Re: Foucault and Bathouses

Dave,
Although your history of the naming of AIDS does seem important, you forget
something even more important. Remember, Foucault not only looks at historical
"truth," but also at the field of forces that constitute who can speak the
truth. For example, the CDC can speak the truth of AIDS. Yet, given the
obvious history of scientia sexualis, one might imagine that if Foucault had
heard the declartion you place at the ursprung of the "AIDS panic" in a much
more complex and politically aware (and thus skeptical) fashion than simply
believing what the "experts" were saying. By the way, have the geneticists
found the gay gene yet?
Sorry for the stingy tone, this debate/information exchange about
Foucault's actions and its underlying movement of criminalization or resitance
to criminalization has become tiresome. Perhaps, we could shift to a list
reading/discussion of Foucault's 1978 essay "The Dangerous Individual." It
seems almost prohetic in that FOucault looks at the emergence of a move from
an emphasis upon criminal acts to "the criminal" within juridical discourse as
psychiatric discourse enables the court to idenity "the criminal" and demand
the criminals own self-identification (public-confession) as "the criminal."
It is only a suggestion.
Chad Wilson

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