-----Messaggio originale-----
Da: Sebastian Gurciullo <sebtempo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
A: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Data: Saturday, January 09, 1999 6:10 PM
Oggetto: Re: Was Foucault a nihilist?
>Foucault's nihilism? foucault himself claimed (in a couple of interviews
>mainly) that his histories were in a sense nothing but "fictions" and that
>what he was really interested in when writing them was of experiencing some
>form of personal transformation! this confirms the kind of account tony
>gives in his first post on F's nihilism, that F sought to present as
>reasoned, scholarly, work the kind of alternative account(s) that must be
>outmanouvered in order for the conventional normal one to hold onto its
>claim to validity. Foucault's painstakingly reconstructed genealogies are
>therefore not the truth at last coming out, but the more disturbing
>unworking of every possibility of truth at last, which is a transformative
>experience which Foucault would like to share with his readers.
No, no, no, no, no. He is not interested in the "disturbing unworking of
every possibility of truth at last." That's nihilism! Foucault was not a
deconstrucitonist! Truth is *incredibly* important to Foucault. But not
because it has an essence so much as it has such profound affects. And
something that has profound affects must be taken very seriously.
Was Nietzsche a nihilist? The answer is no, right? He was a diagnostician of
nihilism. He thought it was a necessary stage of intellectual life -- the
"lion" stage. But it could not be the *goal* of intellectual activity. It
was not something that Nietzsche or Foucault positively hoped for. Because
the ideal agents of nihilism are precisely the thoughtless products of the
disciplines (Foucault) or the satiated bourgeois ridiculed in the Preface to
Zarathustra. Nihilism is the shrug of indifference directed at every
valuation -- and isn't that exactly what liberal toleration is? Isn't that
exactly the ethic of so many so-called leftists?
Foucault was not a nihilist. He did not want to unwork every possibility of
truth. Neither did Nietzsche. "Truth" might be an error, but the word
"error" does not always literally translate into "undesirable" or "harmful".
In *Genealogy* for instance Nietzsche constantly accuses preists and
religionists of committing errors that *promote life.*
For Foucault's own view on this, see his Introduction to Canguilem's "Normal
and Pathological." For an insightful commentary on that essay, see (!) my
essay, "Foucault and Lebensphilosophie" in some journal or other the name of
which I forget.
--John Ransom
>
>the last part of tony's mail seems to move either into parody or devil's
>advocacy. we finally realize that all we need to do is to remove every
>attempt at a regime of truth and miraculously, spontaneously,
>anarchistically perhaps, in an orgy of freedom, really good things start to
>happen and things are at last radically transformed, nothing less than the
>long delayed promise of the enlightenment spontaneously erupts amongst us.
>wish fulfilled. this impossible scenario is sometimes what one senses would
>be F's utopia, the end of regimes as such, no further attempts to construct
>a new order, no more problem solving, etc. Foucault never actually says any
>such thing, its only when you attempt to think through the implications of
>his thinking in the real world that these possibilities become manifest in
>his thought. But then, I don't think Foucault really was much of a
practical
>thinker, except perhaps in furnishing a whole new generation of scholars
>with varyingly imaginative, provocative, contradictory theses with which to
>carry out more scholarship in new areas of critical thought - the Foucault
>industry.
>
>Overall, I doubt that even this kind of happily anarchistic utopia would
>have been of much attraction to F. In the end he seemed to embrace the
>utopia of aestheticism, of the beautifully lived life and above all, of a
>memorable life, as a way of resisting the ugly deformations of an
>administered world. When you attempt to fit this last move of Foucault's
>late works on ethics (as aesthetics of existence or as the self's ascetic
>stylisation of itself) within the overall output of productive ideas (an
>attempt which some F scholars would probably see as futile or outmoded) its
>as if Foucault wanted to set an example, much in the way of Nietzsche but
>perhaps in the end without as much elegance and originality, of how
>problematic existence actually is, let alone truth or knowledge of
existence
>and how to critically resist its deformations. How successful F. was at
this
>is still very much up in the air. Sure he has been hailed by some as a
saint
>for the sheer productivity of new tools with which to carry out analyses, a
>proliferation of Foucauldian studies of this or that, for a myriad of
>purposes, and endless commentaries on what he actually thought and why, all
>of which is only natural, its scholarly debate as usual isn't it?
>
>There are many Foucaults to choose from, and the one I find most attractive
>is the one who seems to be a stylish nihilist, the one who gets into
trouble
>with the likes of Habermas for "performative contradictions". The appeal of
>this Foucault is that he reflects a great deal of the nihilism lurking
about
>in our contemporary world, that many would prefer did not exist or could
>smooth away with good-will and careful intersubjective communication, or
>whatever. It is doubtful that anything good would necessarily come of this
>Foucault, or anybody's well meaning appropriation of his ideas. But then,
>its better to will nothing than not will at all, and perhaps less harmful.
>
>Of course, if you dont like this Foucault, just shop around, you're sure to
>find the one that best suits you.
>
> cheers
> sebastian gurciullo
>