At 04:23 PM 11/17/98 +0000, you wrote:
>At 12:55 PM 11/17/98 +0000, Alex wrote:
>.... I think that the latter
>>thinkers construct their whole project of Theory of hegemony
>>precicely in order to go beyond Foucaultian political project.
>
>My question here is about the function of theory of hegemony in
>Laclau and Mouffe's project? Putting the theory of hegemony as a
>stepstone for going beyond Foucault does not mean that the latter
>does not imply it? It all depends on how you locate Foucault? Foucault
>does not need to theorise hegemony and thus bring that theory out of the
>absence? Reality is positive, and the local will bring to the fore the
>necessity of such hegemony as a type of manifestation of power.
First off, though, what is actually the relationship b/w "the local" and
"hegemony": clearly the latter is aimed at the national-popular, or in
other words is a code for discerning the totality. Even for the
arch-poststructuralists Laclau and Mouffe, hegemony and potential
"alliances" are situated at this level (what they call an "articulated
discursive totality). So I think the function of "hegemony" in L&M is to
try and rethink how social movements (e.g., the New Right) actually operate
or could better operate in terms of achieving a national-popular hegemony;
in short, the bloc is constructed from the local, but also knows a life at
the global. For them, such alliances or blocs are always contingent, and
have no *necessary* roots in class (or in any one thing), or no necessary
forms or contents. Blocs and I suppose hegemony itself follow no clear or
given path. The only ting they are sure of, in terms of theory, is that
blocs and hegemonic social formations are constructed along "chains of
equivalences." And for this to happen, and while they insist that there
has to be a common, *perceived" antagonism, there does not have to be a
given and common *interest* among the groups. (I cannot say how L&M's
later work diverges/elaborates from my acount.)
The other function of the term is, of course, to deconstruct -- and clearly
they are more Derridean than Foucauldian -- classical marxism, by offering
us something like an intellectual history of marxist political theory.
Here hegemony is seen as what Derrida might call the "systematic other
message" within this tradition -- a concept aimed at more effectively
understanding or naming the totality (or "society") under new historical
conditions, namely the absence of capitalism's collapse and of proletarian
revolution. But this theoretical work within marxism simultaneously
reveals that the totality can not be so understood via a class analysis,
within itself; in fact it simply cannot be adequately "named." Ironically,
they sound a lot like Thatcher when they say "there is no such thing as
society." (Not that this makes L&M wrong, of course.)
Leaving aside the merits and demerits of all this, I think it clearly has
little enough to do with Foucault (or with western marxism, for that
matter). Gramsci was of course a brilliant analyst of the
national-popular, esp in re. civil society, culture and the state. But
Foucault is up to something different, something more "microphysical."
First off, he would object -- quite properly, in my view -- to the notion
of "consent" in Gramsci's "hegemony." (Of course, if we understand Gramsci
a la Stuart Hall, we'd know the category of "assent" was always there in
Gramsci/hegemony too, and I think that therefore enables the continuing
explanatory power of "Gramscianism".) But more generally, Foucault's
development of a productive, subjectivating "juridical" power surely parts
ground with Gramsci and hegemony.
What happens in the clinic or the prison -- and of course not only there,
since such technologies of power are also meant to be emblematic of "macro"
forces/technologies -- is simply different or other- than what happens in
the consturction of hegemonic blocs. Of course, these "technologies" and
histories are *not* entirely unrelated to what in HSS, I. he rather
classically calls "bourgeois hegemony" (125). But they have no origin or
neccesary relation to this, and have a reality and force quite of their own.
