Sean,
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, I am glad you have used the essay 'Concern
for Truth@ since I once used a quote from this essay as a signature on this
list and it was pointed out by various members that they knew better than I
what Foucault meant. You also seem to present Foucault's words as self
evidently true and neglect the fact that i may have a different reading of them.
>"Leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in
>>order. At least spare us their morality when we write."
Leave me alone, ask not who I am and what I do, just let me do it eh? A
perfect fascist line.
Sean goes on:
>He is asked by Francois Ewald:
>
> ...People are certainly now going to expect an answer from you to the
>question: What must one do? What must one want?
>
>Foucault: The role of an intellectual is not to tell others what they have
>to do.
I agree, who said otherwise? BUT!
By what right would he do so? And remember all the prophecies,
>promises, injunctions, and programs that intellectuals have managed to
>formulate over the last two centuries and whose effects we can know see.
Is not Foucault himself guilty of this after all, the assertion that as
intellectuals we should not tell others what to do is an assertion of what
intellectuals should or should not do? Non? He is at least telling
intellectuals what they should do.
>The work of an intellectual is not to shape others' political will; it is
>through the analyses that he carries out in his field, to question over and
>over again what is postulated as self-evident, that to disturb people's mental
>habits, the way they do and think things, to dissipate what is familiar and
>accepted, to reexamine rules and institutions and on the basis of this
>reproblematization (in which he carries out his specific task as an
>intllectual) to participate in the formation of a political will (in which
>he has his role as citizen to play)."
>
Ditto, Foucault in telling us what intellectuals should not do is in fact
telling us what they should do. But more than this there is the very
impossibility, that Foucault sees, of separating the role of the citizen
from that of the intellectual (if only because intellectuals are also
citizens. And of course, this itself makes clear how untenable is your claim
that:
>The confusion lies not in Foucault, but in those
>>such as Habermas and Colin who refuse to set aside (provisionally, of
>>course) their moralities in order to examine the rationality of the
>>unintended effects of their moralities.
Is totally ant-Foucautian. Again, and this really is getting tedious. How is
such a miraculaous event to be effected. You are simply buying into some
very extreme form of positivism here. It is naive. Rationality distinct from
the morality that frames it, I wish?
>
>F: Nothing is more inconsistent than a political regime that is indifferent
>to truth; but nothing is more dangerous than a political system that claims
>to lay down the truth.
Oh, and does this latter clause not perfectly describe Fascism, which we now
might describe in Foucaultian terms as the "most dangerous of political systems"
The function of "telling the truth" must not take
>the form of law, just as it would be pointless to believe that it resides
>by right in the spontaneous interplay of communication. The task of
>telling the truth is an endless labor: to respect it in all its complexity
>is an obligation which no power can do without -- except by imposing the
>silence of slavery.
But the truth is (as I understand many on this list to argue) something that
is a construct and not alethiac! That is, things are not true in and of
themselves. Hence, discursive idealism does reign. If truth is constructed
and not of things then the truth that the Nazi's construct is as ethically
valuable as any other. And if not why not? What makes it untruth? (what we
once upon a time used to call lies.)
>This obviously is a misrepresentation of Foucault's account of discursive
>pratices. First of all, he does not deny the concept of human nature;
>rather, he wishes to examine the ways in which the concept FUNCTIONS in
>different discourses.
Now I agree with some of this. I have often posted exactly this to the list.
The point is however, that in various places (the debate with Chomsky for
example) he does seem to imply exactly this through his denial that it is a
legitimate question. Moreover, if you are saying that he doesn't deny the
concept, then what is human nature for Foucault?
In the same way, he never attacks truth per se, but
>examines how truth FUNCTIONS in different discourses.
This is a classic case of the "epistemic fallacy", the confusion of an
epistemological notion of truth with an ontological one.
Finally, he does not
>have a "discursive idealism" though he did attempt a theory of discourse in
>the _Archaeology of Knowledge_ but subsequently admitted the failure of
>that project. He does not consider discourse to be non-referential, nor
>merely an arbitrary construction.
Good, can you provide any evidence of this? I would like to quote it....
As he says in countless places: it is
>not his task to verify the truth validity of statements. Rather, his
>concern is to examine the FUNCTION of what counts as true in relation to
>the complexity of its socio-historical context.
What is true simply cannot be reduced or separated from the function of
truth. And to think otherwise is simply dangerous. Since the function of
truth in a Nazi discourse is to legitimate the destruction of peoples they
do not like, then I suppose Foucualt would tell us what we already know.
What is true is important because people tell lies. The function of truth is
only one of its modes of operation.
