On Tue, 12 Jan 1999 09:33:17 -0800 (PST) Michael Roberts=20
<solace54@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Foucault uses "commentary" in "The order of things" and in several of
> the interviews collected in "Foucault live".One point Foucault is
> making in "The order of Things" is that most "history" is a commentary
> on the past written from the perspective of the present. The history
> of biology, for example, is written backward as a celebration of
> Darwin's triumph over the darkness and confusion which reigned before.
> The contribution of every pre-darwinian biologist is looked at from
> the perspective of the question "Did this point to Darwin or in
> another direction?". This makes everyone either pre-darwinian or
> wrong. This is not a perspective which allows us to ask if what any
> given person was saying made sense and was worth saying by the
> standards not of our time but of theirs. If you think that history
> ought to be a creation myth for our time commentary on the past is
> fine. If you want to understand not the present but the past,
> commentary is useless.
I'll check that out in _Order_. So "commentary" sounds like the genre=20
of epistemes, and, as well, the documents in the archives revealing=20
various geneaologies of power relations. I'm not sure your conclusions=20
are called for--or so radically determined by "commentary." F gives an=20
interesting account of how we got to this point in what is right and=20
what is wrong, what is true and whast is false. such an insight flows=20
both ways, it seems to me.
> On the jump from beliefs to systems of belief, I can only ask you
> two rhetorical questions. "Do you admitt to having a political
> ideology and if so what does this mean to you" and the same question
> only substituting "personality" for "political ideology". When I
> admitt to having a political ideology what I mean is that if a
> competant researcher where given my answers to several questions about
> political issues she could make a better than chance guess about how I
> might answer most other questions about political issues. When I
> admitt to having a personality, what I mean is that observation of my
> behavior in one context might allow this same researcher to make a
> good guess as to how I might respond in some other superficially
> unrelated context. For example, watching how I drive might give her a
> clue as to how I might respond to some guy who bumps me in a bar and
> accidently spills beer on my shirt. I admitt to having both a
> personality and a political ideology and believe that I follow the
> human rule in this rather than being the exception.=20
I think that what I think my political ideology is and what I think my=20
personality is will not pan out as my "belief system." It may be=20
something that I think and call my "belief system" but it ain't the=20
whole story by a long shot. And quantifiable surveys of drinking,=20
driving, and bumping into people ain't gonna make anybody else's=20
grammar of my belief system the whole story either.
A lot of research
> is based on this idea, the idea that beliefs and therefor tendencies
> of response are not random and unconnected but arranged in systems.
> Some of this research is based on the further assumption that these
> belief structures are layered: that some attitudes sit closer to the
> individuals' core than others and that those that sit closer can, for
> many practical purposes, be thought of as constraining those which are
> less central.=20
Sounds like a perfect set-up for crowd control; or maybe
health mgmt triage. plotting out the system of an individual is a=20
totalitarian act masquerading as science.=20
I personally prefer a model which labels those attitudes
> which are most central as ideology. I think of ideology as the
> cognitive aspect of personality: ideology is what a person can not
> help believeing just given the kind of person he or she is. I take
> this idea seriously enough to believe that a real change in ideology
> always involves some kind of deep personal transformation. For
> example, while I am not a christian, I take being "born again" as a
> real psychological process involving creation of a new self based on
> interpollation of a set of ideas about God and being in a personal
> relationship with God. If the "born again" experience is real, these
> ideas don't seem like "just attitudes" at all but like insights into
> the nature of a timeless truth. I don't see being "born again" as a
> positive thing but I do see it as a real transformation of the self.
you might look into Nietzsche's will to power: self-overcoming is the=20
key there. and it is an essential doctrine neglected by those who just=20
see nihilism in N's thought.
I wonder though about self-overcoming and its cousin per Foucault:
the inner policeman.
