Re: Ideology, episteme and knowledge

Hi,

Does anyone know where I can find any works about a comparison between the
conceptions of =E9pist=E9m=E8 or "savoir" in Foucault and the marxist concep=
tion
of ideology and especially the one developed by Althusser?

Maybe someone can help me to understand clearly the own conception of
Ideology developed in AK, as a limit, a frontier, between science and
savoir?

Glo> In reading _The History of Sexuality_, I got the impression that
F. favors the subjective over the objective.

My analogy would be that he finds the lens of more interest than
the star or microbe at which it is pointed.

In so elevating the social and human aspect of knowledge (knowledge
is produced by DISCOURSE rather than DISCOVERY), doesn't F.
make peace with "the powers that be"? In other words, he concedes
that something may be true and yet not be "the truth" because it
gets said by someone who is outside the official organs of
discourse and is a personage of no rank.

I applied Mendel and his peas to this. Mendel was ignored for a time
because his ideas and discoveries did not fit the framwrok of theory
of his day. Also, Louis Pasteur only succeeded in convincing the
medical officals of the efficacy of his anthrax vaccine due to
a staged trial, wherein he made a public controlled 2-group
experiment. In that instance the officals were totally wrong. If
F. is saying that knowledge is ALWAYS a prouct of discourse and not
discovery, is he not being a bit reductionist in his analysis?
Just that example shows that DISCOVERY can move DISCOURSE in a
different direction. That is, the French medical academicians had
absolutely no intention to accomodate Pasteur's theories into
their discourse, but were forced to do so by the reality of
Pasteur's sheep being healthy and the other sheep being dead.

I don't know if this answers anything about the relation of
"savoir" to science. Perhaps there are some areas where DISCOURSE
must yield itself to discovery and others where it need not.

Gloria





Would Foucault agree with the opinion of Althusser that "ideology
has no history"? Then, is there here a kind of "eternal" and then why not
"universal" point in the analysis of Foucault? MAybe, the beginning of a
real theory of knowledge? That's a big problem for me, because I always
thought that Foucault always refused such theoretical, or universal, point
of view.

MAybe that's all silly, so...

Thanx anyway,

Ludovic ARMAND
Etudiant en th=E8se de Science politique


Folow-ups
  • Re: Ideology, episteme and knowledge
    • From: Philip Goldstein
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