>with complex relations. For this Foucault gets called
>neo-conservative, irrational, immoral, an epistemoligical relativist, a
>nihilist, etc. These accusations are quite reactionary and tirelessly seem
>to miss the point that Foucault's analyses are attempts to examine the ways
>in which actions affect other actions, despite the conscious awareness of
>the those who practice them, including, admittedly, Foucault's own
>discourse.
Reactionary! All form of idealism are reactionary, that is a good Marxist
truth. I will never undertand the oversensitivity followers of Foucault have
to critique. Why is to to be constructed as reactionary as opposed to
concerned questioning? What, I am to take what you say on faith or simply
shut up? This is a very interesting but weird intellectual phenomena. Raise
a question and the barriers go up.
>
>Now in the following, Colin fails to address the effects of his own
>will-to-censorship and, furthermore, lapses into a "slippery slope"
>argument:
No sorry this is an illicit move. I have never, thus far, suggested that i
would censor the Nazi's, but merely questioned whether a Foucautian approach
could or should, or how it would even frame the question. Actually, I
probably wouldn't in this context but I have a fairly firm cut off point
where I would act, and this would be the point Feyerabend also names as his:
when human suffering starts. The problem for a Foucaultian approach is that
I fail to see how even such a point could be elaborated. When would a
Foucaultian act? OK. you don't want to censor them, fine. Next year they
take over a US state and start shipping out those nasty old blacks, now, is
now the time to act and why? No. Oh, OK, next year they take over the US and
ship out all non-white peoples and incarcerate those that refuese to go, now
surely, now is the time to act. Yes. Why? Also, a related problem you are a
non-white and denied the chance to act.
Improbable scenario? I hope so. But why? because someone somewhere acted
earlier. You obviously don't have to worry about them Sean, but many do. But
then again I suppose that is their problem.
I said
there will be noone left but the
>>Nazis and people reading Foucault, and then who do you think they are going
>>to come for?
Sean replies:
>
>Nothing left but Nazis and Foucauldians! (laughter) This is clearly
>irrational fear at work. There is nothing about the failure to censor this
>newsgroup that would necessarily lead to the rapid spread of Nazi idealogy.
Of course there isn't, that's hardly the point. When things do get so bad
how will you Foucautians know? I mean, I know this is a cheap shot, but
Foucault was at least honest himself about his idealism, discursive or
otherwise, and consistently refused to belief in AIDS and safe sex.
Unfortunately, for all of us, AIDS was real, independent of what Foucault
thought. End of story. I think your own notions of human nature are
beginning to show through Sean. Don't you have an overidealised view of
humans? And by the way, tell the 50 million, or there abouts, people who
died in WWII that fear of the Nazis was irrational, not to mention the many
Asians and other who suffer regularly form their practices in my country. I
can only assume Sean that you are one of those in the cosy intellectual
bubble that I spoke of in a earlier post to whom the Nazis pose no threat.
Nice and comfortable isn't it? For you at least.
>However, there is a negative effect that follows necessarily frrom the
>silencing of a group of people.
Always? Much too determinist an analysis for me.
And it is
>the rationality of practices such as censorship that Foucault questions.>
>So although we can agree that the content of this newsgroup which
>suppossedly would include among other things discussions of the censorship
>of "inferior races", the attempt to silence this group is to instantiate a
>similar type of undesireable practice.
Exactly, the key point. So when would a Foucautian act Sean. When is the
moment when something has to be supressed or is everything OK? Is supression
of a minority political group a lesser wrong that that groups effect on others?
>Once again, the so-called "Foucault industry" is in large part an
>unintended effect of Foucault's own discourse.
So there really is something Foucault "intended" to say?
In the same way, you cannot
>dismiss Nietzsche's writings as necessarily responsible for Nazi idealogy
>merely because one interpretation of his writings shows influence on Nazi
>idealogy; there are clearly places where Nietzsche would dismiss Nazism.
There are plenty more where he lends support and displays his rampant misogyny.
But even so I wouldn't ban reading him or Heidegger, or Hegel (who was
probably a bigger influence on AH). But at least the dangers should be
elaborated on.
>
>To write about ethics does not necessarily make one ethically responsible
>for the effects of what one writes.
Writers do carry a reponsibility, which is why I am trying hard not to get
too dismissive of what I perceive to be your naive stance. I hope you too
will display the same degree of control when, and if, you reply to my
naivety. If you really thought otherwise, why bother writing? Of course, you
can't be held responsible for how I read your posts but this does not
discharge you of your responsibilty in framing your posts. Like much else in
the Foucault corpus, I find this relocation of responsibilty overdone.
The key question I have yet to have answered is when might a Foucautian act
and why?
