Peter Gates writes:
>so I guess my question is, as someone with hope for the future, how do we
>argue for the continuing significance of marxism at a time when capitalism
>is beocmeing ever more subtle in its attacks on human freedom.
In some areas capitalism may be becoming 'ever more subtle' in its attack
on human freedom, but in others it seems to me to be taking the opposite
tack. Take, for instance, the criminal justice system and prisons in the
USA. The production of the docile body through internalized discipline
whose emergence Foucault wrote of seems to be becoming a thing of the past.
Production and control of the 'criminals' in the USA have become very
unsubtle and overtly & obviously repressive, especially in the Southern
states like Mississippi. Rehabilitation is out; capital punishment, prison
labor, chain gangs, boot camps, 'three strikes and you're out,' etc. are
in. Newly respectable racist politics and the triumphant bourgeoisgie may
have made a Foucauldian analysis obsolete in this respect. Much has changed
since the time when Foucault was writing _Discipline and Punish_.
And how about education and psychiatry in the USA? Freud and the 'talking
cure' are out (they are too leisurely, too expensive for HMOs);
psychotropic drugs are in. Many children who are diagnosed to have the
'attention deficit disorder' are taking Ritalin and other drugs, to be
directly controled by chemicals, not through the production of the 'soul as
the prison of the body.'
Isn't capitalism becoming post-Foucauldian?
Yoshie Furuhashi
>so I guess my question is, as someone with hope for the future, how do we
>argue for the continuing significance of marxism at a time when capitalism
>is beocmeing ever more subtle in its attacks on human freedom.
In some areas capitalism may be becoming 'ever more subtle' in its attack
on human freedom, but in others it seems to me to be taking the opposite
tack. Take, for instance, the criminal justice system and prisons in the
USA. The production of the docile body through internalized discipline
whose emergence Foucault wrote of seems to be becoming a thing of the past.
Production and control of the 'criminals' in the USA have become very
unsubtle and overtly & obviously repressive, especially in the Southern
states like Mississippi. Rehabilitation is out; capital punishment, prison
labor, chain gangs, boot camps, 'three strikes and you're out,' etc. are
in. Newly respectable racist politics and the triumphant bourgeoisgie may
have made a Foucauldian analysis obsolete in this respect. Much has changed
since the time when Foucault was writing _Discipline and Punish_.
And how about education and psychiatry in the USA? Freud and the 'talking
cure' are out (they are too leisurely, too expensive for HMOs);
psychotropic drugs are in. Many children who are diagnosed to have the
'attention deficit disorder' are taking Ritalin and other drugs, to be
directly controled by chemicals, not through the production of the 'soul as
the prison of the body.'
Isn't capitalism becoming post-Foucauldian?
Yoshie Furuhashi