On Sat, 26 Jun 1999, Daniel Purdy wrote:
> Foucault's account of disciplinary power in D&P is so overwhelmingly
> determinist that there would seem to be no way of explaining
> subjective feelings as anything but the direct effect of a power
> regime. In other words, disciplinary power does not allow for or
> acknowledge the possibility of a subject with autonomous feelings and
> a moral conscience.
I've heard this kind of "determinist" reading of D&P before; I must say I
find it puzzling. I'd venture that it stems from the assumption that D&P
is supposed to express some kind of full-blown theory of subjectivity ...
I don't think there's any reason to think that, but that is often the way
academics read a text: reduce it, expand it, and cajole it into a coherent
theory, and blow it apart.
I think Ian Hacking (in his piece at the end of the Critical Reader)
offers the most fitting final word on the subject of Foucault and the
freedom of the subject: for Foucault, freedom is an utter mystery ... just
as it is for Kant. Just as it is for anyone, in the end.
Matthew
---Matthew A. King---Department of Philosophy---York University, Toronto---
In my dream I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows they learned to swim
--------------------------------(U2)---------------------------------------
> Foucault's account of disciplinary power in D&P is so overwhelmingly
> determinist that there would seem to be no way of explaining
> subjective feelings as anything but the direct effect of a power
> regime. In other words, disciplinary power does not allow for or
> acknowledge the possibility of a subject with autonomous feelings and
> a moral conscience.
I've heard this kind of "determinist" reading of D&P before; I must say I
find it puzzling. I'd venture that it stems from the assumption that D&P
is supposed to express some kind of full-blown theory of subjectivity ...
I don't think there's any reason to think that, but that is often the way
academics read a text: reduce it, expand it, and cajole it into a coherent
theory, and blow it apart.
I think Ian Hacking (in his piece at the end of the Critical Reader)
offers the most fitting final word on the subject of Foucault and the
freedom of the subject: for Foucault, freedom is an utter mystery ... just
as it is for Kant. Just as it is for anyone, in the end.
Matthew
---Matthew A. King---Department of Philosophy---York University, Toronto---
In my dream I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows they learned to swim
--------------------------------(U2)---------------------------------------