Thanks,
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA
--------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, I am glad you have used the essay 'Concern
for Truth@ since I once used a quote from this essay as a signature on this
list and it was pointed out by various members that they knew better than I
what Foucault meant. You also seem to present Foucault's words as self
evidently true and neglect the fact that i may have a different reading of them.
>"Leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in
>>order. At least spare us their morality when we write."
Leave me alone, ask not who I am and what I do, just let me do it eh? A
perfect fascist line.
Sean goes on:
>He is asked by Francois Ewald:
>
> ...People are certainly now going to expect an answer from you to the
>question: What must one do? What must one want?
>
>Foucault: The role of an intellectual is not to tell others what they have
>to do.
I agree, who said otherwise? BUT!
By what right would he do so? And remember all the prophecies,
>promises, injunctions, and programs that intellectuals have managed to
>formulate over the last two centuries and whose effects we can know see.
Is not Foucault himself guilty of this after all, the assertion that as
intellectuals we should not tell others what to do is an assertion of what
intellectuals should or should not do? Non? He is at least telling
intellectuals what they should do.
>The work of an intellectual is not to shape others' political will; it is
>through the analyses that he carries out in his field, to question over and
>over again what is postulated as self-evident, that to disturb people's mental
>habits, the way they do and think things, to dissipate what is familiar and
>accepted, to reexamine rules and institutions and on the basis of this
>reproblematization (in which he carries out his specific task as an
>intllectual) to participate in the formation of a political will (in which
>he has his role as citizen to play)."
>
Ditto, Foucault in telling us what intellectuals should not do is in fact
telling us what they should do. But more than this there is the very
impossibility, that Foucault sees, of separating the role of the citizen
from that of the intellectual (if only because intellectuals are also
citizens. And of course, this itself makes clear how untenable is your claim
that:
>The confusion lies not in Foucault, but in those
>>such as Habermas and Colin who refuse to set aside (provisionally, of
>>course) their moralities in order to examine the rationality of the
>>unintended effects of their moralities.
Is totally ant-Foucautian. Again, and this really is getting tedious. How is
such a miraculaous event to be effected. You are simply buying into some
very extreme form of positivism here. It is naive. Rationality distinct from
the morality that frames it, I wish?
>
>F: Nothing is more inconsistent than a political regime that is indifferent
>to truth; but nothing is more dangerous than a political system that claims
>to lay down the truth.
Oh, and does this latter clause not perfectly describe Fascism, which we now
might describe in Foucaultian terms as the "most dangerous of political systems"
The function of "telling the truth" must not take
>the form of law, just as it would be pointless to believe that it resides
>by right in the spontaneous interplay of communication. The task of
>telling the truth is an endless labor: to respect it in all its complexity
>is an obligation which no power can do without -- except by imposing the
>silence of slavery.
But the truth is (as I understand many on this list to argue) something that
is a construct and not alethiac! That is, things are not true in and of
themselves. Hence, discursive idealism does reign. If truth is constructed
and not of things then the truth that the Nazi's construct is as ethically
valuable as any other. And if not why not? What makes it untruth? (what we
once upon a time used to call lies.)
>This obviously is a misrepresentation of Foucault's account of discursive
>pratices. First of all, he does not deny the concept of human nature;
>rather, he wishes to examine the ways in which the concept FUNCTIONS in
>different discourses.
Now I agree with some of this. I have often posted exactly this to the list.
The point is however, that in various places (the debate with Chomsky for
example) he does seem to imply exactly this through his denial that it is a
legitimate question. Moreover, if you are saying that he doesn't deny the
concept, then what is human nature for Foucault?
In the same way, he never attacks truth per se, but
>examines how truth FUNCTIONS in different discourses.
This is a classic case of the "epistemic fallacy", the confusion of an
epistemological notion of truth with an ontological one.
Finally, he does not
>have a "discursive idealism" though he did attempt a theory of discourse in
>the _Archaeology of Knowledge_ but subsequently admitted the failure of
>that project. He does not consider discourse to be non-referential, nor
>merely an arbitrary construction.
Good, can you provide any evidence of this? I would like to quote it....
As he says in countless places: it is
>not his task to verify the truth validity of statements. Rather, his
>concern is to examine the FUNCTION of what counts as true in relation to
>the complexity of its socio-historical context.
What is true simply cannot be reduced or separated from the function of
truth. And to think otherwise is simply dangerous. Since the function of
truth in a Nazi discourse is to legitimate the destruction of peoples they
do not like, then I suppose Foucualt would tell us what we already know.
What is true is important because people tell lies. The function of truth is
only one of its modes of operation.
