Blaine wrote:
> Well, Malgosia, if you are suggesting that Foucault felt deep-down that
> humans are basically good, I suppose I'd have to say that I'd categorize
> your belief as "basically unfalsifiable." I tried to offer some
> evidence that this wasn't the case, but I suppose there's nothing extant
> that could, strictly speaking, falsify your belief. I'm not sure where
> that gets us, however....
Well, this is becoming a lead balloon, and so is probably best left
dropped. I don't think that what I was suggesting is in any way
an "unfalsifiable belief". This "at heart" talk of mine could, with
a little bit of effort, be recast into a question about who, to use Umberto
Eco's term, is Foucault's "model reader", and then it would lose the
psychologizing costume that jars on you. I thought your evidence had to do
with essentializing, rather than with an underlying aesthetic or underlying
attitude towards the reader, so I tried to draw a distinction between the
two. But if this is all a dead end, then so it is. Although I'll likely
try again later, differently.
-m
> Well, Malgosia, if you are suggesting that Foucault felt deep-down that
> humans are basically good, I suppose I'd have to say that I'd categorize
> your belief as "basically unfalsifiable." I tried to offer some
> evidence that this wasn't the case, but I suppose there's nothing extant
> that could, strictly speaking, falsify your belief. I'm not sure where
> that gets us, however....
Well, this is becoming a lead balloon, and so is probably best left
dropped. I don't think that what I was suggesting is in any way
an "unfalsifiable belief". This "at heart" talk of mine could, with
a little bit of effort, be recast into a question about who, to use Umberto
Eco's term, is Foucault's "model reader", and then it would lose the
psychologizing costume that jars on you. I thought your evidence had to do
with essentializing, rather than with an underlying aesthetic or underlying
attitude towards the reader, so I tried to draw a distinction between the
two. But if this is all a dead end, then so it is. Although I'll likely
try again later, differently.
-m