On Thu, 21 Oct 1999, Tom Choi wrote:
> for the most part derrida is always complimentary of his former
> teacher.
Obsequious, I would say. Well, who knows. Derrida strikes me as being like
the politician who doesn't even know when s/he's being sincere and when
s/he's not. Not that that's necessarily bad. Better in a philosopher than
in a politician, anyway....
> and maybe one could also contrast foucault's insistence on anonymity
> (as in the interview "the masked philosopher" where he conducted an
> interview anonymously)
One might say (a la Derrida?) that Foucault's "absence" just drew all the
more attention to his presence. ("Who was that masked man?" everyone
asks.) And now, of course, the interview is published under Foucault's
name (as is that encyclopedia entry that Foucault apparently wrote
pseudonymously about himself)--and we all think, gee, cool, an anonymous
interview ... what a *cool guy* that Foucault was! What a *personality*!
(Don't get me wrong, I think he *was* a cool guy ... and like Halperin
(was it Halperin who wrote _St. Foucault_?), I don't feel like I need to
apologize for that.)
> with derrida today as a celebrity icon in american literary circles.
> certainly, one can argue that derrida has become that "universal
> intellectual" that foucault so despised in sartre.
Despised in *himself*, maybe! Let's face it, Foucault was about as much a
universal intellectual as it is possible, in the latter part of the 20th
century, to be. (And in this respect, maybe, Foucault takes after
Nietzsche, who often seems to be railing against himself as much as
against the world--when he rails against the world, he's railing against
his own projected image. Why did Nietzsche understand ressentiment so
well? Because he was so full of ressentiment himself! Why did Foucault
understand so well the futility of aspiring to be a universal
intellectual? Because he aspired to be one--he *was* one--himself! (And so
you're really missing something if you take it to be a point against
Nietzsche or Foucault that they fail to live up to their own ideals.
Aren't our ideals *precisely* what we fail to live up to--aren't they our
ideals *because* we fail to live up to them?))
Anyway, as I've said before on this list, I'm not so sure that Foucault
wished to *valorize* the specific intellectual over the general
intellectual so much as to say that, nowadays, the specific intellectuals
are "where the action is". Foucault somewhere names Robert Oppenheimer as
a prime example--by performing the very specific task of figuring out how
to build atomic bombs, Oppenheimer had much more of an effect on things
than Sartre (or Foucault) ever could. But that doesn't mean that Foucault
thinks that it's better to be Oppenheimer than to be Sartre!
Matthew
---Matthew A. King---Department of Philosophy---York University, Toronto---
"Whatever we have words for, that we have already got beyond.
In all talk there is a grain of contempt."
--------------------------------(Nietzsche)--------------------------------
> for the most part derrida is always complimentary of his former
> teacher.
Obsequious, I would say. Well, who knows. Derrida strikes me as being like
the politician who doesn't even know when s/he's being sincere and when
s/he's not. Not that that's necessarily bad. Better in a philosopher than
in a politician, anyway....
> and maybe one could also contrast foucault's insistence on anonymity
> (as in the interview "the masked philosopher" where he conducted an
> interview anonymously)
One might say (a la Derrida?) that Foucault's "absence" just drew all the
more attention to his presence. ("Who was that masked man?" everyone
asks.) And now, of course, the interview is published under Foucault's
name (as is that encyclopedia entry that Foucault apparently wrote
pseudonymously about himself)--and we all think, gee, cool, an anonymous
interview ... what a *cool guy* that Foucault was! What a *personality*!
(Don't get me wrong, I think he *was* a cool guy ... and like Halperin
(was it Halperin who wrote _St. Foucault_?), I don't feel like I need to
apologize for that.)
> with derrida today as a celebrity icon in american literary circles.
> certainly, one can argue that derrida has become that "universal
> intellectual" that foucault so despised in sartre.
Despised in *himself*, maybe! Let's face it, Foucault was about as much a
universal intellectual as it is possible, in the latter part of the 20th
century, to be. (And in this respect, maybe, Foucault takes after
Nietzsche, who often seems to be railing against himself as much as
against the world--when he rails against the world, he's railing against
his own projected image. Why did Nietzsche understand ressentiment so
well? Because he was so full of ressentiment himself! Why did Foucault
understand so well the futility of aspiring to be a universal
intellectual? Because he aspired to be one--he *was* one--himself! (And so
you're really missing something if you take it to be a point against
Nietzsche or Foucault that they fail to live up to their own ideals.
Aren't our ideals *precisely* what we fail to live up to--aren't they our
ideals *because* we fail to live up to them?))
Anyway, as I've said before on this list, I'm not so sure that Foucault
wished to *valorize* the specific intellectual over the general
intellectual so much as to say that, nowadays, the specific intellectuals
are "where the action is". Foucault somewhere names Robert Oppenheimer as
a prime example--by performing the very specific task of figuring out how
to build atomic bombs, Oppenheimer had much more of an effect on things
than Sartre (or Foucault) ever could. But that doesn't mean that Foucault
thinks that it's better to be Oppenheimer than to be Sartre!
Matthew
---Matthew A. King---Department of Philosophy---York University, Toronto---
"Whatever we have words for, that we have already got beyond.
In all talk there is a grain of contempt."
--------------------------------(Nietzsche)--------------------------------