On Fri, 22 Oct 1999, Paul Bryant wrote:
> Foucault, according to Derrida, falls prey to precisely the same
> fallacy that he accuses psychology of... He thinks that he can speak
> madness or point to it. Foucault, despite protestations, seems
> ultimately to agree with this critique as can be seen in the huge
> transformations his project undergoes in OT, AK, and DP... All of
> which can be seen as attempts to escape the need of referring to some
> sort of authentic phenomenology in order to properly critique the
> human sciences.
The thing is, though, there is nothing (as far as I can recall) in M&C
(maybe it's different in French, I don't know) that looks like a
phenomenology of madness. It's all a history of what was done to the mad
and what was thought about madness. He doesn't say a single thing, as far
as I can tell, about *madness itself*.
Matthew
> Foucault, according to Derrida, falls prey to precisely the same
> fallacy that he accuses psychology of... He thinks that he can speak
> madness or point to it. Foucault, despite protestations, seems
> ultimately to agree with this critique as can be seen in the huge
> transformations his project undergoes in OT, AK, and DP... All of
> which can be seen as attempts to escape the need of referring to some
> sort of authentic phenomenology in order to properly critique the
> human sciences.
The thing is, though, there is nothing (as far as I can recall) in M&C
(maybe it's different in French, I don't know) that looks like a
phenomenology of madness. It's all a history of what was done to the mad
and what was thought about madness. He doesn't say a single thing, as far
as I can tell, about *madness itself*.
Matthew