Doug wrote:
> Interesting. Is there no Foucaultian polemic?
This is an interesting question. I assume that you're not asking whether
Foucault himself engaged in polemics, etc., but whether there are forms
of polemic that are in some sense specifically "foucauldian". Now to
really think about this we would probably need to agree on what we mean
by "polemic". To the extent that the purpose of polemic is to _refute_,
I believe that it is pretty much at cross-purposes with Foucault's
approach to thinking, which is very concenred with constant readiness
for transformation, with "stopping to think what one is thinking" --
in other words, the production of the new. To the extent that polemic
does strive to produce something new by bringing about a dialectical
event of some kind, I would say that a Foucauldian attitude towards
it would probably be opportunistic and depend on the situation.
However, there is in Foucault a definite striving to get away from
dialectics, which is, I believe, seen as a form of thinking that can
no longer serve as a productive and useful foundation for leftist thought.
-m
> Interesting. Is there no Foucaultian polemic?
This is an interesting question. I assume that you're not asking whether
Foucault himself engaged in polemics, etc., but whether there are forms
of polemic that are in some sense specifically "foucauldian". Now to
really think about this we would probably need to agree on what we mean
by "polemic". To the extent that the purpose of polemic is to _refute_,
I believe that it is pretty much at cross-purposes with Foucault's
approach to thinking, which is very concenred with constant readiness
for transformation, with "stopping to think what one is thinking" --
in other words, the production of the new. To the extent that polemic
does strive to produce something new by bringing about a dialectical
event of some kind, I would say that a Foucauldian attitude towards
it would probably be opportunistic and depend on the situation.
However, there is in Foucault a definite striving to get away from
dialectics, which is, I believe, seen as a form of thinking that can
no longer serve as a productive and useful foundation for leftist thought.
-m