Sigmund,
I don't see how my understanding of Foucault, whatever it is, can make
it inappropriate for you to claim an interest in his critique. You bring
to Foucault your own understandings and your own questions, and make use
of him in any way you find appropriate; so do I. I don't find the concerns
you spoke of either "vulgar" or "reactionary", and I probably share many
of them; but for me personally Foucault is useful precisely because his
thinking cuts into, so to speak, the flab of these concerns -- cuts into
what I regard as muscle and reveals it as flab. "Knowledge is not made
for understanding; it is made for cutting."
You say the issue of power is especially urgent to those with less power.
I would question this; I would say it is most urgent to those who need
to maintain power. Also, I would like to ask you: if power is something
one has or doesn't have, and if you regard yourself as privileged and thus
-- I assume -- not among those who are totally deprived of it, then why
your interest in these questions? Assuming that privilege is a good thing
and that it also requires the presence of people who are less privileged,
are you and I not all set? What are we seeking?
You say you wouldn't insist on the innocence of your perspective with
respect to power. Why this word "innocence", which hints at a connection
between power and guilt? Do you regard power as tainted with guilt?
Is the ideal, then, that we should all be powerless?
I cannot try to explain to you how foucault's discussion makes your concerns
irrelevant or beside the point, because I don't see how it could do that --
how can anything anybody thinks make _your_ concerns irrelevant? I also
cannot say what "criminality" or "science" mean to me -- they can mean so many
different things, depending on the circumstances: on whether I happen to be
a criminal, a victim of a crime, a juror, a witness, a claimant in an
anti-pollution suit, a psychiatrist, a psychiatric patient, a laboratory
worker, etc.
-m
I don't see how my understanding of Foucault, whatever it is, can make
it inappropriate for you to claim an interest in his critique. You bring
to Foucault your own understandings and your own questions, and make use
of him in any way you find appropriate; so do I. I don't find the concerns
you spoke of either "vulgar" or "reactionary", and I probably share many
of them; but for me personally Foucault is useful precisely because his
thinking cuts into, so to speak, the flab of these concerns -- cuts into
what I regard as muscle and reveals it as flab. "Knowledge is not made
for understanding; it is made for cutting."
You say the issue of power is especially urgent to those with less power.
I would question this; I would say it is most urgent to those who need
to maintain power. Also, I would like to ask you: if power is something
one has or doesn't have, and if you regard yourself as privileged and thus
-- I assume -- not among those who are totally deprived of it, then why
your interest in these questions? Assuming that privilege is a good thing
and that it also requires the presence of people who are less privileged,
are you and I not all set? What are we seeking?
You say you wouldn't insist on the innocence of your perspective with
respect to power. Why this word "innocence", which hints at a connection
between power and guilt? Do you regard power as tainted with guilt?
Is the ideal, then, that we should all be powerless?
I cannot try to explain to you how foucault's discussion makes your concerns
irrelevant or beside the point, because I don't see how it could do that --
how can anything anybody thinks make _your_ concerns irrelevant? I also
cannot say what "criminality" or "science" mean to me -- they can mean so many
different things, depending on the circumstances: on whether I happen to be
a criminal, a victim of a crime, a juror, a witness, a claimant in an
anti-pollution suit, a psychiatrist, a psychiatric patient, a laboratory
worker, etc.
-m