Stuart
I entirely share your sentiments and share others' appreciation of your
reportage and analysis of the new materials.
I saw some sensible emails on this list recently about 'governmentality'
studies and whether there was a 'governmentality school'. One can be more or less
enthusiastic about
the fruitfulness (and politics) of particular approaches, initaitives and
attempted codifications, and the accuracy of some of the critical discussion. But
it seems to me, given the as yet still fragmentary published sources, that
most people appear to have understood fairly well what the concept is about and
what F does with it. Perhaps the concept has some kind of inherent
accessibiity and robustness to it. The final full availability of sources will certainly
act as a major new stimulus.
Histoire de la Folie I think was a slightly different case, where the
continuing indolence of the publishers in failing to organise a full translation is
hard to explain or excuse. And it happened to be chosen as a target by a series
of scholarly demolition artists who hadn't read the (always available) 1961
original or in some cases even the abridged translation.
Biblio bits:
The editor of the 78 and 79 volumes is Michel Senellart, author of Les arts
de gouverner (Seuil 1995) - very interesting though with a peculiar
relationship to the Foucault material.
In French on the 82 lectures there is an interesting set of conference papers
in Foucault et la philosophie antique (Eds Gros and Levy Kime, 2003).
There are papers on the 76 lectures in Cités 2000:2.(PUF)
Colin
In a message dated 13/03/04 18:52:45 GMT Standard Time,
stuartelden@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> Subj: RE: l'hermeneutique du sujet
> Date: 13/03/04 18:52:45 GMT Standard Time
> From: stuartelden@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Reply-to: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent from the Internet
>
>
>
> Colin, and others (brief replies to Margot and David below)
>
> Your introduction to The Foucault Effect throws up all sorts of links and
> questions that I hope the course publications will allow me to follow through.
> Although that book (which I've had for some time, and is a very useful
> source) has some remarkable contributions, I don't think that the majority of the
> governmentality literature has that nuanced sense of the issues, or at least,
> not what Foucault himself did with them.
>
> I'm struck by the relation of this issue to your piece on Histoire de la
> folie that appeared back in 1990. The claim that you made there - that the
> reception of Foucault's Madness and Civilisation was necessarily limited because
> this was only an abridgment of the full original text, and that some key
> claims in critiques were untenable - was inspirational for me. (I hope I'm not
> reducing your argument to a caricature here). It suggested to me/confirmed that
> serious scholarship on Foucault had to read him in the original - both
> because so much important material was unavailable in English, and because there
> were nuances that could be only picked up in French (and, on occasion, some
> errors - as you note in a recent post). Histoire de la folie was the first
> serious book I read through in French, and I've been trying to follow this
> principle since. The reading of the histories of madness in the last chapter of my
> Mapping the Present attempts to show what can be gleaned from the full text in
> relation to the issues I was concerned with; the second half of that chapter
> relates the Rio lectures to Discipline and Punish (a theme I continue in the
> piece you cited).
>
> Just as in this case, it strikes me that the full lectures will enrich and
> supplement the bits of the courses we do have, the summaries, and the material
> you and others have written. I remember a piece by Pasquale Pasquino on the
> 1976 lectures published some time back in Economy and Society; and the Stoler
> book developing ideas from this course. Both very useful and productive, but
> they still didn't (for me, at least) fully anticipate what was in the course
> itself. I suspect that the same will be true with the other courses.
>
> I'm interested that you've seen the proofs, and though it might be a bit
> disappointing (or at least familiar) to you, that is to you! What I mean by this
> is that you're hardly the standard user of the governmentality literature.
> Perhaps this further clarifies...
>
> On the other questions recently:-
>
> On race in Foucault, there is a review article by John Marks of the course
> (Theory and Society I think, or maybe Theory, Culture and Society - can't
> remember, sorry); a piece by Warren Montag which appeared in MF et la medecine
> and in English in Pli: Warwick Journal of Philosophy No 13; at least one
> special journal issue in France (Cites, Vol II); the book series Lectures de Michel
> Foucault Vol I is devoted to this course; I wrote a piece in boundary 2, Vol
> 29; etc. I'm sure there's more. There's a panel at a forthcoming conference
> in Lancaster (UK) on the course too. Stoler has written more than just that
> book on these issues, I think the book Carnal Knowledge also has discussion.
>
> To David - lots of things to say about that. My review of that course for
> boundary 2 discussed the idea of the monster. If I get time, I will post a
> longer response tonight or tomorrow. But I am off to the US tomorrow and so am
> short of time. This is why I haven't had a chance to fully elaborate the race
> references, etc.
>
> It's a shame to be going just as the list is getting interesting again, but
> I will try to get to all the posts on my return.
>
> best wishes
>
> Stuart
>
>
Colin Gordon
Director, NHSIA Disease Management Systems Programme
Health Informatics Manager, Royal Brompton Hospital
Chair, British Medical informatics Society
http://www.bmis.org
07881 625146
colinngordon@xxxxxxx
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