Stuart Elden surely is right in his judgment of the toolkit-based work. And
it time someone with his strong sense of the value of F's work say it aloud.
As to the Said question re Beginnings etc: Said needs to mis-read certain
elements of Foucault for the purposes of his own agenda-which agenda is
totally honorable in my eyes. But, Foucault takes a kind of undeserved
beating along the way especially on the charge that 'power' is ubiquitous
and monolithic and does not allow for resistance-a comment, like Chomsky's
on justice-that does not rigorously theorize F's texts on power because of
Said's own historicist humanism.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Stuart Elden
Sent: Monday, November 01, 1999 4:41 PM
To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Toolkit
Sebastian,
You cited my comment
>And that 'theory as toolkit' quote. Am i the only one who thinks that
>Foucault has (unintentionally) provided legitimation for a whole lot of
crap
>scholarship?
which i was beginning to think had passed unnoticed! You said:-
>I tend to agree. This particular legitimation for appropriating Foucault's
>ideas is sometimes accompanied by eulogies regarding the remarkable
>"productivity" unleashed by Foucault's historical analyses. While not all
of
>the resultant scholarship can be dismissed as "crap", I think such
>legitimations often end up being problematic because they tend to focus in
>on some particular idea derived from the Foucaultian archive, without much
>care or concern for small or large-scale contexts, and then proceed to
reify
>it in isolation to the point at which it becomes somewhat blind, suspect
and
>worthless, an effect which the rapturous chords of the professed
>"productivity" of the applicability of Foucault's ideas attempt to mollify.
First, can I just say that i was not intending to say all Foucault
scholarship has been 'crap', far from it. But a lot of work that trades on
this idea - and I don't mean just on/related to Foucault - has been. The
comments above are useful, but more broadly - for me at least - the key
danger is the pick 'n' mix approach of so much 'postmodernism'. Social and
political theory, philosophy - call it what you will - is not like shopping
in a supermarket of ideas... you can't just wrench something from its
context and hope it works with something torn from another.
> <snip>
I've cut out your very interesting comments here, just to keep the length
down. I'm not sure I'd accept your characterisation of Foucault's lifework -
to my mind it's the continuities that are the most interesting part of it,
rather than the artifically (to my mind) named 'periods' of his work. This,
of course, is similar to his refusal to be characterised as a 'thinker of
discontinuity'... and i think there is a fairly characteristic approach (not
a method, perhaps more a style) in his work throughout.
But I totally agree with a lot of the rest of the mail. And the citation of
Butler and Said is good - two of the most interesting people to have traded
upon Foucault's work. Both of them pick up pieces of it, challenge it, turn
it to new purposes, etc. Use it as tools, indeed. But they know his work
_and_ the context of it, very well (look at Said's book Beginnings, or
Butler's The Subject of Desire) _before_ they start to use it. You need to
know how a tool works, or at least, how it was designed to work, before you
can use it, or before you can turn it to new purposes.
Best wishes
Stuart
it time someone with his strong sense of the value of F's work say it aloud.
As to the Said question re Beginnings etc: Said needs to mis-read certain
elements of Foucault for the purposes of his own agenda-which agenda is
totally honorable in my eyes. But, Foucault takes a kind of undeserved
beating along the way especially on the charge that 'power' is ubiquitous
and monolithic and does not allow for resistance-a comment, like Chomsky's
on justice-that does not rigorously theorize F's texts on power because of
Said's own historicist humanism.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Stuart Elden
Sent: Monday, November 01, 1999 4:41 PM
To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Toolkit
Sebastian,
You cited my comment
>And that 'theory as toolkit' quote. Am i the only one who thinks that
>Foucault has (unintentionally) provided legitimation for a whole lot of
crap
>scholarship?
which i was beginning to think had passed unnoticed! You said:-
>I tend to agree. This particular legitimation for appropriating Foucault's
>ideas is sometimes accompanied by eulogies regarding the remarkable
>"productivity" unleashed by Foucault's historical analyses. While not all
of
>the resultant scholarship can be dismissed as "crap", I think such
>legitimations often end up being problematic because they tend to focus in
>on some particular idea derived from the Foucaultian archive, without much
>care or concern for small or large-scale contexts, and then proceed to
reify
>it in isolation to the point at which it becomes somewhat blind, suspect
and
>worthless, an effect which the rapturous chords of the professed
>"productivity" of the applicability of Foucault's ideas attempt to mollify.
First, can I just say that i was not intending to say all Foucault
scholarship has been 'crap', far from it. But a lot of work that trades on
this idea - and I don't mean just on/related to Foucault - has been. The
comments above are useful, but more broadly - for me at least - the key
danger is the pick 'n' mix approach of so much 'postmodernism'. Social and
political theory, philosophy - call it what you will - is not like shopping
in a supermarket of ideas... you can't just wrench something from its
context and hope it works with something torn from another.
> <snip>
I've cut out your very interesting comments here, just to keep the length
down. I'm not sure I'd accept your characterisation of Foucault's lifework -
to my mind it's the continuities that are the most interesting part of it,
rather than the artifically (to my mind) named 'periods' of his work. This,
of course, is similar to his refusal to be characterised as a 'thinker of
discontinuity'... and i think there is a fairly characteristic approach (not
a method, perhaps more a style) in his work throughout.
But I totally agree with a lot of the rest of the mail. And the citation of
Butler and Said is good - two of the most interesting people to have traded
upon Foucault's work. Both of them pick up pieces of it, challenge it, turn
it to new purposes, etc. Use it as tools, indeed. But they know his work
_and_ the context of it, very well (look at Said's book Beginnings, or
Butler's The Subject of Desire) _before_ they start to use it. You need to
know how a tool works, or at least, how it was designed to work, before you
can use it, or before you can turn it to new purposes.
Best wishes
Stuart