>with complex relations. For this Foucault gets called
>neo-conservative, irrational, immoral, an epistemoligical relativist, a
>nihilist, etc. These accusations are quite reactionary and tirelessly seem
>to miss the point that Foucault's analyses are attempts to examine the ways
>in which actions affect other actions, despite the conscious awareness of
>the those who practice them, including, admittedly, Foucault's own
>discourse.
Reactionary! All form of idealism are reactionary, that is a good Marxist
truth. I will never undertand the oversensitivity followers of Foucault have
to critique. Why is to to be constructed as reactionary as opposed to
concerned questioning? What, I am to take what you say on faith or simply
shut up? This is a very interesting but weird intellectual phenomena. Raise
a question and the barriers go up.
>
>Now in the following, Colin fails to address the effects of his own
>will-to-censorship and, furthermore, lapses into a "slippery slope"
>argument:
No sorry this is an illicit move. I have never, thus far, suggested that i
would censor the Nazi's, but merely questioned whether a Foucautian approach
could or should, or how it would even frame the question. Actually, I
probably wouldn't in this context but I have a fairly firm cut off point
where I would act, and this would be the point Feyerabend also names as his:
when human suffering starts. The problem for a Foucaultian approach is that
I fail to see how even such a point could be elaborated. When would a
Foucaultian act? OK. you don't want to censor them, fine. Next year they
take over a US state and start shipping out those nasty old blacks, now, is
now the time to act and why? No. Oh, OK, next year they take over the US and
ship out all non-white peoples and incarcerate those that refuese to go, now
surely, now is the time to act. Yes. Why? Also, a related problem you are a
non-white and denied the chance to act.
Improbable scenario? I hope so. But why? because someone somewhere acted
earlier. You obviously don't have to worry about them Sean, but many do. But
then again I suppose that is their problem.
I said
there will be noone left but the
>>Nazis and people reading Foucault, and then who do you think they are going
>>to come for?
Sean replies:
>
>Nothing left but Nazis and Foucauldians! (laughter) This is clearly
>irrational fear at work. There is nothing about the failure to censor this
>newsgroup that would necessarily lead to the rapid spread of Nazi idealogy.
Of course there isn't, that's hardly the point. When things do get so bad
how will you Foucautians know? I mean, I know this is a cheap shot, but
Foucault was at least honest himself about his idealism, discursive or
otherwise, and consistently refused to belief in AIDS and safe sex.
Unfortunately, for all of us, AIDS was real, independent of what Foucault
thought. End of story. I think your own notions of human nature are
beginning to show through Sean. Don't you have an overidealised view of
humans? And by the way, tell the 50 million, or there abouts, people who
died in WWII that fear of the Nazis was irrational, not to mention the many
Asians and other who suffer regularly form their practices in my country. I
can only assume Sean that you are one of those in the cosy intellectual
bubble that I spoke of in a earlier post to whom the Nazis pose no threat.
Nice and comfortable isn't it? For you at least.
>However, there is a negative effect that follows necessarily frrom the
>silencing of a group of people.
Always? Much too determinist an analysis for me.
And it is
>the rationality of practices such as censorship that Foucault questions.>
>So although we can agree that the content of this newsgroup which
>suppossedly would include among other things discussions of the censorship
>of "inferior races", the attempt to silence this group is to instantiate a
>similar type of undesireable practice.
Exactly, the key point. So when would a Foucautian act Sean. When is the
moment when something has to be supressed or is everything OK? Is supression
of a minority political group a lesser wrong that that groups effect on others?
>Once again, the so-called "Foucault industry" is in large part an
>unintended effect of Foucault's own discourse.
So there really is something Foucault "intended" to say?
In the same way, you cannot
>dismiss Nietzsche's writings as necessarily responsible for Nazi idealogy
>merely because one interpretation of his writings shows influence on Nazi
>idealogy; there are clearly places where Nietzsche would dismiss Nazism.
There are plenty more where he lends support and displays his rampant misogyny.
But even so I wouldn't ban reading him or Heidegger, or Hegel (who was
probably a bigger influence on AH). But at least the dangers should be
elaborated on.
>
>To write about ethics does not necessarily make one ethically responsible
>for the effects of what one writes.
Writers do carry a reponsibility, which is why I am trying hard not to get
too dismissive of what I perceive to be your naive stance. I hope you too
will display the same degree of control when, and if, you reply to my
naivety. If you really thought otherwise, why bother writing? Of course, you
can't be held responsible for how I read your posts but this does not
discharge you of your responsibilty in framing your posts. Like much else in
the Foucault corpus, I find this relocation of responsibilty overdone.
The key question I have yet to have answered is when might a Foucautian act
and why?
Thanks,
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA
--------------------------------------------------------