On Thu, 17 Jul 1997 brehkopf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Thanks for Alan's posting: I felt like Jody Foster in _Contact_ -- there
> *is* life out there!
>
> The normative (good/bad) debate about power is quite central to
> Foucault's work and the criticisms of it.
>
> With due respect, I'd suggest that the debate is a bit more intractable
> than it might appear to those of us who defend F would like, sometimes,
> to think. Suspecting critics of Foucault of simply not getting the full
> picture or understanding the project not only seems a bit dismissive -
> there are some mighty powerful thinkers, then, who simply don't "get it"
> - but it also allows us to gloss over much of what still requires work.
I completely agree with you that it doesn't make much sense that such
intelligent people would fail to get it. And yet as your comments below
indicate, there is a kind of blindness about Foucault.
>
> That being said...I wonder about Fraser's criticism (admittedly I haven't
> read it - not that I recall!). It seems to me that Foucault went to some
> great pains to hyper-analyze power, rather than supposing it is one
> giant indivisible concept. My gosh, the first time I read D&P, my head
> was spinning from all the micro-distinctions he was making.
I heartily agree with the above. Foucault doesn't make us less able to
analyze power than the liberal-normative-critical tradition, but *better*
able to do it. He's an empirical kind of guy! The reason incredibly
intelligent people like Fraser and Habermas and many others misread him
has to do, I think, with the emotional desire, ponited out by Alan in an
earlier post, to hold on to the lollipop of normativity and utopia.
> The fact
> that he labels all those "techniques" (I think Murray's point is well
> taken here) of power "disciplinary," is not proof that he has an
> unanalyzed/able conception of power. Quite the contrary, I think.
>
> I suspect that - again, contrary to Fraser - at least part of the reason
> for avoiding evaluation/prescription/normativity/whatever is precisely
> to avoid such gross characterization that the binary good/bad inevitably
> produces. If Fraser thinks that an algorithm that separates good from
> bad is more precise than one that allows for the fine analyses
> Foucault's does, then that is a suspect claim.
>
> So, I guess that my point is that I'm agnostic about Fraser's
> conclusion, but I would disagree with her premises - rather, Foucault's
> conception of power is finely analyzable rather than gross. And it
> attempts to avoid that binary good/bad precisely to retain the many
> micro-distinctions it encompasses.
>
> Peace,
>
> Blaine Rehkopf
> Philosophy
> York University
> Toronto, CANADA
> --
>
> Thanks for Alan's posting: I felt like Jody Foster in _Contact_ -- there
> *is* life out there!
>
> The normative (good/bad) debate about power is quite central to
> Foucault's work and the criticisms of it.
>
> With due respect, I'd suggest that the debate is a bit more intractable
> than it might appear to those of us who defend F would like, sometimes,
> to think. Suspecting critics of Foucault of simply not getting the full
> picture or understanding the project not only seems a bit dismissive -
> there are some mighty powerful thinkers, then, who simply don't "get it"
> - but it also allows us to gloss over much of what still requires work.
I completely agree with you that it doesn't make much sense that such
intelligent people would fail to get it. And yet as your comments below
indicate, there is a kind of blindness about Foucault.
>
> That being said...I wonder about Fraser's criticism (admittedly I haven't
> read it - not that I recall!). It seems to me that Foucault went to some
> great pains to hyper-analyze power, rather than supposing it is one
> giant indivisible concept. My gosh, the first time I read D&P, my head
> was spinning from all the micro-distinctions he was making.
I heartily agree with the above. Foucault doesn't make us less able to
analyze power than the liberal-normative-critical tradition, but *better*
able to do it. He's an empirical kind of guy! The reason incredibly
intelligent people like Fraser and Habermas and many others misread him
has to do, I think, with the emotional desire, ponited out by Alan in an
earlier post, to hold on to the lollipop of normativity and utopia.
> The fact
> that he labels all those "techniques" (I think Murray's point is well
> taken here) of power "disciplinary," is not proof that he has an
> unanalyzed/able conception of power. Quite the contrary, I think.
>
> I suspect that - again, contrary to Fraser - at least part of the reason
> for avoiding evaluation/prescription/normativity/whatever is precisely
> to avoid such gross characterization that the binary good/bad inevitably
> produces. If Fraser thinks that an algorithm that separates good from
> bad is more precise than one that allows for the fine analyses
> Foucault's does, then that is a suspect claim.
>
> So, I guess that my point is that I'm agnostic about Fraser's
> conclusion, but I would disagree with her premises - rather, Foucault's
> conception of power is finely analyzable rather than gross. And it
> attempts to avoid that binary good/bad precisely to retain the many
> micro-distinctions it encompasses.
>
> Peace,
>
> Blaine Rehkopf
> Philosophy
> York University
> Toronto, CANADA
> --
>