Re: transgression again

On Mon, 14 John Ransom wrote:

> Bataille may be the occasion for the essay, but at least when I read
> "Preface" it seems that a much broader discussion of transgression is
> either being presented by Foucault himself or can reasonably be
> extrapolated from the text.
>
> Here's how I see the flow of the argument in Preface: (1) We used to know
> what to do with transgressions; we used to be able to situate them in a
> transcendent hierarchy vis-a-vis God. In particular, we used to know how
> to handle sexual transgressions, as in "the ecstasy that I, St. Teresa,
> experience is *like* sexual ecstasy, but it's *really* the ecstasy one
> feels when filled with the grace of God's love." (2) Now, however, God is
> dead, as Nietzsche points out. (3) But not only God -- or rather, God can
> be seen as a convenient placeholder for all God-like guarantees of our
> being and its purpose, such as Man, Humanity, the Proletariat, etc.
> (4) Given these deaths, we need to go "back to the phenomena" and study
> limit-transgression in itself. We need to understand the
> limit-transcendence dyad in a way that is freed from the stories we used
> to tell about them, precisely because those stories no longer work or not
> as well.
>
> You ask if Foucault recommends transgression as a general thing, and if
so
> where. Here's what Foucault said some twenty years after writing the
> "Preface" piece:
>
> We must...give a more positive content to what may be a
> philosophical ethos consisting in a critique of what we
> are saying, thinking, and doing, through a historical
> ontology of ourselves.
> This philosophical ethos may be characterized as a
> *limit-attitude*. We are not talking about a gesture of
> rejection. We have to move beyond the outside-inside
> alternative; we have to be at the frontiers. Criticism
> indeed consists of analyzing and reflecting upon
> limits....The point, in brief, is to transform the
> critique conducted in the form of a necessary limitation
> into a practical critique that takes the form of a
> possible transgression. ("What Is Enlightenment" in
> _Foucault Reader_, 45)
>
> So it's not that Foucault is recommending "transgression" as a
generalized
> idea, but that we need to rethink transgression given its fairly
ruderless
> state in the current setting. Just after the above quotation, Foucault
> continues:
>
> This entails an obvious consequence: that criticism is no
> longer going to be practiced in the search for formal
> structures with universal value, but rather as a historical
> investigation into the events that have led us to
> constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as subjects
> of what we are doing, thinking, saying. In that sense,
> this criticism is not transcendental, and its goal is not
> that of making a metaphysics possible. ("WIE", 45-46)
>

I think we have to be a little careful in trying to extrapolate
a much broader discussion of transgression from the
"Preface to the Transgression" by associating this text with
"What is Enlightenment?". In the original French version
of "What is Enlightenment?" the word Foucault uses is
'franchissement' and not 'transgression'.
Here is the French version of the passage John Ransom
quoted:

"Il s'agit en somme de transformer la critique exercée dans la
forme de limitation nécessaire en une critique pratique
dans la forme du franchissement possible". ("Qu'est-ce-que
les lumieres", Dits et Ecrits, V.4, p.574)

Now, I am not saying that the two concepts, 'franchissement'
and 'transgression' are unrelated, but I wonder why Foucault
used the former term rather than the latter. Did he,
perhaps, not want to commit himself to some content that he
had ascribed to 'transgression' some twenty years earlier?
In any case, it seems further argumentation is needed to show
that Foucault used the two terms interchangeably.
I think "What is Enlightenment?" is a text with retrospective
overtones for the following reasons:
i) Foucault argues (in "The Subject and Power") that the
question of the subject 'is the general theme of (his) research.
and
ii) he argues (in the Preface to the History of Sexuality, V.2)
that we should undertake a nominalist reduction of the subject
and that a proper understanding of subjective experience
requires a historical ontology of ourselves.
iii) he explains (in "What is Enlightenment?") what he
understands by this historical ontology: criticism (I think given
the context 'critique' would be a better translation than
'criticism') as analysis of and reflection upon limits for their
possible 'franchissement'.

If this is a text that Foucault finds relevant to his entire
project, it is hard to understand why he did not emphasize
the continuity between 'Preface to Transgression' and
'What is Enlightenment?' by using the same term for the same
concept (unless he assigned substantially different meanings to
them.)

Ferda Keskin


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  • Re: transgression again
    • From: John Ransom
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