To get back to the other posts, then, I'd say that neither F or L&M (i.e.,
hegemony/Gramsci) are "beyond" each other: they were never that close in
the first place. L&M in their rush to move beyond all class-based (or any)
"a priori", let slip all of history, micro and macro, or in other words,
elide the kind of painstaking "institutional" analytics of a Foucault. The
F they worked with was always the discursive-intensive one of AofK. IN
other words, their references to him were more of a rhetorical gesture than
a "reading." A rather Derridean Foucault in other words (much like Judith
Butler's, I'd argue -- and I wonder if this isn't a peculiarly American
appropriation). Foucault, for his part, was never much interested in
hegemony, perhaps in no small part because he always had a rather classic,
banal understanding of hegemony -- or of any number of marxist problematics
in the first place. I'm not damning his Rightist tendencies, of course, as
he is as free to be as bored with marxism in France as I am with Nietzche
in the U.S. I am just speaking truth to power. [insert irony here!]
>Yes, it is right to see that Foucault maintains the idea of non-discursive
as
>quasi-transcendental to support an ethical stance. Nietzsche is there
>provisional >for the idea of will to power. The autonomy of the discursive
in AK,
>opposite to >many interpretation, did not depart from the
quasi-transcedentalism, >which is a >non-discursive. The ethical stance is
the selective machine that makes >the >discursive >in light of the
non-discrusive problematic.
>
I think the question of Foucault's ethics or ethos -- and how this might be
related to his *insistence* on the non-discursive dimension of reality --
is a great question and thread. I like Alex's and amd's reading of this,
to boot. It is crucial to see this -- i.e., the non-discursive dimension
-- in Foucault, and as Alex noted, the AofK itself makes this clear (e.g.,
p. 162). (Note too, that whoever says "non-discursive" says "material":
the former simply transcodes the latter. It is not "dialectical
materialism" by any means, but has to come from somewhere: I pick
Althusser/Marx.) Why is this important? L&M say it is not (HSS, p107).
I would say it is, since it seems to imply -- or to evidence in practice,
at any rate -- a certain social ontology. Not Heidegger, but Marx, Weber,
et al. And a certain social, "left" ethos.
At any rate, I think the committment to the non-discursive is as much an
ethical and political one, as it is epistemological. But why is it
"transcendental"? And other thoughts?
Best,
Dan
Daniel Vukovich
English; The Unit for Criticism
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
>At 12:55 PM 11/17/98 +0000, Alex wrote:
>.... I think that the latter
>>thinkers construct their whole project of Theory of hegemony
>>precicely in order to go beyond Foucaultian political project.
>
>My question here is about the function of theory of hegemony in
>Laclau and Mouffe's project? Putting the theory of hegemony as a
>stepstone for going beyond Foucault does not mean that the latter
>does not imply it? It all depends on how you locate Foucault? Foucault
>does not need to theorise hegemony and thus bring that theory out of the
>absence? Reality is positive, and the local will bring to the fore the
>necessity of such hegemony as a type of manifestation of power.
First off, though, what is actually the relationship b/w "the local" and
"hegemony": clearly the latter is aimed at the national-popular, or in
other words is a code for discerning the totality. Even for the
arch-poststructuralists Laclau and Mouffe, hegemony and potential
"alliances" are situated at this level (what they call an "articulated
discursive totality). So I think the function of "hegemony" in L&M is to
try and rethink how social movements (e.g., the New Right) actually operate
or could better operate in terms of achieving a national-popular hegemony;
in short, the bloc is constructed from the local, but also knows a life at
the global. For them, such alliances or blocs are always contingent, and
have no *necessary* roots in class (or in any one thing), or no necessary
forms or contents. Blocs and I suppose hegemony itself follow no clear or
given path. The only ting they are sure of, in terms of theory, is that
blocs and hegemonic social formations are constructed along "chains of
equivalences." And for this to happen, and while they insist that there
has to be a common, *perceived" antagonism, there does not have to be a
given and common *interest* among the groups. (I cannot say how L&M's
later work diverges/elaborates from my acount.)
The other function of the term is, of course, to deconstruct -- and clearly
they are more Derridean than Foucauldian -- classical marxism, by offering
us something like an intellectual history of marxist political theory.
