At 10:21 PM +0000 22/12/00, Adam Greenow wrote:
>I'm grateful to discuss these issues and hope I've clarified my
>understanding. which is of course open to contradiction. Foucault is
>a master of truth games and puzzles. I sometimes change my opinions
>regarding his work on a daily basis. He often consciously
>contradicts himself which makes me think Miller's thesis is quite
>convincing, though not the whole truth, which of course doesn't
>exist. Foucault's work is fiction in a sense, as he said. And he
>liked to laugh at people trying to decipher what he meant.
These contradictions in my opinion are indications of Foucault trying
out ideas, working through them and changing his mind. He thinks an
idea is pretty good, then sees the problems with it and comes up with
something else. It's a sign of a real and developing thinker, rather
than someone who stays static with fixed ideas that they feel they
have to indoctrinate their readers with. Foucault is writing as much
for himself to work out his own ideas as for anyone else. I for one
enjoy participating in that process rather than being the object for
didactic sermonising which one finds with so many other philosophy
texts. He alludes to this aspect of his work on a number of occasions
eg in the introduction to The Use of Pleasures and also in Remarks on
Marx.
--
Clare
*******************************************************
Clare O'Farrell
email: c.ofarrell@xxxxxxxxxx
website: http://www.qut.edu.au/edu/cpol/foucault/
*******************************************************
>I'm grateful to discuss these issues and hope I've clarified my
>understanding. which is of course open to contradiction. Foucault is
>a master of truth games and puzzles. I sometimes change my opinions
>regarding his work on a daily basis. He often consciously
>contradicts himself which makes me think Miller's thesis is quite
>convincing, though not the whole truth, which of course doesn't
>exist. Foucault's work is fiction in a sense, as he said. And he
>liked to laugh at people trying to decipher what he meant.
These contradictions in my opinion are indications of Foucault trying
out ideas, working through them and changing his mind. He thinks an
idea is pretty good, then sees the problems with it and comes up with
something else. It's a sign of a real and developing thinker, rather
than someone who stays static with fixed ideas that they feel they
have to indoctrinate their readers with. Foucault is writing as much
for himself to work out his own ideas as for anyone else. I for one
enjoy participating in that process rather than being the object for
didactic sermonising which one finds with so many other philosophy
texts. He alludes to this aspect of his work on a number of occasions
eg in the introduction to The Use of Pleasures and also in Remarks on
Marx.
--
Clare
*******************************************************
Clare O'Farrell
email: c.ofarrell@xxxxxxxxxx
website: http://www.qut.edu.au/edu/cpol/foucault/
*******************************************************