colin, i won't try to respond to everything, realising that i too
have some sympathies with many of your views. probably the wooly
liberal heartstrings urging me to 'do the right thing'...
colin wight wrote:
> One of the most often cited charges against Foucault is that his
> work is neo-conservative.
the basis for this critique seems to rest on a 'if not x, then must
be y' sort of logic. the abandonment of positivism is seen as the
abandonment of all critical thought for if the 'centre' doesn't hold
then nothing must. the abandonment of moral universalism is seen as
the abandonment of morality in general.
a brief response from bell hooks:
'postmodern culture with its decentred subject can be the space
where ties are severed or it can provide the occasion for _new and
varied forms of bonding_. To some extent, ruptures, surfaces,
contextuality and a host of other happenings create gaps that make
space for oppositional practices which no longer require
intellectuals to be confined to narrow separate spheres with no
meaningful connection to the world of the everyday...a space is
there for _critical exchange_...'
i agree that the separation from the political and the philosophical
is a dubious act, in said's terms, 'one must repoliticise the
philosophical and rephilosophicise the political'. the scholars must
step down from the towers and get their hands dirty, i think hooks
is trying to show that theory and praxis is not impossibly
separated, or even _incommensurable_. foucault's system (not
foucault personally, because although he didn't love animals, i'm
think he loved young boys...) is not meant to be an unconditional
acceptance of moral relativism, a position which foucault admits
would be equally as totalising as moral universalism.
> though never rebutted charge that Foucault is a
> proto-positivist.
i think these two arguments are interlinked. you argue: (i) foucault
provides no ground to answer questions of silencing except that we
should never silence. (ii) foucault was a proto-positivist because
he held on to the subject/object distinction. (i'm sure other
reasons as well)
both assume that foucault was either hopelessly trapped on the
borderlines or was actually a closet positivist who employed
nebulous postmodern theoretical dodgings. i think foucault sees
these ends of a conflated spectrum as an unecessary dichotomy. in
his words:
'but if you claim you are opening up a radical interrogation, if you
wish to place your discourse at the level at which we place
ourselves, you know very well that it will enter our game, and in
turn, extend the dimension that is trying to free itself from.
either it does not reach us or we claim it. I admit this question
embarrasses me more than your earlier objections. i am not entirely
suprised by it; but i would prefer to leave it in suspense a little
longer. this is because, for the moment, and as in far as I can see,
my discourse, far from determining the locus in which it speaks, is
avoiding the ground on which it could find support...it is trying to
deploy a dispersion that can never be reduced to a single system of
differences...' (Arch of Knldg)
foucault ironically recognises this paradox in his work. i think to
rip away the tightrope between postmodern thought and positivism is
to abandon critical inquiry into issues such as _them nasty
cyber-nazis_. foucault isn't asking for positivist categories,
identities, methods, to be wiped theoretically away, that would be
naive given that they ontologically still exist for the majority of
people (this is something baudrillard seems to enjoy ignoring).
ultimately he is questioning their construction, not reducing them
to mere constructions.
as for _them nasty cyber-nazis_, they exist in 'reality'. but they
are also visions, conceptions, constructions to a certain extent.
they are the subject of laughs on tv talk shows, or they are the
straw-figures in hollywood action films. this is not the sympathy
routine, rather a argument that how we view them implicates how we
view ourselves, racial categories, classes, the role of the
internet, government censorship/law enforcement, etc. the morality
here is a shade of grey, it is not black and white (no pun
intended). foucualt's method of questioning how these issues are
presented to us and how power is tied in with how we view things is
indispensible for traversing these issues.
certain people on the list repeatedly say _silence, silence,
silence_ as if it is the only option. is silencing going to solve
the problem or is it a quick solution for more fundamental racial
and class dynamics? no one seems to be wanting to ask or answer
these questions, its much easier to just say 'silence'.
cheers,
paul