Hi Kevin,
Thank you for the long reply, when I meant to question your "thesis" I meant
the thesis of your one post not the broader work that it forms but a part
of. I would never want to question the "significance" of someone's work
that I haven't read. But you give a lengthy reply that does explain more
your interest in power and why you are raising these specific issues.
But.
I still think in a philosophical sense the question of the "subject" is
central. The three "matrixs of experience" were defined as three related
modes of interpreting the formation of subjects, and so you are absolutely
right to prioritize them, and then within them is is worth problemtaizing
power, but that still entails that Foucault's project is a sustained attempt
to find a way out of the modern paradigm of subjectivty.
Foucault defines this well:
"Currently, when on does history - the history of ideas, of knowlegde, or
simply history - one sticks to this subject of knowledge, to this subject of
representation as the point of origin from whoch knowledge is possible and
truth appears. It would be interesting to try to see how a subject came to
be constituted that is not definitively given, that is not the thing on the
basis of which truthhappens to history - rather, a subject that constitutes
itself within history and is constantly established and reestablished by
history. It is towards that radical critique of the human subject by
history that we should direct our efforts." (Truth and Juridical Forms"
Later in U/P this is part of the claim that he is studying the
problematization of "being." If we link this to others then we can say that
Foucualt agrees with Habermas that the "philosophy of the subject is
exhausted" and that we must move beyond "subject-centred reason"
(Philosophical Discourse of Modernity) and with Gadamer that subjectivity is
a "distorting mirror."
I know there may be some confusion because Foucault suggested that "ethics"
was about "the subject" but really all three axes are about subjectivity in
one form or another. The early works look to situate the production of
knowledge/truth about the "mad subject" or the "healthly subject" in B/C and
in OT the living, labouring and speaking subjects. Later, knowledge/power
is developed to interpretation the constitution of the delinquent subject
and sexual subject, and finally, U/P beyond interprets the desiring subject.
Like I said in the earlier post, knowledge, power and ethics are the
structures he builds to study the historical formation of possible
experiences of subjectivity and are not ends in themselves. What you call
the "space" constituted by these three axes is "filled in" by the production
of a historical form of "subjectivity." Foucault is not interested in just
"experience" but the experience of subjectivity - that experience is
developed by discursive structures that posit the "subject" as an object for
knowledge/truth; by power structures that posit "the subject" in normative
relations and ethics which forms the basis for someone to posit himself as a
"subject" of ethical action.
So, I think there is philosophical warrant to say that the primary question
Foucault raised was how to ground "subjectivity" in historical practices and
not in a transcendental "self-consciousness" and that what you call the
"foucault problematic" is the "grammar" that he developed to develop a
post-metaphyscial definition of subjectivty. I don't think we are
necessarily talking at cross purposes on this issue, I am simply suggesting
that the foundation to what you call "foucault's problematic" is the
question he shares with others about the problem of subjectivity.
I don't see this altering your ideas about power but situating them in a
broader philosophical dialogue in which Foucault is such an important member
and a dialogue about "the subject" in which all of us participate in when we
try to understand Foucault or apply him to do work of our own.
Myself, I am more interested in the "ethics" axis and using it to study how
the Jacobins of the French Revolution problematized the self and constituted
in ascetic practice an experience of being a revolutionary and "true
republican." I think this raises larger questions about the constittion of
civics and possibilities of experience ourselves as "political subjects."
Cheers,
Brodie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin Turner" <k_turner@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 4:11 PM
Subject: Re: critique or criticism?
> Hi Brodie,
>
>
>
> Thanks for your interesting, and somewhat challenging, set of questions;
> challenging in the sense that they go to the hart of what I am attempting
> to
> do.
