> Less melodramatically, is it acceptable for someone writing what looks to
> be like history - especially history of a sort that is making fairly
> sweeping claims - to "breech the laws" of "traditional historiography"?
> Which means, as far as I can tell, a sloppiness about evidence in the
> service of a "higher" truth. So what's your standard for judging that
> higher truth then?
Doug, this seems to me a rather sloppily conceived question. Is any of it
meant to refer to Foucault's work? If so, I would vigorously deny the
notion that Foucault is involved in serving a "higher" truth, and I would
also deny that he is "sloppy"; on the contrary, he seems to me to be
a strikingly careful and attentive researcher. As far as "traditional
historiography" goes, he didn't conceive of his work as being that; he
repeatedly stresses that it is something else -- "genealogy", in the
Nietzschian sense, or "archeology". It is concerned with tracing the
genealogies of what shapes, or constitutes, subjectivity. I don't think
"traditional historiography" deals with that, and I don't think his concerns
belong in some established field in which one can refer to "laws". One can
take from Foucault what seems right or useful, and leave the rest alone.
What do you mean by "is it acceptable"? To whom, for what purpose, in what
context?
-malgosia
> be like history - especially history of a sort that is making fairly
> sweeping claims - to "breech the laws" of "traditional historiography"?
> Which means, as far as I can tell, a sloppiness about evidence in the
> service of a "higher" truth. So what's your standard for judging that
> higher truth then?
Doug, this seems to me a rather sloppily conceived question. Is any of it
meant to refer to Foucault's work? If so, I would vigorously deny the
notion that Foucault is involved in serving a "higher" truth, and I would
also deny that he is "sloppy"; on the contrary, he seems to me to be
a strikingly careful and attentive researcher. As far as "traditional
historiography" goes, he didn't conceive of his work as being that; he
repeatedly stresses that it is something else -- "genealogy", in the
Nietzschian sense, or "archeology". It is concerned with tracing the
genealogies of what shapes, or constitutes, subjectivity. I don't think
"traditional historiography" deals with that, and I don't think his concerns
belong in some established field in which one can refer to "laws". One can
take from Foucault what seems right or useful, and leave the rest alone.
What do you mean by "is it acceptable"? To whom, for what purpose, in what
context?
-malgosia