> Foucault makes some grandiose claims regarding madness and sexuality.
> Foucault's "manifesto" would see madness supplant reason and sexuality
> would
> break free of the discursive chains that entrap it. Derrida's response is
> to
> see madness as inherent to reason. Reason has no pure, undivided,
> relationship
> to itself. There is no pure reason uncontaminated by madness just as
> their is
> no pure madness exterior to reason.
>
I'm sorry, but this is blatently not what Foucault is doing.
Certainly not the later Foucault writing about sexuality. This is Foucault
seen through Derridean blinders (which may or may not be Derrida's
blinders). To claim that for Foucault "sexuality would break free of the
discursive chains that entrap it" shows a failure to read the first 15 pages
of A History of Sexuality, Vol I.
I don't have Loren's original post with me, but I do remember it
bringing up some some central axes of a question which is still being
debated within postmodern/poststructuralist/call-it-what-you-will exchanges,
though it is hardly, as far as I can tell, ever openly thematized. To put
it in simplistic terms, but terms which I think effectively get the point
across: while all of these thinkers are united in articulating the internal
failure of metaphysical, oppositional thought, some thinkers remain
committed to the idea that meaning rests upon such oppositional structures,
even if these structures cannot secure themselves. Thus they point to an
excess to such oppositions, but insist that this excess cannot be named, nor
approached, except as a limit to meaning. On the other side of this, there
are those who insist that that taking this excess seriously requires
rethinking whether meaning is indeed tied to identity and opposition, or to
a relational synthesis of some other sort. This does not mean that this
excess can be named, nor that it can be tapped in some pristine form. The
excess itself is relational, so the idea that it is pristine and pure is
ridiculous.
In short, the political debate is over whether traditional
conceptions of meaning, even if the are forever unstable, are the only
conceptions we can have, or can we theorize something else. And it's not
surprising that from the perspective of each of the two groups outlined
above, the other appears to be illicitly returning to the very metaphysical
thinking they critique. From the perspective of the first, those who would
try to establish other conceptions of meaning and relationality not tied to
identity and opposition are trying to think outside discourse; from the
perspective of the second, those who insist that meaning must be tied to
such traditional structures are failing to think through all the
implications of the deconstruction of these structures.
And so, just to be crude about it (since the entire explanation, as
I said, was simplistic): we can put Lacan, Derrida at his worst, and Judith
Butler and, it seems, Nick, into the first camp, and Foucault, Deleuze,
Irigaray, Derrida at his occasional best, and myself, into the second.
Now, perhaps, even though the divisions I've drawn are simple and
ridiculously binary, we can at least begin a discussion that at least has
the virtue of not being premised on the fallacious reduction of Foucault to
"making grandiose claims about madness and sexuality."
Later,
Nathan
n.e.widder@xxxxxxxxx
> Foucault's "manifesto" would see madness supplant reason and sexuality
> would
> break free of the discursive chains that entrap it. Derrida's response is
> to
> see madness as inherent to reason. Reason has no pure, undivided,
> relationship
> to itself. There is no pure reason uncontaminated by madness just as
> their is
> no pure madness exterior to reason.
>
I'm sorry, but this is blatently not what Foucault is doing.
Certainly not the later Foucault writing about sexuality. This is Foucault
seen through Derridean blinders (which may or may not be Derrida's
blinders). To claim that for Foucault "sexuality would break free of the
discursive chains that entrap it" shows a failure to read the first 15 pages
of A History of Sexuality, Vol I.
I don't have Loren's original post with me, but I do remember it
bringing up some some central axes of a question which is still being
debated within postmodern/poststructuralist/call-it-what-you-will exchanges,
though it is hardly, as far as I can tell, ever openly thematized. To put
it in simplistic terms, but terms which I think effectively get the point
across: while all of these thinkers are united in articulating the internal
failure of metaphysical, oppositional thought, some thinkers remain
committed to the idea that meaning rests upon such oppositional structures,
even if these structures cannot secure themselves. Thus they point to an
excess to such oppositions, but insist that this excess cannot be named, nor
approached, except as a limit to meaning. On the other side of this, there
are those who insist that that taking this excess seriously requires
rethinking whether meaning is indeed tied to identity and opposition, or to
a relational synthesis of some other sort. This does not mean that this
excess can be named, nor that it can be tapped in some pristine form. The
excess itself is relational, so the idea that it is pristine and pure is
ridiculous.
In short, the political debate is over whether traditional
conceptions of meaning, even if the are forever unstable, are the only
conceptions we can have, or can we theorize something else. And it's not
surprising that from the perspective of each of the two groups outlined
above, the other appears to be illicitly returning to the very metaphysical
thinking they critique. From the perspective of the first, those who would
try to establish other conceptions of meaning and relationality not tied to
identity and opposition are trying to think outside discourse; from the
perspective of the second, those who insist that meaning must be tied to
such traditional structures are failing to think through all the
implications of the deconstruction of these structures.
And so, just to be crude about it (since the entire explanation, as
I said, was simplistic): we can put Lacan, Derrida at his worst, and Judith
Butler and, it seems, Nick, into the first camp, and Foucault, Deleuze,
Irigaray, Derrida at his occasional best, and myself, into the second.
Now, perhaps, even though the divisions I've drawn are simple and
ridiculously binary, we can at least begin a discussion that at least has
the virtue of not being premised on the fallacious reduction of Foucault to
"making grandiose claims about madness and sexuality."
Later,
Nathan
n.e.widder@xxxxxxxxx