Sean,
Once again thanks for your replies.
>>
>>Leave me alone, ask not who I am and what I do, just let me do it eh? A
>>perfect fascist line.
>>
>
>Maybe. But given your above claim to the possibility of different readings
>and my understanding of the number of possible readings of a text to be
>indeterminate, to interpret that comment as strictly fascist certainly is
>not the only possible one.
No I am not claiming that it is fascism but that such replies can be used to
hide various approaches. Moreover, I accept that you can get a different
reading, my point is more that my reading of the quote is at least one and
this worries me. I don't like this quote at all although i know many
Foucaultians are quite taken with it. Yes, I can see the attraction if you
are a marginalised dissident then it seems a perfectly reasonable stance to
take, but if you are a homocidal fascist then it equally well serves to
elide questioning.
I reject this reading because I find nothing
>in Foucault to support his being a fascist.
I am not suggesting he was. My apologies if you have taken me to be
suggesting this. I am not interested in Foucault the man, I thought I made
this clear, it is his philosophical framework that concerns me, and nor am a
saying that that is fascist, it is more a question of how it would refute
fascism and why?
. But he does not think the problem of fascism is
>exclusively to be found in explicit fascist declarations (such as one might
>find on the newsgroup). To silence the newsgroup is also a form of fascism
>just as possibly dangerous as the potential effects caused by the
>newsgroup.
But the question still remains Sean, when would a Foucaultain silence, when
is the time to move? How many people have to suffer before we say to someone
you must stop your activities. I am not claiming that the answers are easy,
not that I know them all, I am claiming that under certain readings of
Foucault the answer is never. This is problematic no?
>
>"that it disclosed political relationships where they were unsuspected.
>...The intellectual was rejected and persecuted at the precise moment when
>the facts became incontrovertable, when it was forbidden to say that the
>emperor had no clothes. The intellectual spoke the truth to those who had
>yet to see it, in the name of those who were forbidden to speak the truth;
>he was conscience, consciousness, and eloquence." ("Intellectuals and
>Power", 207)
But this is exactly the point, in naming the traditional intellectual thus
and saying that this role is no longer viable or ethically responsible he
his, in effect, arguing that intellectuals should not play this role. Also,
I think he seriously underplays the manner in which intellectual ideas are
not solely, although they are to a certain extent, in the control of the
intellectuals. Hence the masses do not need the intellectuals to tell them
what to do, but rather, the ideas intellectuals produce get used whatever
the intellectuals think their role should be. And if you tell people that
truth is simply an effect of power, then the tacit recomendation is to get
as much power as is possible.
It may go
>like this: Despite the citizen's demand that the intellectual no longer
>tell him/her what to do, because he/she knows it perfectly well, there is
>the issue of the background of largely unarticulated beliefs that the
>citizen is not aware of in its everyday activity (how the citizen's actions
>affect other actions). The contemporary citizen's everyday activities do
>not require him/her to articulate these beliefs in order to do what s/he
>does. And that is why the intellectual's committments today may be less
>about informing the citizen of what s/he should do, and more about
>explicating the background of largely unarticulated beliefs, including
>contemporary moralities. It is this critical activity which, I think, can
>only enrich one's self-understanding as a citizen, but it certainly is not
>a requirement of being a citizen. Is this naive? Is it fascist?
Absolutely not, it sounds very much as I would describe the role. But (1) it
is driven by a certain morality (I simply don't accept the notion of value
freedom); and, (2) the knowledge produced can have real effects. Hence, the
knowledge of the background, which was once unknown can have real, and
possibly emancipatory effects. But I am not sure the approach you describe
could be correctly describes as what Foucault suggests, since your position
seems to imply that there is a background to be discovered as opposed to
constructed. I agree with you (if I have undertstood you right), but wonder
whether the process you describe is consistent with Foucault, it seems more
Marxist to me.
>
>The traditional intellectual was always affiliated with a political regime,
>or at least served as the representatve of the "truth", as it did for
>instance in Lenin or Gramsci. I think Foucault, after 68, finds the
>political function of traditional intellectuals to be oppressive to people
>and so he rejects that function, and he subsequently does not tell people
>how to think or act, ethically or otherwise.
