Truth (was: Discursive formations contra Ideology)



On Fri, 21 Aug 1998, JONATHAN RUBIN wrote:

> The other aspect is that he also claimed that all he had ever written
> were fictions, nothing but fictions.

Yes, and one ought to be very careful with that. After he said that, in
an interview conducted in English, he said: "My English is not very good,
so with this kind of sentence I've said, people will say, 'You see, he's a
liar.'" Which is not what you're saying, obviously, but at the same time,
one ought to be careful about spinning that statement as part of a
critique of truth, or of the value of truth, in general. Don't forget
about parrhesia....

> Truth is the most powerful rhetorical trope there is. There's just
> nothing quite as affective as claiming something to be true to get
> people to pay attention.

This is an odd thing to say. Maybe the very oddness of it is part of your
point. But what's the difference between saying "Clinton had sex with
Lewinsky" and "It's true that Clinton had sex with Lewinsky"? And then,
why *should* anyone pay attention to you if you said "Clinton had sex with
Lewinsky, but it's not true that Clinton had sex with Lewinsky"?

> Foucault, I believe, was too much of a Nietzschean ever to think that
> truth was the most important valuational mechanism ("and why not a will
> to untruth?")

Who ever *did* think that truth was *the* most important valuational
mechanism? A stupid question, maybe, but stupid questions can be hard to
answer.... Plato? Look at the Republic: what's more important, truth, or
the good government of the city? Apparently, truth is important *for* the
good government of the city.... And if not Plato, then who?

> and if you don't think there is any significant "property"
> called truth

Which wouldn't mean that you would have to *value* truth any less. One
thing that I find striking about Foucault: he seems to me unrelentingly
*honest*. That English interview is titled "The Concern for Truth" in
_Foucault Live_; Foucault is not deriding that concern--the concern is
his.

> anyway, then you are forced to a)stop doing epistemology
> (phew)

I'll second that, at any rate. :)

> and b) have some other way of ordering ideas eg. the Nietzschean
> method of asking "which one" believes

Could you explain this a bit? (And again, I don't think that denying
there is any single *property* which truth is entails that you have to
stop ordering ideas in terms of truth and falsity ... any more than
denying that there is any single property which *good* is would entail
that you had to stop evaluating things as good or bad.)

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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