>
>
>
> 1. I agree that "one" of the central concerns Foucault was addressing was
> the subject; however, I have a problem with positing the subject as being
> "the" central concern of Foucault's critical project. To present the
> subject
> as being Foucault's central concern is as problematic as positing either
> knowledge/truth or power/government as being "the" central question
> Foucault
> was addressing. Rather, I think Foucault project is best situated within
> the
> space constituted by these three axes: our relations to knowledge and to
> truth; our relations to rules and to obligations; our relations to others
> and to ourselves. Such a triangle constitutes what Foucault termed the
> "matrix of experience" (see 'Preface to The History of Sexuality, Volume
> Two'), and what I refer to in my thesis as "Foucault's problematic."
>
>
>
> 2. I may have given the impression that the question concerning power in
> Foucault's early writings was all my thesis was about. If this was the
> case,
> then your concerns would, I think, be fully justified. However, the thesis
> is doing more than this; in fact the "bringing to the fore the
> conceptualization of power used in MC" only constitutes one chapter of the
> thesis.
>
>
>
> 3. The reason I want to address the model of power operative in MC and BC,
> the rationale of bringing the model of power to the fore, is precisely to
> raise the question of why Foucault came to see such a negative model of
> power as being inadequate for the kind of analyses he is undertaking:
> vis-à-vis knowledge and the subject. That is to say, it is to not simply
> accept that the repressive model of power was rejected, but to actually
> look
> at why it was rejected, and to do this by looking at how such a model was
> used in these texts. In addition, it is also to note that Foucault's later
> reformulations of power, first as "pouvoir," then as government, can be
> seen
> in embryonic form in these "early writings."
>
>
>
> 4. The reason for doing this is that what my thesis is actually about is
> the
> emergence of the notion of government in Foucault's thought. And thus what
> I
> am interested in is noting the conditions of possibility for the emergence
> of the notion of government in Foucault's writings from the 1960's and
> early-to-mid 1970s.
>
>
>
> 5. As I have already stated, the three genealogical axes that constitute
> what I call Foucault's problematic cannot be separated from each other;
> neither in Foucault's analysis of historically specific forms of
> experience
> themselves, nor in a study of these analyses, To specify one of the three
> axes of Foucault's problematic as being the primary or organising
> principle
> of that problematic would be to miss the point. To specify one as being
> the
> focus of a particular enquiry is a different matter. Firstly, what I am
> doing here, since I am interested in charting the emergence of the notion
> of
> government in Foucault's thought, and since government is the term
> Foucault
> substituted for power in his later writings, is to "focus" on the question
> concerning power; which is neither to address that question "exclusively"
> nor to treat it "exhaustively." Secondly, of the three axes that form
> Foucault's problematic, the axis concerning power is, perhaps, the most
> misunderstood, and, accordingly, the one that most warrants further
> investigation. Thirdly, and here lies the crux of the issues, of the three
> axes that form the matrix of experience that constitutes what I am calling
> Foucault's problematic, the most problematic for Foucault, or so I argue,
> was the question concerning our relations to rules and obligations, to
> norms
> and normalisations, in short, to the question pertaining to power.
>
>
>
> the notion of repression is.more insidious.I myself have had much trouble
> in
> freeing myself of it insofar as it does indeed appear to correspond so
> well
> with a whole range of phenomena that belong among the effects of power
> (P/K:
> 119).
>
>
>
> Whilst it may be the case that there were formations, transformations and
> reformulations, that there were revisions and reversions regarding the
> question concerning knowledge and the question concerning self, I want to
> argue that the "motor," as it were, for these displacements, that the
> "engine" that drove the curve of Foucault's thought, was, in fact, the
> question concerning power. This is not to posit power as being "the"
> central
> question Foucault was addressing, but simply to note that is was perhaps
> the
> most problematic or troubling axes for Foucault: it was, after all, the
> problematisation of the notion of power, or perhaps of the absence of such
> a
> notion of power, in Foucault's early work that lead to his project of the
> early-to-mid 1970s; and it was aging the problematisations of the notion
> of
> power, specifically with reference to the notion of resistance, which
> marked
> a shift in emphasis form a "genealogy of moral" (an analysis of the
> political technology of individuals) to a genealogy of ethics (an analysis
> of the culture of the self, of a concern of care of the self).
