Thanks again for a thought provoking response. I'm really not here
because I consider myself an expert on Foucault. I know a little and
its my project for this term to dive in and try to learn more. Hence
my presence on the list.
Survey research is all about prediction and control. But, then
again, so is a case study. So are the human sciences in general.
Foucault actually talks in "Order" about man as that which escapes the
efforts of the human sciences at quantification in the service of
prediction and control, what Foucault calls normalization. I read him
as saying that man is not the knowledge gathered by the human sciences
but rather the resistence to being reduced to this knowledge that the
existence of the human sciences creates in real people. In this sense,
the essence of a person, the essence which escapes quantification and
normalization, is this resistence. It is the resistence that its own
activity generates that the human sciences can never take into
account. Just as, as Foucault pointed out in his analysis of "Las
Meninas", no representation can ever represent the spectator from
whose perspective the representation is rendered.
I had one seminar on Nietzsche years ago as an undergrad. The thing
that has stuck with me all these years is the claim that all truth is
perspectival, that what is "true" for an individual will be determined
by that persons' particular version of the will to power. I call
Nietzsche a nihilist not because I think he did not believe anything
but because I don't think he claimed that this belief was compelled by
anything outside himself. His truth was made not found, chosen not
discovered. About the best book I ever read on Nietzsche was written
by George Stack. Stack's book is a comparison/contrast of Nietzsche
and Ralph Waldo Emerson which convinced at least me that Emersom was
what Nietzsche would have been if he had had a sound digestion.
Foucault asked an interesting question about Nietzsche. The
question was "if we applied Nietzsches' ideas about why people have
the ideas they have to Nietzsche himself, what would we come up with?
If "truth' always hides a vested interest struggling with other vested
interests, which vested interest is best served by this "truth":the
truth that truth is always a weopon in the struggles of vested
interest." This question boils down to the question "What power made
Nietzsche possible? What increasing power served by his truth, what
vested interest winning out more and more in struggle, makes
Nietzsche's truth more and more plausible as time goes by. The final
victory of an interest and the end of a long struggle will be
announced when Nietzsche's truth becomes obvious to everyone, becomes
common sense. What should we call this interest and how should we
describe this struggle?". Perhaps these questions will only be
answered in the commentary the next episteme will give on our own.
See Ya,
Tony Michael Roberts
---henry sholar <hwsholar@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 12 Jan 1999 09:33:17 -0800 (PST) Michael Roberts
> <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
> of epistemes, and, as well, the documents in the archives revealing
> various geneaologies of power relations. I'm not sure your
conclusions
> are called for--or so radically determined by "commentary." F gives
an
> interesting account of how we got to this point in what is right and
> what is wrong, what is true and whast is false. such an insight
flows
> 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.
>
> I think that what I think my political ideology is and what I think
my
> personality is will not pan out as my "belief system." It may be
> something that I think and call my "belief system" but it ain't the
> whole story by a long shot. And quantifiable surveys of drinking,
> driving, and bumping into people ain't gonna make anybody else's
> 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.
>
> Sounds like a perfect set-up for crowd control; or maybe
> health mgmt triage. plotting out the system of an individual is a
> totalitarian act masquerading as science.
>
> 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
> key there. and it is an essential doctrine neglected by those who
just
> 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
> 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
> is for the media until something new comes along? this shit doesn't
> really touch people. these rightwing fundies aren't winning the
hearts
> and minds of the populance. the pendulum continues in full swingÉ
>
>
> > 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.
>
> 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 storyÉ
> 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
> i may say politely, i would not bank policy on anything of great
import
> being determined by distinguishing the pronunciations.
>
> kindest regards,
> henry
>
>
==
"I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." Michel Foucault
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
because I consider myself an expert on Foucault. I know a little and
its my project for this term to dive in and try to learn more. Hence
my presence on the list.
Survey research is all about prediction and control. But, then
again, so is a case study. So are the human sciences in general.
Foucault actually talks in "Order" about man as that which escapes the
efforts of the human sciences at quantification in the service of
prediction and control, what Foucault calls normalization. I read him
as saying that man is not the knowledge gathered by the human sciences
but rather the resistence to being reduced to this knowledge that the
existence of the human sciences creates in real people. In this sense,
the essence of a person, the essence which escapes quantification and
normalization, is this resistence. It is the resistence that its own
activity generates that the human sciences can never take into
account. Just as, as Foucault pointed out in his analysis of "Las
Meninas", no representation can ever represent the spectator from
whose perspective the representation is rendered.
I had one seminar on Nietzsche years ago as an undergrad. The thing
that has stuck with me all these years is the claim that all truth is
perspectival, that what is "true" for an individual will be determined
by that persons' particular version of the will to power. I call
Nietzsche a nihilist not because I think he did not believe anything
but because I don't think he claimed that this belief was compelled by
anything outside himself. His truth was made not found, chosen not
discovered. About the best book I ever read on Nietzsche was written
by George Stack. Stack's book is a comparison/contrast of Nietzsche
and Ralph Waldo Emerson which convinced at least me that Emersom was
what Nietzsche would have been if he had had a sound digestion.
Foucault asked an interesting question about Nietzsche. The
question was "if we applied Nietzsches' ideas about why people have
the ideas they have to Nietzsche himself, what would we come up with?
If "truth' always hides a vested interest struggling with other vested
interests, which vested interest is best served by this "truth":the
truth that truth is always a weopon in the struggles of vested
interest." This question boils down to the question "What power made
Nietzsche possible? What increasing power served by his truth, what
vested interest winning out more and more in struggle, makes
Nietzsche's truth more and more plausible as time goes by. The final
victory of an interest and the end of a long struggle will be
announced when Nietzsche's truth becomes obvious to everyone, becomes
common sense. What should we call this interest and how should we
describe this struggle?". Perhaps these questions will only be
answered in the commentary the next episteme will give on our own.
See Ya,
Tony Michael Roberts
---henry sholar <hwsholar@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 12 Jan 1999 09:33:17 -0800 (PST) Michael Roberts
> <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
> of epistemes, and, as well, the documents in the archives revealing
> various geneaologies of power relations. I'm not sure your
conclusions
> are called for--or so radically determined by "commentary." F gives
an
> interesting account of how we got to this point in what is right and
> what is wrong, what is true and whast is false. such an insight
flows
> 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.
>
> I think that what I think my political ideology is and what I think
my
> personality is will not pan out as my "belief system." It may be
> something that I think and call my "belief system" but it ain't the
> whole story by a long shot. And quantifiable surveys of drinking,
> driving, and bumping into people ain't gonna make anybody else's
> 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.
>
> Sounds like a perfect set-up for crowd control; or maybe
> health mgmt triage. plotting out the system of an individual is a
> totalitarian act masquerading as science.
>
> 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
> key there. and it is an essential doctrine neglected by those who
just
> 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
> 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
> is for the media until something new comes along? this shit doesn't
> really touch people. these rightwing fundies aren't winning the
hearts
> and minds of the populance. the pendulum continues in full swingÉ
>
>
> > 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.
>
> 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 storyÉ
> 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
> i may say politely, i would not bank policy on anything of great
import
> being determined by distinguishing the pronunciations.
>
> kindest regards,
> henry
>
>
==
"I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." Michel Foucault
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com