I have been getting others's messages, but this one in response to Mark
Cenite did not come back.
And there are NO reasons to NOT be paranoid, at times?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark Cenite:
If the answer to this question below is "us", then indeed it's like we're
on some human wave of history about which we have no control. I for one do
not like to be implicated with these vaguely outlined powers, and if
language itself is a wave... it is up to individuals to try to "surf" it
and make the best of whatever time and place "we" happen to be born into.
One of my favorite lines from _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_, and I merely
paraphrase, is "I ask not whether you are free, but where you are coming
from." It's true. NONE of us are "free", and it is illusory to think that
we can "jump ship" into... becoming a hermit, away from "it" all? Even
then, we'd carry the taint of what we'd known before. Or, going to
Rousseau's _Emile_, if we brought up a kid in total "innocence", we might
end up with a kid that can barely speak English, such as Jodie Foster's
film, _Nell_.
However, to say that, given the circumstances of "an apparatus for
producing ever greater quantity of discourse about sex, capable of
functioning and taking effect in its very economy...."
I think there is a great distinction between those who would try to control
it for fascist/eugenic purposes, as Hitler tried to do with, for example,
his Nazi sculptures of "ideal" people, and someone like John Stuart Mill or
William James, who celebrated the *diversity* of life.
On a similar note, when Barthes uses Nietzsche to protect "reader's rights"
in a book like _The Rustle of Language_, I again think it is very different
from someone who tries so narrowly to "frame" things with these apparatuses
that that is all we come up with: a picture, framed, static, a
scientifically "correct" (as they deem it) view of something, compared to
how a picture like "The Mona Lisa" by Da Vinci can move people, in many
different ways, perhaps equally valid. As Mill said, let people say what
they want. The force of their argument will either sink it as "false" or a
misreading, or... focussing on someone's Achilles' Heels instead of what
may be, to another person, their "strengths".
The Soviet Union installed apparatuses well, didn't they? Propaganda
machines, designed to squash dissent. And their "others" often found
themselves in the Gulag, which ties in with yet another book of Foucault's,
_Madness and Civilization_, as well as this.
Take care, and thank you for the feedback---
Randall Albright
http://world.std.com/~albright/
================================
>>WHO "installed rather an apparatus for producing ever greater quantity of
>>discourse about sex, capable of functioning and taking effect in its very
>>economy." (page 23)
>>
>An important question, I think, and the short answer may lie in the
>oft-quoted statement of Foucault's that "power and resistance are
>everywhere"--or in the title to the first section, "We Other Victorians":
>the answer to "who?" seems often seems to be "us"--Foucault is moving
>beyond intention, authorship, and dominant/subordinate, instead speaking of
>complex weaves of power and discourse
>-m.
Cenite did not come back.
And there are NO reasons to NOT be paranoid, at times?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark Cenite:
If the answer to this question below is "us", then indeed it's like we're
on some human wave of history about which we have no control. I for one do
not like to be implicated with these vaguely outlined powers, and if
language itself is a wave... it is up to individuals to try to "surf" it
and make the best of whatever time and place "we" happen to be born into.
One of my favorite lines from _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_, and I merely
paraphrase, is "I ask not whether you are free, but where you are coming
from." It's true. NONE of us are "free", and it is illusory to think that
we can "jump ship" into... becoming a hermit, away from "it" all? Even
then, we'd carry the taint of what we'd known before. Or, going to
Rousseau's _Emile_, if we brought up a kid in total "innocence", we might
end up with a kid that can barely speak English, such as Jodie Foster's
film, _Nell_.
However, to say that, given the circumstances of "an apparatus for
producing ever greater quantity of discourse about sex, capable of
functioning and taking effect in its very economy...."
I think there is a great distinction between those who would try to control
it for fascist/eugenic purposes, as Hitler tried to do with, for example,
his Nazi sculptures of "ideal" people, and someone like John Stuart Mill or
William James, who celebrated the *diversity* of life.
On a similar note, when Barthes uses Nietzsche to protect "reader's rights"
in a book like _The Rustle of Language_, I again think it is very different
from someone who tries so narrowly to "frame" things with these apparatuses
that that is all we come up with: a picture, framed, static, a
scientifically "correct" (as they deem it) view of something, compared to
how a picture like "The Mona Lisa" by Da Vinci can move people, in many
different ways, perhaps equally valid. As Mill said, let people say what
they want. The force of their argument will either sink it as "false" or a
misreading, or... focussing on someone's Achilles' Heels instead of what
may be, to another person, their "strengths".
The Soviet Union installed apparatuses well, didn't they? Propaganda
machines, designed to squash dissent. And their "others" often found
themselves in the Gulag, which ties in with yet another book of Foucault's,
_Madness and Civilization_, as well as this.
Take care, and thank you for the feedback---
Randall Albright
http://world.std.com/~albright/
================================
>>WHO "installed rather an apparatus for producing ever greater quantity of
>>discourse about sex, capable of functioning and taking effect in its very
>>economy." (page 23)
>>
>An important question, I think, and the short answer may lie in the
>oft-quoted statement of Foucault's that "power and resistance are
>everywhere"--or in the title to the first section, "We Other Victorians":
>the answer to "who?" seems often seems to be "us"--Foucault is moving
>beyond intention, authorship, and dominant/subordinate, instead speaking of
>complex weaves of power and discourse
>-m.