>
>
>
> OK. I have gone on longer than I intended to, but I hope the above
> addresses
> some of your concerns vis-à-vis the "significance" of my thesis.
>
>
>
> Regards - Kevin.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: " Richards" <brodie_richards@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 7:05 AM
> Subject: Re: critique or criticism?
>
>
>> If we follow Foucault's own production of quotes, then, we must add the
>> statement "it is not power, but the subject, which is the general theme
>> of
>> my research." (Subject and Power.) This is rather evident, but it is
>> worth
>> repeating, that Foucault main task was always to participate in much a
> wider
>> philosophical project which was attempting to develop a way out of the
>> philosophical paradigm of the "constitutive subject."
>>
>> The most pertinent question seems to me to be how does Foucault interpret
>> the constitution of the "mad subject" and how do the different shifts and
>> reevaluations throughout his life change that interpretation. The
>> concept
>> of power is important to Foucault's concept of subjectivity and how
>> subjectivity is constituted by practice, but it seems to me that we have
>> a
>> tendency of emphasizing the concept of power and losing the focal point
> that
>> is Foucault's dialogue with the philosophical discourse that is
>> problematizing the nature of subjectivity. Discourse, power, ethics are
> the
>> central parts to Foucault's grammar about subjectivity, but if we choose
> to
>> only analyse the concept of power itself, then all we gain from Foucault
> is
>> a novel idea about power but we don't know what work it can do. How many
>> studies can we point to that suggest they are "using" his concept of
> power,
>> but fail to understand its link with the philosophical question of the
>> subject.
>>
>> Kevin, if we agree that the question of the subject is the central
> question
>> that Foucault asks, in all his work, how is our understanding of his
>> approach to that question enhanced by "trying to bring to the fore" a
>> conceptualization of power used in M/C but not theorized? If we say that
> he
>> uses a "repressive" notion of power in M/C, how does that impact the way
> we
>> relate to his discussion of the constitution of the "mad subject"? Is the
>> "early work" devalued by your thesis that he is using a notion of power
> that
>> he later rejects?
>>
>> I think the importance of the "early work" is to watch Foucault situate
>> subjectivity in discourse and not consciousness. Yes, he is using a
> notion
>> of power that he would later rework to explain how language and practice
>> form a productive relation with one another, but that was a step built on
>> the initial theorization that our experience of ourselves as subjects is
> an
>> experience constituted by practice, specifically discursive practices.
> What
>> I am having trouble following is the "significance" of your thesis about
> the
>> "early work" and power for our understanding of Foucualt. What
> possibility
>> of understanding about his project does it open up?
>>
>> Cheers, Brodie
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
> Version: 7.0.289 / Virus Database: 265.4.7 - Release Date: 07/12/2004
>
Thank you for the long reply, when I meant to question your "thesis" I meant
the thesis of your one post not the broader work that it forms but a part
of. I would never want to question the "significance" of someone's work
that I haven't read. But you give a lengthy reply that does explain more
your interest in power and why you are raising these specific issues.
But.
I still think in a philosophical sense the question of the "subject" is
central. The three "matrixs of experience" were defined as three related
modes of interpreting the formation of subjects, and so you are absolutely
right to prioritize them, and then within them is is worth problemtaizing
power, but that still entails that Foucault's project is a sustained attempt
to find a way out of the modern paradigm of subjectivty.