Been over this, Yes he does by telling them the role of an intellectual is
not to be that of a traditional intellectual.
But that does not mean that
>these same people could not find something useful or even dangerous in his
>work if they read him that way. That choice, or whether to read Foucault
>at all, is up to them.
No it is not all up to them. Just as racist literature is not simply a
function of the reader. Writers have a responsibilty. Sure they cannot be
held totally responsible, just as if you interpret this post as advocating
fascism, I can't stop you. But I can at least partially control the process
by not using certain words, phrases and ideas. Otherwise, what do we bother
communicating?
>Your notion of truth seems to be unnecessarily objectivist and the
>deconstructionists are far too relativist.
Strange that, I would try to place myself in the middle ground too. However,
I am rather a stickler for keeping my ontology distinct from my
epistemology, hence my claim that there is such a thing as truth does not
imply any particular epistemological claim of how we might know it. Let me
be clear, I chracterise my metaphysical position as: ontologically realist,
epistemologically relativist (in the sense that I accept that all beliefs
and truth claims are socially embedded), and jugementally rationalist.
producedThe phenomenological requirement
>of transparent access to the "things themselves" assumes that there is a
>truth to be obtained from the things and it is the phenomenologist who has
>that access. This is only partially acceptable.
I certainly don't accept it. there is no necessary identity between the
world and our descriptions of it.
Unlike discursive
>idealsim, which like you I too reject, truth cannot be separated from the
>background in which it has meaning. However, this background is never
>fully known, and is always changing.
Yes I agree totally, but the background includes beliefs and things which
those beliefs are and adequate analysis cannot commence without both.
So meaning is not something we
>construct, nor is it embedded deep within the things themselves. It lies
>somewhere between and never remains the same. Against this background of
>shared meanings it is easy to reject Nazi idealogy as untrue without having
>to ground our rejection in some unhistorical idea of morality.
Well, although it never remains the same it must display a certain level of
stability or else we could never understand each other. Nor would I want to
ground morality in some ahistorical idea. But what is our present morality
grounded in.
Once again thanks,
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA
--------------------------------------------------------
Once again thanks for your replies.
>>
>>Leave me alone, ask not who I am and what I do, just let me do it eh? A
>>perfect fascist line.
>>
>
>Maybe. But given your above claim to the possibility of different readings
>and my understanding of the number of possible readings of a text to be
>indeterminate, to interpret that comment as strictly fascist certainly is
>not the only possible one.
No I am not claiming that it is fascism but that such replies can be used to
hide various approaches. Moreover, I accept that you can get a different
reading, my point is more that my reading of the quote is at least one and
this worries me. I don't like this quote at all although i know many
Foucaultians are quite taken with it. Yes, I can see the attraction if you
are a marginalised dissident then it seems a perfectly reasonable stance to
take, but if you are a homocidal fascist then it equally well serves to
elide questioning.
I reject this reading because I find nothing
>in Foucault to support his being a fascist.
I am not suggesting he was. My apologies if you have taken me to be
suggesting this. I am not interested in Foucault the man, I thought I made
this clear, it is his philosophical framework that concerns me, and nor am a
saying that that is fascist, it is more a question of how it would refute
fascism and why?
. But he does not think the problem of fascism is
>exclusively to be found in explicit fascist declarations (such as one might
>find on the newsgroup). To silence the newsgroup is also a form of fascism
>just as possibly dangerous as the potential effects caused by the
>newsgroup.
But the question still remains Sean, when would a Foucaultain silence, when
is the time to move? How many people have to suffer before we say to someone
you must stop your activities. I am not claiming that the answers are easy,
not that I know them all, I am claiming that under certain readings of
Foucault the answer is never. This is problematic no?
>
>"that it disclosed political relationships where they were unsuspected.
