On Thu, 6 Aug 1998, M.A. King wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, 6 Aug 1998, Ms P Hadjiyianni wrote:
>
> > Eventhough Foucault is following the
> > Platonic cave-project in terms of body and soul
>
> What do you mean by that?
>
> Matthew
>
Plato talked about the body/soul construct in terms of liberation and
progress. The body, he says, has to descend to the cave in order for the
soul to be regulated. Foucault talked about this in D&P in the same
terms,
i.e. he traced a process of confining the body in order to "correct" the
soul. Hence the abscence of the punishment of the body as a spectacle,
which in itself is a process that erases the soul. With this new system
of punishment, as Foucault points out, the focus is on the soul.
Therefore, Foucault is using the Platonic discourse as a subtext in order
to perform "his" system of punishment.
I don't think that Foucault is interested in the body/soul binary, but I
do think that he is putting forward a body and soul rhetoric which sees
the various disciplines as well as systems of punishment as being
prescribed on the subject. What we can call the soul is that construct
which emerges from these systems, therefore it can be said to be that
construct which frames the body in a supplementing discourse of systems.
Body and soul are not binary opposites, but they certainly are engaged in
a power relationship.
I am very well aware that the body is neither physical nor natural. It is
a construct which emerges from these kind of systems of power which
involve both the soul and the body. When I say "physical body" I mean the
body "in flesh", the body seen in fragments [arm, leg, nipple, etc.] and
the body in alienation, i.e. the body as alien and defamiliarised, in
other words the physical body in a disappearing form. That is why in my
PhD I will be discussing texts like "The Newromancer", "Silence of the
Lamps" as well as texts from Virtual Reality.
I don't know if Foucault is very relevant to this, but I do know that his
construction of the body is being used in postmodern texts on the body.
Polina
>
>
> On Thu, 6 Aug 1998, Ms P Hadjiyianni wrote:
>
> > Eventhough Foucault is following the
> > Platonic cave-project in terms of body and soul
>
> What do you mean by that?
>
> Matthew
>
Plato talked about the body/soul construct in terms of liberation and
progress. The body, he says, has to descend to the cave in order for the
soul to be regulated. Foucault talked about this in D&P in the same
terms,
i.e. he traced a process of confining the body in order to "correct" the
soul. Hence the abscence of the punishment of the body as a spectacle,
which in itself is a process that erases the soul. With this new system
of punishment, as Foucault points out, the focus is on the soul.
Therefore, Foucault is using the Platonic discourse as a subtext in order
to perform "his" system of punishment.
I don't think that Foucault is interested in the body/soul binary, but I
do think that he is putting forward a body and soul rhetoric which sees
the various disciplines as well as systems of punishment as being
prescribed on the subject. What we can call the soul is that construct
which emerges from these systems, therefore it can be said to be that
construct which frames the body in a supplementing discourse of systems.
Body and soul are not binary opposites, but they certainly are engaged in
a power relationship.
I am very well aware that the body is neither physical nor natural. It is
a construct which emerges from these kind of systems of power which
involve both the soul and the body. When I say "physical body" I mean the
body "in flesh", the body seen in fragments [arm, leg, nipple, etc.] and
the body in alienation, i.e. the body as alien and defamiliarised, in
other words the physical body in a disappearing form. That is why in my
PhD I will be discussing texts like "The Newromancer", "Silence of the
Lamps" as well as texts from Virtual Reality.
I don't know if Foucault is very relevant to this, but I do know that his
construction of the body is being used in postmodern texts on the body.
Polina