> Ideas matter. Ideas can and do change people. I don't typically find
> the kind of self that results from being changed by Jesus very
> interesting and I do not want to live in a world where christian
> "insight" is "knowledge" that would allow one to construct a
> commentary pathologizing anyone whose sense of self and the world is
> not based on these "insights". We are in the middle of a culture war
> here in these (barely) United States. This war is being fought out
> between those who are willing to see America turned into a Christian
> Republic in the same sense that Iran is an Islamic Republic and those
> who feel the need, for whatever reason, to resist this. It is not a
> simple matter of christian versus non-christian. Some christians are
> actually part of the resistence. I do think beliefs, even beliefs
> about things that superficially don't have much to do with each other,
> are connected in ways that justify a reference to system. For example,
> "Do you think that touching Monica Lewinsky's bobbies rises to the
> level of an impeachable offense?" superficially has little content in
> common with "God's will as revealed in the bible is law even for those
> who do not believe." But I would be willing to bet that knowing how
> the one was answered would give me a clue as to how the other would be
> answered. I'd even go further and guess that, in a structural equation
> model, the arrow ought to point from "God's Will" to "Monica's
> Bobbies" rather than the other way around.
I think you want to spell boobies with RE Monica; i am not sure what=20
you are wanting to say about this culture war. what's new about it?
what is so important about it outside of the entertainment value it now=20
is for the media until something new comes along? this shit doesn't=20
really touch people. these rightwing fundies aren't winning the hearts=20
and minds of the populance. the pendulum continues in full swing=C9
> On grammar rules. I'm sorry you don't find that metaphor useful.
> I do. As a child, I did not learn any grammar rules but I learned to
> speak southern english, the english I heard around me. A well trained
> linguist could, after listening to a tape of me speaking at age 10,
> make a pretty good guess as to my origin both regional and in terms of
> social class. She could do so by noticing the rules of grammar and
> usage I obeyed. Noticing, for example, that I greatly preferred to
> place the accent of a two syllable word on the first syllable, as in
> saying PO! LICE rather than PO LICE!. I'm thinking of grammar as
> descriptive rather than prescriptive. About this same time, I learned
> to act about like most of the other kids. Most of this learning was
> not about being explicitly taught rules either. But, a good Vygotskian
> well versed in american cultural norms could have, after about a half
> hour of interaction, placed the 10 year old I was regionally and
> socially on the basis of observing the rules my interaction style
> obeyed. The 10 year old I was would have had a harder time stating
> these rules than the Vgotskian after that brief half hour. We learn to
> be particular kinds of people just as we learn to speak a particular
> dialect. We are, in most cases, taught neither grammar rules nor
> ideology in any explicit fashion. We learn to be human and to speak by
> watching and listening and it is usually the case that it is possible
> to guess where we learned to be human and to speak on the basis of
> noticing which rules "go without saying", which rules we follow
> without even having to think about it.=20
so you think that there are formulae for filling in the whole story?
i don't.
I would agree with you that
> saying and doing is practice not belief. I would argue, however, that
> both saying and doing are guided by beliefs so central as to "go
> without saying". Making someone look at "what goes without saying"
> can sometimes be as disorienting as asking a centiped "How do you know
> which of those legs to move first?". You're also right in saying that
> most people most of the time do not take that kind of question
> seriously. The real fun, for me anyway, starts when I do. I love
> Foucault not because he comes forward saying "I will tell you the
> truth" but rather "Everything you think you know is wrong and I've got
> a story to tell you which will prove it.".
both statements tend in the same direction, but let's hear the story=C9=20
if we are flexible (& compassionate).
> ps. Prove to me that its PO LICE! and not PO! LICE and "there" not
> "ther"! Let me add that I say "PO! LICE ride in squad cars." but "By
> 1850, desire had come to be PO LICED! by medicine rather than
> religion." only because I first learned to use that word as a verb in
> college.
there is a difference between the PO-lice and po-LICING desire. But if=20
i may say politely, i would not bank policy on anything of great import=20
being determined by distinguishing the pronunciations.
kindest regards,
henry