Re: Foucault & Derrida

On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, mike king wrote:

>
> >
>
> it seems to me that spanos is saying that heidegger and foucault, the
> two most important thinkers, were both blinded in their insight, which
> is, of course, paul de man's phrase. Foucault's excessive focus on
> "sociopolitics" prevented him from seeing such things as "enframing"
> and "the age of the world picture," whereas heidegger's focus on
> ontology prevented him from seeing things such as the evil of nazism,
> even though he later made a reference to gas chambers in the context
> of a criticism of the technological mindset. A synthesis of heidegger
> and foucault enables "oppositional intellectuals" to avoid the
> mistakes of both.
>
> this synthesis is more explicitly noticeable in the new spanos book:
> "America's Shadow: An Anatomy of Empire," in which spanos shows the
> "ontological origins of occidental imperialism." the disciplinary,
> classificatory tables and the truth discourse of the West, combined
> with a calculative/technological understanding of Being, allow us to
> "level" and "enframe" the Other into a "docile and useful body." The
> rhetoric of problem-solving and "improvement" adds inevitability and
> moral necessity to acts of imperialism. Resistances to this liberal
> humanist/democratic, such as the "falsehood" or "errancy" of the
> communists or "savages," must be made to fit the "true" discourse of
> the West.
>

this isn't sociopolitical???? and how do you define "excessive" and
measure it??? through calculating technologies?

-heidi


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