Colin said:
> In this respect Foucault is advising intellectual not play the role of "the
> traditional intellectual" (although I would tend to view Foucault's notion
> of the traditional intellectual as more a construct of Foucault than a
> reality); that the masses don't need intellectuals to tell them how to go
> on; that the masses should go on without intellectuals; that intellectuals
> have no "authority" to pronounce; that truth is simply an effect of power,
> and so on. These are all advice statements.
I know that that's what you're saying, but my point is that you're replying
to the wrong argument. I wasn't arguing that Foucault doesn't give advive:
I don't really care one way or the other what one calls what he gives;
we all know that words have consequences and influences, are not innocent,
etc. So yes, if one interprets F's "not telling people what to do" as
denying this, then I agree it becomes naive and stupid. In the case of the
sentence of mine you quoted, I was replying to a statement of Doug's that
I read to mean that intellectuals who study things social and political --
as opposed to sea cucumbers -- should be expected to give advice in some
classical, visceral, direct sense of the word "advice". A sense in which --
it was implied -- they do NOT give it merely by writing about their findings.
So is this not going nowhere? Let's just drop it, unless we have something
to say that will increase either your or my understanding of the world.
-m
> In this respect Foucault is advising intellectual not play the role of "the
> traditional intellectual" (although I would tend to view Foucault's notion
> of the traditional intellectual as more a construct of Foucault than a
> reality); that the masses don't need intellectuals to tell them how to go
> on; that the masses should go on without intellectuals; that intellectuals
> have no "authority" to pronounce; that truth is simply an effect of power,
> and so on. These are all advice statements.
I know that that's what you're saying, but my point is that you're replying
to the wrong argument. I wasn't arguing that Foucault doesn't give advive:
I don't really care one way or the other what one calls what he gives;
we all know that words have consequences and influences, are not innocent,
etc. So yes, if one interprets F's "not telling people what to do" as
denying this, then I agree it becomes naive and stupid. In the case of the
sentence of mine you quoted, I was replying to a statement of Doug's that
I read to mean that intellectuals who study things social and political --
as opposed to sea cucumbers -- should be expected to give advice in some
classical, visceral, direct sense of the word "advice". A sense in which --
it was implied -- they do NOT give it merely by writing about their findings.
So is this not going nowhere? Let's just drop it, unless we have something
to say that will increase either your or my understanding of the world.
-m