Re: Misunderstanding of Foucault?



On Wed, 10 Jun 1998 sissy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> However both call themselves simply
> "postmodern" and the listener has to figure out which
> school is claiming the term.

"Postmodern" and "postmodernist" are terms which philosophers who wish to
be taken seriously rarely apply to themselves. Foucault, when asked
whether he thought of himself as a "postmodernist", replied that he didn't
know what the term meant--"postmodernist" in relation to which modernity?
(See "Critical Theory/Intellectual History", collected in _Politics,
Philosophy, Culture" among other places). In _The Order of Things_,
Foucault does talk of a modern period, beginning in the 19th century and
perhaps nearing its end--but this is not the "modernity", which usually
begins either with the Renaissance or the Enlightenment, that most people
refer to in speaking of "postmodernity". Meanwhile, in his late lectures
on Kant, Foucault identifies himself with the critical modernity of Kant.

For what it's worth, Rorty used to happily call himself "postmodernist"
and came to regret doing so. Also, for what it's worth, some
commentators--Joseph Margolis (who happily calls himself a relativist, tee
hee) and Honi Faber among them--claim that Foucault is a poststructuralist
but not a postmodernist. In Habermas's terms (and on his superficial
reading of Foucault), Foucault is not a postmodernist but an
anti-modernist. Around and around we go....

> Both groups talk of deconstruction, decentering and local
> knowledges.

Foucault never uses the term "deconstruction". He and Derrida did not see
eye to eye on much....

> Both groups also differentiate between
> the premodern, modern and postmodern by referring to
> historical periods that are much the same.

Again, this is not the case with Foucault.

> However, political postoderns are more likely to use the
> word "political" to mean something like the word "values"
> in ordinary language. A political postmodern might well
> say, "Everything is political."

Well ... Foucault would say that everything is political because
everything--all human relationships, all human activity--involves power
relations. Which is not quite the same thing as saying that everything
involves "values". I think this preoccupation with "the value-ladenness
of theory" and so on is a peculiarly analytic (as opposed to Continental)
one.

> And political postmoderns are more likely
> to talk of "marginalized people" and "oppression." I
> think Foucault is the major inspiration for political
> postmoderns although I question whether or not this is a
> misinterpretation of Foucault's writing.

You'd have to expand on what you mean by "marginalized people" and
"oppression", and what "political postmoderns" are supposed to think about
them, before it would be clear what Foucault had to do with it.
"Marginalized people" is a phrase which resonates more with Foucault than
"oppression", on the face of it. See his discussion of "subjugated
knowledges" in "Two Lectures", collected in _Power/Knowledge_.

> I think the postmodern
> movement in psychoanalysis (of which I feel I am a part)

Well, be warned: there is so little agreement on what "postmodernist"
means and who is one, and the term is so frequently used pejoratively--by
philosophers, but also by critics outside academia--that it may be more
trouble than it's worth.

Matthew

----Matthew A. King------Department of Philosophy------McMaster University----
"The border is often narrow between a permanent temptation to commit
suicide and the birth of a certain form of political consciousness."
-----------------------------(Michel Foucault)--------------------------------


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