On Mon, 26 May 1997, COLIN WIGHT wrote:
> Miles,
>
> If only things were that simple. One does not purge oneself of ontological
> commitments simply by not concerning oneself with them.
>
> Perhaps, if the claim that such questions are irrelevant is indeed true of a
> Foucaultian approach then it is tha which I find so troubling. To argue that:
>
> >he is primarily a historian noting how discourse is
> >>embedded in various social contexts, its uses, its effects. All
> >>this has nothing to do with asking about the role of "the real"
> >>on our use of language and discourse.
>
> Is clearly to invite ontological questions. 'Are the discourses real and how
> the weave their effects?' is a question that cannot logically be divorced
> from 'are the objects of discourses real?' on pain of naive solipism.
> Foucault's unthematised commitment to an empiricist ontology precludes him
> from ever breaking the boundaries of its grip. To use your own example.
>
> The move from discourses of deities to discourses of anything else is
> clearly to commit a category error (which I admit a Foucaultian analysis
> does allow). the reality of AIDS is clearly of a different form than the
> reality of deities. One has to belief in deities in order for the discourses
> to work their magic. The "magic" of AIDS is completely independent of belief
> or not in it. To tell me that a Foucautian analysis is not concerned with
> ontological questions points only to seroius aporia in any Foucaultian
> analysis. Discourses are of things and why some discourses predominate over
> others is itself tied, in part, to those things.
Yes, this whole topic can invite ontological questions--if you're a
philosopher of ontology! (If you have a hammer, everything looks like
a nail, I'd say.) Look, my deity argument works with AIDS too. In order
for the statement "AIDS is caused by HIV" to function as a truth
statement in any society, there have to be discursive practices and
related nondiscursive practices in place: medical research, popular and
academic reports, etc. Perhaps the effects of HIV are independent of
our research, but the truth that HIV causes AIDS can only socially
function as a truth if it is embedded in discursive and related non-
discursive activity. A Foucauldian analysis uncovers this social
activity.
There is only a "serious aporia" here if you demand that social analysis
should uncover the ontological strata beneath social practices and
language. That is simply not necessary, as sociologists of religion
have quite clearly demonstrated.
If anywhere, the aporia is in the conventional materialist account:
as if the production of scientific truth does not require human activity
and discourse! I am dismayed whenever a researcher claims that social
interaction and discourse have little role to play in their theory or
findings, for the research is only made socially meaningful and
important via discourse and social activity. --A little thought
experiment: imagine no professional conventions, no journals, no
e-mail, no research meetings, no grant proposals. Could the
scientific community produce truths?
I think this whole issue really comes down to what interests each of us.
I am fascinated by the fact that people at different times and in
different societies have claimed truth status for an amazing variety
of different and often conflicting statements. What roles do
language and other forms of social interaction play here?
On the other hand, you seems to take a philosophical interest: how
does reality impinge on our accounts? Isn't our use of language
limited by the real? Again, this is an interesting philosophical
issue, but it has nothing to do with Foucault's method of analysis.
One of my pet peeves about what you guys call the "Foucault
industry" as well as many of MF's intellectual adversaries is that
they treat him as a philosopher pointificating about the relationship
between language and reality. It seems to me that MF, like many
social historians and sociologists and anthropologists, has other
fish to fry.
Miles Jackson
mjackson@xxxxxxx