Foucault defines this well:
"Currently, when on does history - the history of ideas, of knowlegde, or
simply history - one sticks to this subject of knowledge, to this subject of
representation as the point of origin from whoch knowledge is possible and
truth appears. It would be interesting to try to see how a subject came to
be constituted that is not definitively given, that is not the thing on the
basis of which truthhappens to history - rather, a subject that constitutes
itself within history and is constantly established and reestablished by
history. It is towards that radical critique of the human subject by
history that we should direct our efforts." (Truth and Juridical Forms"
Later in U/P this is part of the claim that he is studying the
problematization of "being." If we link this to others then we can say that
Foucualt agrees with Habermas that the "philosophy of the subject is
exhausted" and that we must move beyond "subject-centred reason"
(Philosophical Discourse of Modernity) and with Gadamer that subjectivity is
a "distorting mirror."
I know there may be some confusion because Foucault suggested that "ethics"
was about "the subject" but really all three axes are about subjectivity in
one form or another. The early works look to situate the production of
knowledge/truth about the "mad subject" or the "healthly subject" in B/C and
in OT the living, labouring and speaking subjects. Later, knowledge/power
is developed to interpretation the constitution of the delinquent subject
and sexual subject, and finally, U/P beyond interprets the desiring subject.
Like I said in the earlier post, knowledge, power and ethics are the
structures he builds to study the historical formation of possible
experiences of subjectivity and are not ends in themselves. What you call
the "space" constituted by these three axes is "filled in" by the production
of a historical form of "subjectivity." Foucault is not interested in just
"experience" but the experience of subjectivity - that experience is
developed by discursive structures that posit the "subject" as an object for
knowledge/truth; by power structures that posit "the subject" in normative
relations and ethics which forms the basis for someone to posit himself as a
"subject" of ethical action.
So, I think there is philosophical warrant to say that the primary question
Foucault raised was how to ground "subjectivity" in historical practices and
not in a transcendental "self-consciousness" and that what you call the
"foucault problematic" is the "grammar" that he developed to develop a
post-metaphyscial definition of subjectivty. I don't think we are
necessarily talking at cross purposes on this issue, I am simply suggesting
that the foundation to what you call "foucault's problematic" is the
question he shares with others about the problem of subjectivity.
I don't see this altering your ideas about power but situating them in a
broader philosophical dialogue in which Foucault is such an important member
and a dialogue about "the subject" in which all of us participate in when we
try to understand Foucault or apply him to do work of our own.
Myself, I am more interested in the "ethics" axis and using it to study how
the Jacobins of the French Revolution problematized the self and constituted
in ascetic practice an experience of being a revolutionary and "true
republican." I think this raises larger questions about the constittion of
civics and possibilities of experience ourselves as "political subjects."
Cheers,
Brodie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin Turner" <k_turner@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 4:11 PM
Subject: Re: critique or criticism?
> Hi Brodie,
>
>
>
> Thanks for your interesting, and somewhat challenging, set of questions;
> challenging in the sense that they go to the hart of what I am attempting
> to
> do.
>
>
>
> 1. I agree that "one" of the central concerns Foucault was addressing was
> the subject; however, I have a problem with positing the subject as being
> "the" central concern of Foucault's critical project. To present the
> subject
> as being Foucault's central concern is as problematic as positing either
> knowledge/truth or power/government as being "the" central question
> Foucault
> was addressing. Rather, I think Foucault project is best situated within
> the
> space constituted by these three axes: our relations to knowledge and to
> truth; our relations to rules and to obligations; our relations to others
> and to ourselves. Such a triangle constitutes what Foucault termed the
> "matrix of experience" (see 'Preface to The History of Sexuality, Volume
> Two'), and what I refer to in my thesis as "Foucault's problematic."
>
>
>
> 2. I may have given the impression that the question concerning power in
> Foucault's early writings was all my thesis was about. If this was the
> case,
> then your concerns would, I think, be fully justified. However, the thesis
> is doing more than this; in fact the "bringing to the fore the
> conceptualization of power used in MC" only constitutes one chapter of the
> thesis.
