>From: Asher Haig <ahaig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Gendered language and Re: Power and the Subject
>Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 17:03:32 -0500
>
>on 1/30/01 4:45 PM, Bryan C at kirk728@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
>Will you please take note of the pronouns that you use and not use "his" to
>reference a universal subject. Such gendered references are at the very
>least potentially exclusive and dangerous and it seems like a simple effort
>on the part of individuals to select other referents.
Sorry, I'm trying, old habits die hard.
>
> > I have only one remaining question that I cannot answer seem to
> > find an answer for. If agency is born of power relations and
> > absent power relations we are just a shell, how did power
> > relations arise in the first place. Surely no control and resistance
> > goes on between two rocks.
> >
>
>Questions of metaphysics so not seem to be so much relevant, but I think
>Foucault does provide an answer. Power relations have always (and will
>always) exist in some form. There is no outside to power. Power, however,
>transforms (is transformed and transforms others). Forms of power change.
But at some point there must have been a first organism capable of power
relations, whether an amoeba or a plankton or a fish, etc. Also
at one time there was no life, thus no power relations.
>
>Who says that we haven't? The presumption seems rather arrogant. And how
>are
>"we" different than other animals, fundamentally, anyway? Because we can
>kill more efficiently?
This was exactly the question I was asking. Do animals have power
relations? The answer seems to be yes. My point is that we lack
scientific or other evidence that animals have knowlage of the self.
>
>---
>
>Asher Haig ahaig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Dartmouth 2004
>
>
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