>malgosia askanas wrote:
>
>>Doug, I think that what you keep trying to ask is this. Is there anything
>>in Foucault -- and if so, what? -- that draws limits to the interpretation
>>of, say, Foucault's notion of "trangression"? Is it just because Foucault
>>is mostly read by a bunch of academics, and thus not treated with complete
>>seriousness, that people don't, under the influence of his writings, engage
>>in murder and eye-ripping in the name of "experimenting with one's limits"?
>>Or is there anything in Foucault writings that circumscribes this
>>"experimentation"? Could someone "experiment" with mass murder and still be,
>>so to speak, a good Foucauldian?
>>
>>Is this what you're trying to ask? I don't think I have anything to offer
>>by way of answer, but this is the first time that I feel like maybe I
>>understand
>>the question.
>
>Well yes, that's a good part of it - and I'm asking that not just about
>Foucault himself, as man and author, but about people who admire them. More
>broadly, I'm also asking how seriously to take this whole anti-humanist
>line. Without humanism, are all things possible?
>
>I was flamed for bringing up Foucault's connections to the heads-on-sticks
>tendencies of French 60s Maoism. But there's no doubt that Foucault was
>fascinated by extremes of torture and violence, whether we're talking about
>Damiens and Riviere or erotic play with floggers and fists. When it comes
>to erotic play, I say screw official morality, let a thousand nipple clamps
>bloom, but when it comes to politics and social life, I get a little
>nervous about eroticized violence. For all the Foucaultian (or is it
>Foucauldian?) talk about the local and the specific, I see an awful lot of
>abstract, even universalizing, declarations about anti-moralism.
>
>Doug
>
>Doug
>
>Well, hummmm, there's no reason why foucault has to be any more consistent
than the rest of us. I think you're right that foucault started out
priviledging the category of transgression and the idea of the outside. And
certainly it seems reasonable to assume that, personally, he always had an
attraction to extreme experiences.
But I think intellectually he gave up this position after Derrida's review
of Madness and civilization. The guy who wrote foucault and Literature - i
can't remember his name - has an interesting section on this. foucault is
very explicit in the Archeology that there is no `outside.'
and if you read the later vols of the history of sexuality in the context of
Rajchman's book on Lacan and Foucault and Deluze's short monograph on
foucault you see a different side of his argument. In these works,
subjectivization only takes place as the result of a relationship in which
the subject has to affect itself in the context of a specific practice/set
of rules. and while the specific rules can be transcended/changed the
defining concept of practice can't. (He has a short essay in which he reads
gay s/m practices in this context)
so I think you should read foucault for his ambivalences - in order to see
where a certain sensibility goes when it is denied the access to an outside
that Bataille had. It doesn't do much good to flatten him out like roadkill
on an interstate.
Roy
>
>
>
>>Doug, I think that what you keep trying to ask is this. Is there anything
>>in Foucault -- and if so, what? -- that draws limits to the interpretation
>>of, say, Foucault's notion of "trangression"? Is it just because Foucault
>>is mostly read by a bunch of academics, and thus not treated with complete
>>seriousness, that people don't, under the influence of his writings, engage
>>in murder and eye-ripping in the name of "experimenting with one's limits"?
>>Or is there anything in Foucault writings that circumscribes this
>>"experimentation"? Could someone "experiment" with mass murder and still be,
>>so to speak, a good Foucauldian?
>>
>>Is this what you're trying to ask? I don't think I have anything to offer
>>by way of answer, but this is the first time that I feel like maybe I
>>understand
>>the question.
>
>Well yes, that's a good part of it - and I'm asking that not just about
>Foucault himself, as man and author, but about people who admire them. More
>broadly, I'm also asking how seriously to take this whole anti-humanist
>line. Without humanism, are all things possible?
>
>I was flamed for bringing up Foucault's connections to the heads-on-sticks
>tendencies of French 60s Maoism. But there's no doubt that Foucault was
>fascinated by extremes of torture and violence, whether we're talking about
>Damiens and Riviere or erotic play with floggers and fists. When it comes
>to erotic play, I say screw official morality, let a thousand nipple clamps
>bloom, but when it comes to politics and social life, I get a little
>nervous about eroticized violence. For all the Foucaultian (or is it
>Foucauldian?) talk about the local and the specific, I see an awful lot of
>abstract, even universalizing, declarations about anti-moralism.
>
>Doug
>
>Doug
>
>Well, hummmm, there's no reason why foucault has to be any more consistent
than the rest of us. I think you're right that foucault started out
priviledging the category of transgression and the idea of the outside. And
certainly it seems reasonable to assume that, personally, he always had an
attraction to extreme experiences.
But I think intellectually he gave up this position after Derrida's review
of Madness and civilization. The guy who wrote foucault and Literature - i
can't remember his name - has an interesting section on this. foucault is
very explicit in the Archeology that there is no `outside.'
and if you read the later vols of the history of sexuality in the context of
Rajchman's book on Lacan and Foucault and Deluze's short monograph on
foucault you see a different side of his argument. In these works,
subjectivization only takes place as the result of a relationship in which
the subject has to affect itself in the context of a specific practice/set
of rules. and while the specific rules can be transcended/changed the
defining concept of practice can't. (He has a short essay in which he reads
gay s/m practices in this context)
so I think you should read foucault for his ambivalences - in order to see
where a certain sensibility goes when it is denied the access to an outside
that Bataille had. It doesn't do much good to flatten him out like roadkill
on an interstate.
Roy
>
>