>Well I certainly agree. But Isn't it rather problematic to break something
>down in order to build up something new? Won't new understandings and
>categorizations allways imply new inclusions and exclusions?
Well, thats certainly the problematic foucault enjoys. Its not his
contention that one can escape relations of power in the process or the
finality of self-subjectification. To establish ones own subject is to
consistantly employ strategies of resistance and transgression. Foucault
compares such strategies as creating art--in which the process and/or
attempt to resubjectify oneself is like creating a work of art. There will
inevitably be strategies of exclusion as long as power relations are
prolific, so the ethico-political action should be a constant resistance.
>We are faced with the same problem in our project. Because of our initial
>concern with the exclusions inherent in an active society, we in a way
>presuppose a certain kind of truth: that we are all equal and should have
>equal rights and possibilities. Personally I have no problem with such an
>attitude, but isn't there an academic problem when we are trying to do a
>genealogy?
Its not so much an issue of pursuing truth--at least not in its traditional
understanding. Geneology is "anti-science", it brings into present all
those discourses and knowledges the history and science books don't tell you
about. Its not about a search for origin, as traditional historical
analysis pursues, but is about understanding that events don't exist in a
vacuum, independent of a multitude of relations and discourses that shape an
event. Geneology does alleviate truth(s), and claims no objectivity in its
findings, but rather undermines the concept of an objective truth which is
dominant in our thinking today. (oh, also, you may want to be careful in
presupposing a concept of equality and rights--such liberal terms have been
used for very questionable purposes)
Loren Dent
Georgetown High School, TX