Here hegemony is seen as what Derrida might call the "systematic other
message" within this tradition -- a concept aimed at more effectively
understanding or naming the totality (or "society") under new historical
conditions, namely the absence of capitalism's collapse and of proletarian
revolution. But this theoretical work within marxism simultaneously
reveals that the totality can not be so understood via a class analysis,
within itself; in fact it simply cannot be adequately "named." Ironically,
they sound a lot like Thatcher when they say "there is no such thing as
society." (Not that this makes L&M wrong, of course.)
Leaving aside the merits and demerits of all this, I think it clearly has
little enough to do with Foucault (or with western marxism, for that
matter). Gramsci was of course a brilliant analyst of the
national-popular, esp in re. civil society, culture and the state. But
Foucault is up to something different, something more "microphysical."
First off, he would object -- quite properly, in my view -- to the notion
of "consent" in Gramsci's "hegemony." (Of course, if we understand Gramsci
a la Stuart Hall, we'd know the category of "assent" was always there in
Gramsci/hegemony too, and I think that therefore enables the continuing
explanatory power of "Gramscianism".) But more generally, Foucault's
development of a productive, subjectivating "juridical" power surely parts
ground with Gramsci and hegemony.
What happens in the clinic or the prison -- and of course not only there,
since such technologies of power are also meant to be emblematic of "macro"
forces/technologies -- is simply different or other- than what happens in
the consturction of hegemonic blocs. Of course, these "technologies" and
histories are *not* entirely unrelated to what in HSS, I. he rather
classically calls "bourgeois hegemony" (125). But they have no origin or
neccesary relation to this, and have a reality and force quite of their own.
To get back to the other posts, then, I'd say that neither F or L&M (i.e.,
hegemony/Gramsci) are "beyond" each other: they were never that close in
the first place. L&M in their rush to move beyond all class-based (or any)
"a priori", let slip all of history, micro and macro, or in other words,
elide the kind of painstaking "institutional" analytics of a Foucault. The
F they worked with was always the discursive-intensive one of AofK. IN
other words, their references to him were more of a rhetorical gesture than
a "reading." A rather Derridean Foucault in other words (much like Judith
Butler's, I'd argue -- and I wonder if this isn't a peculiarly American
appropriation). Foucault, for his part, was never much interested in
hegemony, perhaps in no small part because he always had a rather classic,
banal understanding of hegemony -- or of any number of marxist problematics
in the first place. I'm not damning his Rightist tendencies, of course, as
he is as free to be as bored with marxism in France as I am with Nietzche
in the U.S. I am just speaking truth to power. [insert irony here!]
>Yes, it is right to see that Foucault maintains the idea of non-discursive
as
>quasi-transcendental to support an ethical stance. Nietzsche is there
>provisional >for the idea of will to power. The autonomy of the discursive
in AK,
>opposite to >many interpretation, did not depart from the
quasi-transcedentalism, >which is a >non-discursive. The ethical stance is
the selective machine that makes >the >discursive >in light of the
non-discrusive problematic.
>
I think the question of Foucault's ethics or ethos -- and how this might be
related to his *insistence* on the non-discursive dimension of reality --
is a great question and thread. I like Alex's and amd's reading of this,
to boot. It is crucial to see this -- i.e., the non-discursive dimension
-- in Foucault, and as Alex noted, the AofK itself makes this clear (e.g.,
p. 162). (Note too, that whoever says "non-discursive" says "material":
the former simply transcodes the latter. It is not "dialectical
materialism" by any means, but has to come from somewhere: I pick
Althusser/Marx.) Why is this important? L&M say it is not (HSS, p107).
I would say it is, since it seems to imply -- or to evidence in practice,
at any rate -- a certain social ontology. Not Heidegger, but Marx, Weber,
et al. And a certain social, "left" ethos.
At any rate, I think the committment to the non-discursive is as much an
ethical and political one, as it is epistemological. But why is it
"transcendental"? And other thoughts?
Best,
Dan
Daniel Vukovich
English; The Unit for Criticism
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign