>Greetings all:
>
>I've just finished reading the dialogue "Revolutionary
>Action: 'Until Now'," reprinted in _Language, Counter-Memory,
>Practice_ and am having trouble interpreting the last
>statement by Foucault. In response to an interlocutor's
>statments about "the fundamental contradiction of revolutionary
>action," Foucault replies:
>
>What strikes me in your argument is that it takes the form
>"until now." However, a revolutionary undertaking is directed
>not only against the present but against the rule of "until
>now" (p. 233).
>
>Would anyone mind unpacking that a bit for me? I must admit,
>somewhat sheepishly, that I find it a bit cryptic -
>especially in response to the passage that precedes it.
>Did something get lost in translation, or I am missing
>something?
>
>thanks,
>dan
=======
All revolutionaries work under the assumption that their particular one has
a chance to be the last revolution, the one that will instate utopia where
no more revolutions will be necessary. Thus, they think that all previous
revolutionary actions were contradictory, until now (their own).
Least that's how I'd interpret it.
Kenneth
>
>I've just finished reading the dialogue "Revolutionary
>Action: 'Until Now'," reprinted in _Language, Counter-Memory,
>Practice_ and am having trouble interpreting the last
>statement by Foucault. In response to an interlocutor's
>statments about "the fundamental contradiction of revolutionary
>action," Foucault replies:
>
>What strikes me in your argument is that it takes the form
>"until now." However, a revolutionary undertaking is directed
>not only against the present but against the rule of "until
>now" (p. 233).
>
>Would anyone mind unpacking that a bit for me? I must admit,
>somewhat sheepishly, that I find it a bit cryptic -
>especially in response to the passage that precedes it.
>Did something get lost in translation, or I am missing
>something?
>
>thanks,
>dan
=======
All revolutionaries work under the assumption that their particular one has
a chance to be the last revolution, the one that will instate utopia where
no more revolutions will be necessary. Thus, they think that all previous
revolutionary actions were contradictory, until now (their own).
Least that's how I'd interpret it.
Kenneth