Re: unconscious of knowledge

<html><div style='background-color:'><PRE style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 1in; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Stuart and Jiviko  <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></PRE>
Although I think my understanding of what we are discussing here is fairly close to what Stuart is saying but I still would like to add few things to see what you all think of it. <o:p></o:p>
I think by ?positive unconscious of knowledge? Foucault is trying to arrive at the necessary conditions (the form of rationality), which constitute knowledge and discourse. This is fairly Kantian. But there are two important distinctions. These necessary conditions are historical and not transcendental. This notion of historical necessity is very crucial in Foucault although the one much less commented upon. Second Foucault, as Stuart has said in his previous mails, is not doing epistemology, he is doing historical ontology. In Foucault the ways of knowing and being cannot be separated in the manner as to make distinction between ontology and epistemology possible. The labour one goes through in order to know also transforms him/her for example. <o:p></o:p>
Furthermore the main difference with Kant is a realization in Foucault that we cannot possibly know all the conditions that have made us what we are i.e. our historical limits, so Foucault limits his study to what he calls practical systems. Practical is here meant in strictly Kantian sense of all that involves freedom. This is because according to Foucault all practical systems involve freedom aspect. Practical systems consists of ?what we do and the way we do? (and this include what we say and the way we say, i.e. discourse) and these involve three relations that form the corner stones of Foucauldian ontology i.e. ?relations of control over things? (knowledge), ?relations of action upon others? (power) and finally ?relations with oneself?. According to Foucault all practical systems have two aspects viz. the form of rationality that organize our ways of doing (and saying) things (which Foucault say ?might be called the technological aspect? of practical systems) and the freedom with which we act within practical systems (this is termed by Foucault as strategic side of practical systems) [Above is based on my reading of What is Enlightenment as published in Foucault Reader beside other sources]. <o:p></o:p>
 In this context What Foucault is doing in The Order of Things is to discover the ?form of rationality? (and hence technological aspect) of certain discursive systems from renaissance to modern period although with strategic intent (and this explains his heralding of the death of subject etc at the end). And this sense, I think, Foucault was completely justified in describing his endeavour as a regional study. Foucault later conceded that he had confused his search for ?excavating? ?the form of rationality? with search for rules or paradigm or something like that: ?I confused it too much with systematicity, theoretical form, or something like a paradigm?. Now he thinks what he was actually aiming in The Order of Things was to discover: <o:p></o:p>
?what governs statements, and the way in which they govern each other so as to constitute a set of proposition which are scientifically acceptable, and hence capable of being verified or falsified by scientific procedures. In short, there is a problem of the regime, the politics of the scientific statement. At this level it is not so much a matter of knowing what external power imposes itself on science, as of what effects of power circulate among scientific statements, what constitutes, as it were, their internal regime of power, and how and why at certain moments that regime undergoes a global modification? (Truth and Power an interview as published in Power Knowledge pp. 112-113). I think ?global modification? here means total transformation, i.e. a transformation not within a regime, but transformation from one regime to another.<o:p></o:p>
 <o:p></o:p>
In this context I would like to take issue with the following statement by Stuart <o:p></o:p>
?This level of knowledge - savoir - can be thought of as unconscious because<o:p></o:p>
it is not articulated explicitly, consciously, by those that utilise it.<o:p></o:p>
Rather, it is what allows, that is the condition of possibility, for what<o:p></o:p>
might be seen as 'conscious' knowledge, that is, connaissance?. <o:p></o:p>
Now Foucault defines ?savior? as ?the process through which the subject finds itself modified by what he knows, or rather by the labour performed in order to know. It is what permits the modification of the subject and the construction of the object? (Remarks On Marx pp. 69-70). While ?Connaissance? is defined by Foucault as ?the process which permits the multiplication of knowable objects, the development of their intelligibility, the understanding of their rationality, while the subject doing the investigation remains the same? (ibid. p. 70).   <o:p></o:p>
Now if my above analysis about What Foucault is doing in The Order of Things is correct, i.e. if it is correct that here he is mainly concerned with the technological aspect of certain discursive systems, I would think quite contrary to Stuart that what Foucault is mainly concerned with here is not savior but with Connaissance, i.e. to say the level of knowledge at which Foucault investigates ?positive unconscious of knowledge? is not savior but Connaissance. Foucault, I think explicitly states this regarding the level of his analysis (although I am not talking about the strategic intent of his work here). After saying that the object of his analysis is not to arrive at ?complete and definitive account of what constitutes our historical limits? and after declaring that the level of his analysis is rather ?practical systems? he goes on to add that: <o:p></o:p>
? Here (i.e. at the level of practical systems) we are taking as a homogenous domain of reference not the representations that men give of themselves, not the conditions that determine them without their knowledge, but rather what they do and the way they do? (Foucault Reader p. 48).  <o:p></o:p>
I think Stuart is right about the use of unconscious and we might accept better alternative suggested by Veyne i.e. preconceptual.  <o:p></o:p>
Well I can be terribly wrong here so please help. <o:p></o:p>
regards<o:p></o:p>
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