Matthew,
I could not help thinking of the Adorno's often quoted statement on the
relation of philosophy to modernist art, that Art says what philosophy
cannot say by not saying it, which is what philosophy as aesthetic theory is
supposed to draw our attention to, a philosophy that needs an Art that needs
philosophy, or something like that. Am I correct in thinking that you find
the connection between literature and madness as it occurs in Foucault's
early work a dubious idea, or only the distinction between a literal
language and a figurative one?:
> Many might agree with Foucault's Descartes that madness
>cannot speak, but contend that madness *shows*, in art, what it cannot
>say. Art is just what cannot be put into (literal) words. Art *expresses*
>what cannot be *communicated*, or something like that. (It seems as if
>Foucault's thought here is infected by something like Barthes's idea that
>art *is* just another kind of speaking.)
>
>Put it this way: to be mad is to be unable to speak *literally*. And so it
>is the modern separation of literal from figurative modes of speaking
>which cuts the mad off from the non-mad--but cuts them off only so far as
>literal speech is concerned.
Looked at aesthetically, Foucault's work seems to have some resemblances to
what he calls literature and madness as unreason, a largely self-referential
language (of his own invention but at the same time dispersed with regard to
the site bearing his name) that does not seek to refer to natural objects
(ie. things do not exist), but which rather contests and reveals the
performativity of other languages (whether they be in the form of discourses
or practices) which while indicating they refer to a natural object (a thing
which does exist) conceal their own self-referential operations through acts
of exclusion. The complex and idiosyncratic vocabularies and the
kaleidoscopic interrelations of their shifting internal architecture brought
into play in each of Foucault's writings, but more noticeably in his longer
works, seem to confirm this for me. If I am not mistaken, this problematic
is related to what has traditionally been called nominalism in philosophical
discourse.
Trying to understand these vocabularies is an ambivalent experience. One
wants to get to the heart of the matter, to get it right, to take Foucault
literally - ie. what does Foucault mean here? how is he using this word?
what is he doing? what does he hope to achieve? what, exactly, is the shape
and extent of the critical apparutus he is using in this text? On the other
hand, working out all these specificities, getting to know them intimately
as if they were one's own (all the better to apply them elsewhere perhaps),
becomes a source of indifference when one realises that it is not possible
to appropriate these vocabularies in a stabilised condition and as
references to things that exist (confinement, discipline, punishment, gaze).
On this side, it is never a question of siding with or against Foucault but
of being elsewhere, amidst another set of contingencies regarding which
Foucault's vocabulary may have some figurative resonance but which requires
some other instantiation of performativity whose relation to Foucault's
thinking may be not so much as to what he says literally (although one can
no doubt attempt to focus on this restricted economy of signification and
seek to counter or apply Foucault's work in this manner), but to the
gestures, figures and forms through which his thinking takes place, which
will be a different vocabulary even if it uses the same words. Philosophy
has an irreducible aesthetic dimension, whether as pure thought, oratory,
rhetoric, dialogue, treatise, essay, etc. What is communicated by this
dimension is never only what is said, but what cannot be said and what makes
saying possible/impossible.
cheers
sebastian
I could not help thinking of the Adorno's often quoted statement on the
relation of philosophy to modernist art, that Art says what philosophy
cannot say by not saying it, which is what philosophy as aesthetic theory is
supposed to draw our attention to, a philosophy that needs an Art that needs
philosophy, or something like that. Am I correct in thinking that you find
the connection between literature and madness as it occurs in Foucault's
early work a dubious idea, or only the distinction between a literal
language and a figurative one?:
> Many might agree with Foucault's Descartes that madness
>cannot speak, but contend that madness *shows*, in art, what it cannot
>say. Art is just what cannot be put into (literal) words. Art *expresses*
>what cannot be *communicated*, or something like that. (It seems as if
>Foucault's thought here is infected by something like Barthes's idea that
>art *is* just another kind of speaking.)
>
>Put it this way: to be mad is to be unable to speak *literally*. And so it
>is the modern separation of literal from figurative modes of speaking
>which cuts the mad off from the non-mad--but cuts them off only so far as
>literal speech is concerned.
Looked at aesthetically, Foucault's work seems to have some resemblances to
what he calls literature and madness as unreason, a largely self-referential
language (of his own invention but at the same time dispersed with regard to
the site bearing his name) that does not seek to refer to natural objects
(ie. things do not exist), but which rather contests and reveals the
performativity of other languages (whether they be in the form of discourses
or practices) which while indicating they refer to a natural object (a thing
which does exist) conceal their own self-referential operations through acts
of exclusion. The complex and idiosyncratic vocabularies and the
kaleidoscopic interrelations of their shifting internal architecture brought
into play in each of Foucault's writings, but more noticeably in his longer
works, seem to confirm this for me. If I am not mistaken, this problematic
is related to what has traditionally been called nominalism in philosophical
discourse.
Trying to understand these vocabularies is an ambivalent experience. One
wants to get to the heart of the matter, to get it right, to take Foucault
literally - ie. what does Foucault mean here? how is he using this word?
what is he doing? what does he hope to achieve? what, exactly, is the shape
and extent of the critical apparutus he is using in this text? On the other
hand, working out all these specificities, getting to know them intimately
as if they were one's own (all the better to apply them elsewhere perhaps),
becomes a source of indifference when one realises that it is not possible
to appropriate these vocabularies in a stabilised condition and as
references to things that exist (confinement, discipline, punishment, gaze).
On this side, it is never a question of siding with or against Foucault but
of being elsewhere, amidst another set of contingencies regarding which
Foucault's vocabulary may have some figurative resonance but which requires
some other instantiation of performativity whose relation to Foucault's
thinking may be not so much as to what he says literally (although one can
no doubt attempt to focus on this restricted economy of signification and
seek to counter or apply Foucault's work in this manner), but to the
gestures, figures and forms through which his thinking takes place, which
will be a different vocabulary even if it uses the same words. Philosophy
has an irreducible aesthetic dimension, whether as pure thought, oratory,
rhetoric, dialogue, treatise, essay, etc. What is communicated by this
dimension is never only what is said, but what cannot be said and what makes
saying possible/impossible.
cheers
sebastian