On Thu, 16 Jul 1998 embuck1@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Foucault is often accused of critiquing power and institutions, but of never
> providing a constructive alternative.
Indeed. But there are reasons he doesn't do that. The most important of
these, I think, may be summed up like this: his interests lie with those
who are managed, and not with the managers. If your interests lie with
prisoners, you cannot (in good faith--and maybe Foucault had too much good
faith) say "what should be done with the prisoners"--because to do so is
either to take the opposite position and betray your own, or
disingenuously to pretend to take the opposite position. Hence the
protest without alternative.
> In Discipline and Punish, Foucault
> very briefly discusses illegality, almost in a tone of advocating deliberate
> illegality to overcome the application of disciplinary correction. I say
> "almost" because I am not yet sure he did advocate such an approach.
In fact he doesn't, and speaks rather harshly of "a whole naive, archaic
ideology which makes the criminal at once into the innocent victim and the
pure rebel--society's scapegoat--and the young wolf of future revolutions"
(PK 130).
> In an
> interview in Power/Knowledge, he mentions the Gulag question in terms of
> intolerability. Is this an inchoate tool for resistance? This is the sort
> of thing I am trying to work out. Has anyone seen any work on these areas?
> Can you point me to other mentions of them in Foucault?
I'm not sure quite what you mean by "inchoate tool for resistance", but I
would agree that intolerability is a very important idea for Foucault,
though it's not something that he "theorizes", as they say.
There's a passage in the late interview "Politics and Ethics" (found in
_The Foucault Reader_) which is particularly relevant to that: "If we
raise the question of Poland in strictly political terms, it's clear that
we quickly reach the point of saying that there's nothing we can do. We
can't dispatch a team of paratroopers, and we can't send armored cars to
liberate Warsaw. I think that, politically, we have to recognize this,
but I think we also have to agree that, for ethical reasons, we have to
raise the problem of Poland in the form of a nonacceptance of what is
happening there, and a nonacceptance of the passivity of our own
governments. I think this attitude is an ethical one, but it is also
political; it does not consist in saying merely, 'I protest,' but in
making of that attitude a political phenomenon that is as substantial as
possible, and one which those who govern, here or there, will sooner or
later be obliged to take into account." No doubt this will sound both
hopelessly vague and hopelessly optimistic to some....
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)--------------------------------
> Foucault is often accused of critiquing power and institutions, but of never
> providing a constructive alternative.
Indeed. But there are reasons he doesn't do that. The most important of
these, I think, may be summed up like this: his interests lie with those
who are managed, and not with the managers. If your interests lie with
prisoners, you cannot (in good faith--and maybe Foucault had too much good
faith) say "what should be done with the prisoners"--because to do so is
either to take the opposite position and betray your own, or
disingenuously to pretend to take the opposite position. Hence the
protest without alternative.
> In Discipline and Punish, Foucault
> very briefly discusses illegality, almost in a tone of advocating deliberate
> illegality to overcome the application of disciplinary correction. I say
> "almost" because I am not yet sure he did advocate such an approach.
In fact he doesn't, and speaks rather harshly of "a whole naive, archaic
ideology which makes the criminal at once into the innocent victim and the
pure rebel--society's scapegoat--and the young wolf of future revolutions"
(PK 130).
> In an
> interview in Power/Knowledge, he mentions the Gulag question in terms of
> intolerability. Is this an inchoate tool for resistance? This is the sort
> of thing I am trying to work out. Has anyone seen any work on these areas?
> Can you point me to other mentions of them in Foucault?
I'm not sure quite what you mean by "inchoate tool for resistance", but I
would agree that intolerability is a very important idea for Foucault,
though it's not something that he "theorizes", as they say.
There's a passage in the late interview "Politics and Ethics" (found in
_The Foucault Reader_) which is particularly relevant to that: "If we
raise the question of Poland in strictly political terms, it's clear that
we quickly reach the point of saying that there's nothing we can do. We
can't dispatch a team of paratroopers, and we can't send armored cars to
liberate Warsaw. I think that, politically, we have to recognize this,
but I think we also have to agree that, for ethical reasons, we have to
raise the problem of Poland in the form of a nonacceptance of what is
happening there, and a nonacceptance of the passivity of our own
governments. I think this attitude is an ethical one, but it is also
political; it does not consist in saying merely, 'I protest,' but in
making of that attitude a political phenomenon that is as substantial as
possible, and one which those who govern, here or there, will sooner or
later be obliged to take into account." No doubt this will sound both
hopelessly vague and hopelessly optimistic to some....
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)--------------------------------