A contribution on Foucault. by Toni Negri
francese: http://seminaire.samizdat.net/article.php3?id_article=15
inglese: http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpnegri14.htm
samedi 9 octobre 2004.
Seminar: Transformations of work and crisis of the political economy (provisional
title).
Douze séminaires d'octobre à juin 2004/5: 1 par mois. 2 pour les mois d'octobre,
mars et mai. Lieu: Université de Paris 1 Panthéon -Sorbonne 5, Place du Panthéon
75005, Paris Salle 216, 2ème étage de 19h30 à 21h30.
Coordination et animation du séminaire assurée par: A. Negri, A. Querrien, B.
Holmes, C. Vercellone, M. Lazzarato, P.Elicio, P.Dieuaide, R. Moneta.
Question 1: Are Foucault's analyses of actualité useful to understand the
movement of societies? In which fields does it seem to you it that they should be
renewed, readjusted, continued?
Answer 1: Foucault's work is a strange machine, it actually makes it impossible
to think of history as other than present history. Probably, a great deal of what
Foucault wrote (as Deleuze rightly underlined) should be rewritten today. What is
astonishing - and concerning -, is that he never ceases to seek, he makes
approximations, he deconstructs, he formulates hypotheses, he imagines, he makes
analogies and tells fables, he launches concepts, withdraws them or modifies
them. His is a thought of a formidable inventiveness. But this is not its
essence: I believe that his method is fundamental, because it enables him to
study and describe at the same time the movement from the past to the present and
that from the present to the future. It is a method of transition where the
present represents the center. Foucault is there, between the two, neither in the
past where he does archaeology, nor in the future whose image he sometimes
sketches - ""comme à la limite de la mer un visage sur le sable"" -. It is
starting from the present that it is possible to distinguish other times.
Foucault has often been reproached for the scientific legitimacy of his
periodizations: we I can understand the historians, but at the same time, I would
want to say that this is not a real problem: Foucault is where the questioning
lies, which always originates in his own time.
Historical analysis, with Foucault, thus becomes an action, knowledge of the past
becomes a genealogy, the future perspective becomes a dispositif. For those who
come from the militant Marxism of the 1960s (but not from the dogmatic and
caricatural traditions of the Second and Third International), Foucault's point
of view is obviously perceived as absolutely legitimate: it corresponds to the
perception of the event, of the struggles and of the joy of taking risks outside
of all necessity and pre-established teleology. In Foucault's thought, Marxism is
completely dismantled at the level of analysis of power relations and historical
teleology, of the refusal of historicism or of a certain positivism; but at the
same time, Marxism is also reinvented and remodelled on the perspective of the
movements and struggles, i.e. actually on the reality of the subjects of these
movements and struggles: because to know is to produce subjectivity. (...)
continues on http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpnegri14.htm)
francese: http://seminaire.samizdat.net/article.php3?id_article=15
inglese: http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpnegri14.htm
samedi 9 octobre 2004.
Seminar: Transformations of work and crisis of the political economy (provisional
title).
Douze séminaires d'octobre à juin 2004/5: 1 par mois. 2 pour les mois d'octobre,
mars et mai. Lieu: Université de Paris 1 Panthéon -Sorbonne 5, Place du Panthéon
75005, Paris Salle 216, 2ème étage de 19h30 à 21h30.
Coordination et animation du séminaire assurée par: A. Negri, A. Querrien, B.
Holmes, C. Vercellone, M. Lazzarato, P.Elicio, P.Dieuaide, R. Moneta.
Question 1: Are Foucault's analyses of actualité useful to understand the
movement of societies? In which fields does it seem to you it that they should be
renewed, readjusted, continued?
Answer 1: Foucault's work is a strange machine, it actually makes it impossible
to think of history as other than present history. Probably, a great deal of what
Foucault wrote (as Deleuze rightly underlined) should be rewritten today. What is
astonishing - and concerning -, is that he never ceases to seek, he makes
approximations, he deconstructs, he formulates hypotheses, he imagines, he makes
analogies and tells fables, he launches concepts, withdraws them or modifies
them. His is a thought of a formidable inventiveness. But this is not its
essence: I believe that his method is fundamental, because it enables him to
study and describe at the same time the movement from the past to the present and
that from the present to the future. It is a method of transition where the
present represents the center. Foucault is there, between the two, neither in the
past where he does archaeology, nor in the future whose image he sometimes
sketches - ""comme à la limite de la mer un visage sur le sable"" -. It is
starting from the present that it is possible to distinguish other times.
Foucault has often been reproached for the scientific legitimacy of his
periodizations: we I can understand the historians, but at the same time, I would
want to say that this is not a real problem: Foucault is where the questioning
lies, which always originates in his own time.
Historical analysis, with Foucault, thus becomes an action, knowledge of the past
becomes a genealogy, the future perspective becomes a dispositif. For those who
come from the militant Marxism of the 1960s (but not from the dogmatic and
caricatural traditions of the Second and Third International), Foucault's point
of view is obviously perceived as absolutely legitimate: it corresponds to the
perception of the event, of the struggles and of the joy of taking risks outside
of all necessity and pre-established teleology. In Foucault's thought, Marxism is
completely dismantled at the level of analysis of power relations and historical
teleology, of the refusal of historicism or of a certain positivism; but at the
same time, Marxism is also reinvented and remodelled on the perspective of the
movements and struggles, i.e. actually on the reality of the subjects of these
movements and struggles: because to know is to produce subjectivity. (...)
continues on http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpnegri14.htm)