I doubt however Foucault would approve of the
use of the body as a weapon loaded with plasique.
Comments?
Wm king
At least in this he would not have, I am sure. He was a staunch pro Israeli
beyond any reasonable limit. In this he resembles Habermas (a philosopher
who teaches us to transcend our context but himself has never able to do
the same!). Eribon somewhere quotes him saying that he cannot even stand the
thought of opposing a Jew! Simple as that. It is also true that in his last
years Foucault increasingly became disillusioned with the idea of militancy
on the whole and he came to include it in the general thematic of his last
researches on racism and its connection to 'thirst for blood' and its
relation to certain type of fascism, 'the fascism in us all'. I was not
claiming what Foucault would have said in such and such a matter. Who cares
what Foucault would have said (or not for that matter)!. I am only saying
that Foucault was a strategician and tactician and not a moralist (in the
worst sense of the word)["To be a philosopher is to make a diagnosis of
present possibilities and to draw up a strategic map-with the secret hope of
influencing the choice of combats). Paul Veyne quotse him as saying around
1979 that:
"I am going to describe certain aspects of the contemporary world and its
governmentality; this course will not tell you what you should do or what
you have to fight against, but it will give you a map; thus it will tell
you: if you want to attack in such and such direction, well, here there is a
knot of resistance and there a possible passage"
And also:
"As for me, I do not see, at least for now, what criteria would allow one to
decide what one should fight against, except perhaps aesthetic criteria".
And this can be supplemented by an episode and 'strange' comments quoted by
Paul Veyne from around 1982-83. Curiously enough they are about the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict:
"In 1982 or 1983, in Foucault's apartment, we were watching a televised
report on the Palestinian - Israeli conflict; at one point one of the
combatants (which side he was on it utterly unimportant) was invited to
speak. Now this man spoke in terms quite different from the ones ordinarily
encountered in political discussions: "I know only one thing", this partisan
said, "I want to win back the lands of my forefathers. This is what I have
wanted since my teens; I don't know where this passion comes from, but there
it is". "There we have it at last", Foucault said to me, "everything has
been said, there's nothing more to say"
Foucault never abandoned the idea of resistance, and his philosophy, as a
philosophy of thought is nothing but resistance. To use Foucault to prove
(through worst kind of moralisation, i would say shameless moralisation) the
futility of resistance by invoking the idea of the sanctity of human life is
pity! I think Foucault was right when he said the people had not read the
last chapter of his Will to knowledge.
Regards
ali
On Sat, 20 Apr 2002, Ali Rizvi wrote:
>
> "When it comes as an expression of a nationality that has neither
> independence nor state structures and demand them, terrorism is
ultimately
> accepted: Jewish terrorism before the creation of the state of Israel,
> Palestinaian terrorism, Irish terrorism, also; even if one is hostile to
one
> or another of these types of action, the very principle of terrorism is
not
> fundamentally impugned. By contrast, what is funamentally impugned is a
> terrorist movement in which one speaks in the name of a class or
political
> group or avent garde or marginal group, saying "I am rebelling . . . I am
> threatening to kill someone in order to gain one or another goal" (From
an
> interview from 1977 quoted in Miller's Passion of Michel Foucault p. 449
> n43).
>
> As Miller notes it shows essentially that Foucault's later opposition to
> terrorism was tactical and not moral. To me passages like this show that
> Foucault's relation to the problem of terrorism is more complex than is
> normally being assumed these days.
>
> It seems to me that there is a whole movement going on to discredit the
very
> concept of resistence. I recall the quotes posted here right after Sept
11,
> which have left me musing ever since.
>
> regards
> ali
>
>
>
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