Alan,
I wrote an article on this that appears in _Philosophy and Social
Criticism_. I see your addresses below and will send you an off-print.
On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Alan C. Hudson wrote:
> Dear Murray and others,
>
> Thanks for that. As I read the Hindess book with its mention of
> government, discipline, power, pastoral care etc. I began to think that
> Fraser's critique was a bit dodgy to say the least - as Murray said.
>
> However, maybe it's the way she puts it. Her critique might better be put,
> not that Foucault doesn't differentiate forms of power, but that,
> everything is power and so nothing is not power.
>
> That is ,is there not a problem with Foucault still in that if all the
> above are different types of power, this doesn't allow anything much to be
> not power, and it is this that makes a (particular type of?) normative
> framework impossible to achieve?
Where by normative framework we mean the ability to distinguish good from
bad forms of power?
Let's say everything is power and nothing is not power. What does that
keep us from doing? We can still oppose forms and exercises of power
whenever we want! It's just that we can't appeal to or strive for some
sort of mythically powerless utopia. Let's say -- and this happens all the
time -- that a teacher uses his or her power position to torture students
with arbitrary demands instead of using it to actually teach them
something. (I do this on alternate semesters: one semester I teach, next
semester I torture. Keeps 'em on their toes and makes the job more
interesting.) Power is being exercised in *both* semesters. "Everything"
is power and nothing is not power. But it's not the case that that makes
us incapable of making distinctions!
What we give up is Habermas's ideal speech community. That's a place
that's supposed to be powerless, a place where only the best and most
rational argument prevails. And it is by virtue of this exclusive reliance
on rational argumentation that the ideal speech situation is deemed
powerless -- a questionable assumption as many have pointed out.
In the real world, things are rarely as clear-cut as the professor who
uses his "power" (hah!) to teach one semester and to torture the second
semester. Instead, exercises of power are ambiguous in their effects,
especially when considered from the point of view of the different
rationalities, the different means-ends relationships that make up a
complicated power situation. Thus when capitalists train a workforce to be
obedient, punctual, and productive, they're not doing something immoral or
anything, they're just following out the rationality of the power-grid
they happen to occupy. And when workers resist efforts to dumb them down
they for their part are not anticipating a utopic community of Renaissance
humans who write poetry in the morning and transform nature in the
afternoon, but simply responding to the dynamics of the situation they
find themselves in.
We can think of the above approach to power as a kind of pragmatism, or we
can think of it in terms of Heidegger's notion of "thrownness"
(Geworfenheit).
>
> Comments?
>
> cheers,
> alan
>
> PS: I apologize if this debate is well-trodden in Foucault circles, but
> I'm trying to get to grips with it!
>
> *****************************************************************************
> Dr. Alan C. Hudson
> University Assistant Lecturer
> and
> IB Director of Studies at Fitzwilliam College
>
> Department of Geography, and Fitzwilliam College,
> University of Cambridge, Cambridge,
> CB2 3EN, CB3 0DG,
> United Kingdom. United Kingdom.
>
> Tel: + 44 (0) 1223 333364 (Department - Direct line)
> Tel: + 44 (0) 1223 333399 (Department - General Office)
> Tel: + 44 (0) 1223 358354 (Home + Answerphone)
> Fax: + 44 (0) 1223 333392 (Department)
> E-Mail: ach1005@xxxxxxxxx
> Website: http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/achhome.htm
> (Currently, a dull (lack of time), slow (not my fault!), but functional
> (mainly luck), website!)
> *****************************************************************************
>
I wrote an article on this that appears in _Philosophy and Social
Criticism_. I see your addresses below and will send you an off-print.
On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Alan C. Hudson wrote:
> Dear Murray and others,
>
> Thanks for that. As I read the Hindess book with its mention of
> government, discipline, power, pastoral care etc. I began to think that
> Fraser's critique was a bit dodgy to say the least - as Murray said.
>
> However, maybe it's the way she puts it. Her critique might better be put,
> not that Foucault doesn't differentiate forms of power, but that,
> everything is power and so nothing is not power.
>
> That is ,is there not a problem with Foucault still in that if all the
> above are different types of power, this doesn't allow anything much to be
> not power, and it is this that makes a (particular type of?) normative
> framework impossible to achieve?
Where by normative framework we mean the ability to distinguish good from
bad forms of power?
Let's say everything is power and nothing is not power. What does that
keep us from doing? We can still oppose forms and exercises of power
whenever we want! It's just that we can't appeal to or strive for some
sort of mythically powerless utopia. Let's say -- and this happens all the
time -- that a teacher uses his or her power position to torture students
with arbitrary demands instead of using it to actually teach them
something. (I do this on alternate semesters: one semester I teach, next
semester I torture. Keeps 'em on their toes and makes the job more
interesting.) Power is being exercised in *both* semesters. "Everything"
is power and nothing is not power. But it's not the case that that makes
us incapable of making distinctions!
What we give up is Habermas's ideal speech community. That's a place
that's supposed to be powerless, a place where only the best and most
rational argument prevails. And it is by virtue of this exclusive reliance
on rational argumentation that the ideal speech situation is deemed
powerless -- a questionable assumption as many have pointed out.
In the real world, things are rarely as clear-cut as the professor who
uses his "power" (hah!) to teach one semester and to torture the second
semester. Instead, exercises of power are ambiguous in their effects,
especially when considered from the point of view of the different
rationalities, the different means-ends relationships that make up a
complicated power situation. Thus when capitalists train a workforce to be
obedient, punctual, and productive, they're not doing something immoral or
anything, they're just following out the rationality of the power-grid
they happen to occupy. And when workers resist efforts to dumb them down
they for their part are not anticipating a utopic community of Renaissance
humans who write poetry in the morning and transform nature in the
afternoon, but simply responding to the dynamics of the situation they
find themselves in.
We can think of the above approach to power as a kind of pragmatism, or we
can think of it in terms of Heidegger's notion of "thrownness"
(Geworfenheit).
>
> Comments?
>
> cheers,
> alan
>
> PS: I apologize if this debate is well-trodden in Foucault circles, but
> I'm trying to get to grips with it!
>
> *****************************************************************************
> Dr. Alan C. Hudson
> University Assistant Lecturer
> and
> IB Director of Studies at Fitzwilliam College
>
> Department of Geography, and Fitzwilliam College,
> University of Cambridge, Cambridge,
> CB2 3EN, CB3 0DG,
> United Kingdom. United Kingdom.
>
> Tel: + 44 (0) 1223 333364 (Department - Direct line)
> Tel: + 44 (0) 1223 333399 (Department - General Office)
> Tel: + 44 (0) 1223 358354 (Home + Answerphone)
> Fax: + 44 (0) 1223 333392 (Department)
> E-Mail: ach1005@xxxxxxxxx
> Website: http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/achhome.htm
> (Currently, a dull (lack of time), slow (not my fault!), but functional
> (mainly luck), website!)
> *****************************************************************************
>