>...The intellectual was rejected and persecuted at the precise moment when
>the facts became incontrovertable, when it was forbidden to say that the
>emperor had no clothes. The intellectual spoke the truth to those who had
>yet to see it, in the name of those who were forbidden to speak the truth;
>he was conscience, consciousness, and eloquence." ("Intellectuals and
>Power", 207)
But this is exactly the point, in naming the traditional intellectual thus
and saying that this role is no longer viable or ethically responsible he
his, in effect, arguing that intellectuals should not play this role. Also,
I think he seriously underplays the manner in which intellectual ideas are
not solely, although they are to a certain extent, in the control of the
intellectuals. Hence the masses do not need the intellectuals to tell them
what to do, but rather, the ideas intellectuals produce get used whatever
the intellectuals think their role should be. And if you tell people that
truth is simply an effect of power, then the tacit recomendation is to get
as much power as is possible.
It may go
>like this: Despite the citizen's demand that the intellectual no longer
>tell him/her what to do, because he/she knows it perfectly well, there is
>the issue of the background of largely unarticulated beliefs that the
>citizen is not aware of in its everyday activity (how the citizen's actions
>affect other actions). The contemporary citizen's everyday activities do
>not require him/her to articulate these beliefs in order to do what s/he
>does. And that is why the intellectual's committments today may be less
>about informing the citizen of what s/he should do, and more about
>explicating the background of largely unarticulated beliefs, including
>contemporary moralities. It is this critical activity which, I think, can
>only enrich one's self-understanding as a citizen, but it certainly is not
>a requirement of being a citizen. Is this naive? Is it fascist?
Absolutely not, it sounds very much as I would describe the role. But (1) it
is driven by a certain morality (I simply don't accept the notion of value
freedom); and, (2) the knowledge produced can have real effects. Hence, the
knowledge of the background, which was once unknown can have real, and
possibly emancipatory effects. But I am not sure the approach you describe
could be correctly describes as what Foucault suggests, since your position
seems to imply that there is a background to be discovered as opposed to
constructed. I agree with you (if I have undertstood you right), but wonder
whether the process you describe is consistent with Foucault, it seems more
Marxist to me.
>
>The traditional intellectual was always affiliated with a political regime,
>or at least served as the representatve of the "truth", as it did for
>instance in Lenin or Gramsci. I think Foucault, after 68, finds the
>political function of traditional intellectuals to be oppressive to people
>and so he rejects that function, and he subsequently does not tell people
>how to think or act, ethically or otherwise.
Been over this, Yes he does by telling them the role of an intellectual is
not to be that of a traditional intellectual.
But that does not mean that
>these same people could not find something useful or even dangerous in his
>work if they read him that way. That choice, or whether to read Foucault
>at all, is up to them.
No it is not all up to them. Just as racist literature is not simply a
function of the reader. Writers have a responsibilty. Sure they cannot be
held totally responsible, just as if you interpret this post as advocating
fascism, I can't stop you. But I can at least partially control the process
by not using certain words, phrases and ideas. Otherwise, what do we bother
communicating?
>Your notion of truth seems to be unnecessarily objectivist and the
>deconstructionists are far too relativist.
Strange that, I would try to place myself in the middle ground too. However,
I am rather a stickler for keeping my ontology distinct from my
epistemology, hence my claim that there is such a thing as truth does not
imply any particular epistemological claim of how we might know it. Let me
be clear, I chracterise my metaphysical position as: ontologically realist,
epistemologically relativist (in the sense that I accept that all beliefs
and truth claims are socially embedded), and jugementally rationalist.
producedThe phenomenological requirement
>of transparent access to the "things themselves" assumes that there is a
>truth to be obtained from the things and it is the phenomenologist who has
>that access. This is only partially acceptable.
I certainly don't accept it. there is no necessary identity between the
world and our descriptions of it.
Unlike discursive
>idealsim, which like you I too reject, truth cannot be separated from the
>background in which it has meaning. However, this background is never
>fully known, and is always changing.
Yes I agree totally, but the background includes beliefs and things which
those beliefs are and adequate analysis cannot commence without both.
So meaning is not something we
>construct, nor is it embedded deep within the things themselves. It lies
>somewhere between and never remains the same. Against this background of
>shared meanings it is easy to reject Nazi idealogy as untrue without having
>to ground our rejection in some unhistorical idea of morality.
Well, although it never remains the same it must display a certain level of
stability or else we could never understand each other. Nor would I want to
ground morality in some ahistorical idea. But what is our present morality
grounded in.
Once again thanks,
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA
--------------------------------------------------------