Paul Bryant writes:
>There's more to it than simply taking Foucault to task
>for "committing the structuralist error of placing
>reason and unreason in opposition to one another".
>Far from being a simple matter of opposition, Derrida
>is calling Foucault into question for presuming to be
>able to speak of an authentic or true experience of
>madness. If Foucault is in some sense claiming that
>identities such as madness are discursive formations
>molded from a field of forces, then the evocation of a
>true or authentic madness can only represent one more
>rationalization of madness in a series of other
>rationalizations. In other words, 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.
>
But, you see, that IS my point. I agree, essentially,
that Derrida is speaking about more than a simple opposition
between reason and unreason. But the claim you say Derrida
makes against Foucault can only hold if it is presumed first
that Foucault considers madness to be some kind of
mirror-identity to reason. And we do see a frequent
contrasting of "reason" and "unreason" that seems to suggest
just the kind of stage-setting that might allow Foucault to
counter the traditional metanarrative of reason with a
counter-history told from the view of unreason, of "madness
itself." But Foucault does not choose this path; instead,
Foucault shows unreason itself to be a mere construct of
reason. Madness becomes a process of "objectivation," an
axis of social exclusion in the interest of the positivist
human sciences. Thus, Foucault is not "claiming that
identities such as madness are discursive formations molded
from a field of forces;" Foucault claims nothing about
identity at all (except perhaps the lack thereof), and nothing
about "madness itself." Rather, he attempts to trace the
development of a PRACTICE, or what he would later call a
"practical system," characterized by continuous acts of
silencing and confinement. "Madness," then, merely denotes a
constructed object of a science of exclusion (i.e.,
psychiatry), which he sees as "a certain moral tactic
contemporary with the end of the eighteenth century, preserved
in the rites of asylum life, and overlaid by the myths of
positivism" (MC 276).
Indeed, one thing that is missing from the history of madness
is the formulated subject. The brand of archaeology present
in M/C speaks little of the experience of the subject, and it
was more for this reason, and not out of any concession to
Derrida, that he felt the need to undertake certain theoretical
shifts in his subsequent works.
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>There's more to it than simply taking Foucault to task
>for "committing the structuralist error of placing
>reason and unreason in opposition to one another".
>Far from being a simple matter of opposition, Derrida
>is calling Foucault into question for presuming to be
>able to speak of an authentic or true experience of
>madness. If Foucault is in some sense claiming that
>identities such as madness are discursive formations
>molded from a field of forces, then the evocation of a
>true or authentic madness can only represent one more
>rationalization of madness in a series of other
>rationalizations. In other words, 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.
>
But, you see, that IS my point. I agree, essentially,
that Derrida is speaking about more than a simple opposition
between reason and unreason. But the claim you say Derrida
makes against Foucault can only hold if it is presumed first
that Foucault considers madness to be some kind of
mirror-identity to reason. And we do see a frequent
contrasting of "reason" and "unreason" that seems to suggest
just the kind of stage-setting that might allow Foucault to
counter the traditional metanarrative of reason with a
counter-history told from the view of unreason, of "madness
itself." But Foucault does not choose this path; instead,
Foucault shows unreason itself to be a mere construct of
reason. Madness becomes a process of "objectivation," an
axis of social exclusion in the interest of the positivist
human sciences. Thus, Foucault is not "claiming that
identities such as madness are discursive formations molded
from a field of forces;" Foucault claims nothing about
identity at all (except perhaps the lack thereof), and nothing
about "madness itself." Rather, he attempts to trace the
development of a PRACTICE, or what he would later call a
"practical system," characterized by continuous acts of
silencing and confinement. "Madness," then, merely denotes a
constructed object of a science of exclusion (i.e.,
psychiatry), which he sees as "a certain moral tactic
contemporary with the end of the eighteenth century, preserved
in the rites of asylum life, and overlaid by the myths of
positivism" (MC 276).
Indeed, one thing that is missing from the history of madness
is the formulated subject. The brand of archaeology present
in M/C speaks little of the experience of the subject, and it
was more for this reason, and not out of any concession to
Derrida, that he felt the need to undertake certain theoretical
shifts in his subsequent works.
______________________________________________________
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