>
>
>
> 3. The reason I want to address the model of power operative in MC and BC,
> the rationale of bringing the model of power to the fore, is precisely to
> raise the question of why Foucault came to see such a negative model of
> power as being inadequate for the kind of analyses he is undertaking:
> vis-à-vis knowledge and the subject. That is to say, it is to not simply
> accept that the repressive model of power was rejected, but to actually
> look
> at why it was rejected, and to do this by looking at how such a model was
> used in these texts. In addition, it is also to note that Foucault's later
> reformulations of power, first as "pouvoir," then as government, can be
> seen
> in embryonic form in these "early writings."
>
>
>
> 4. The reason for doing this is that what my thesis is actually about is
> the
> emergence of the notion of government in Foucault's thought. And thus what
> I
> am interested in is noting the conditions of possibility for the emergence
> of the notion of government in Foucault's writings from the 1960's and
> early-to-mid 1970s.
>
>
>
> 5. As I have already stated, the three genealogical axes that constitute
> what I call Foucault's problematic cannot be separated from each other;
> neither in Foucault's analysis of historically specific forms of
> experience
> themselves, nor in a study of these analyses, To specify one of the three
> axes of Foucault's problematic as being the primary or organising
> principle
> of that problematic would be to miss the point. To specify one as being
> the
> focus of a particular enquiry is a different matter. Firstly, what I am
> doing here, since I am interested in charting the emergence of the notion
> of
> government in Foucault's thought, and since government is the term
> Foucault
> substituted for power in his later writings, is to "focus" on the question
> concerning power; which is neither to address that question "exclusively"
> nor to treat it "exhaustively." Secondly, of the three axes that form
> Foucault's problematic, the axis concerning power is, perhaps, the most
> misunderstood, and, accordingly, the one that most warrants further
> investigation. Thirdly, and here lies the crux of the issues, of the three
> axes that form the matrix of experience that constitutes what I am calling
> Foucault's problematic, the most problematic for Foucault, or so I argue,
> was the question concerning our relations to rules and obligations, to
> norms
> and normalisations, in short, to the question pertaining to power.
>
>
>
> the notion of repression is.more insidious.I myself have had much trouble
> in
> freeing myself of it insofar as it does indeed appear to correspond so
> well
> with a whole range of phenomena that belong among the effects of power
> (P/K:
> 119).
>
>
>
> Whilst it may be the case that there were formations, transformations and
> reformulations, that there were revisions and reversions regarding the
> question concerning knowledge and the question concerning self, I want to
> argue that the "motor," as it were, for these displacements, that the
> "engine" that drove the curve of Foucault's thought, was, in fact, the
> question concerning power. This is not to posit power as being "the"
> central
> question Foucault was addressing, but simply to note that is was perhaps
> the
> most problematic or troubling axes for Foucault: it was, after all, the
> problematisation of the notion of power, or perhaps of the absence of such
> a
> notion of power, in Foucault's early work that lead to his project of the
> early-to-mid 1970s; and it was aging the problematisations of the notion
> of
> power, specifically with reference to the notion of resistance, which
> marked
> a shift in emphasis form a "genealogy of moral" (an analysis of the
> political technology of individuals) to a genealogy of ethics (an analysis
> of the culture of the self, of a concern of care of the self).
>
>
>
> OK. I have gone on longer than I intended to, but I hope the above
> addresses
> some of your concerns vis-à-vis the "significance" of my thesis.
>
>
>
> Regards - Kevin.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: " Richards" <brodie_richards@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 7:05 AM
> Subject: Re: critique or criticism?
>
>
>> If we follow Foucault's own production of quotes, then, we must add the
>> statement "it is not power, but the subject, which is the general theme
>> of
>> my research." (Subject and Power.) This is rather evident, but it is
>> worth
>> repeating, that Foucault main task was always to participate in much a
> wider
>> philosophical project which was attempting to develop a way out of the
>> philosophical paradigm of the "constitutive subject."
>>
>> The most pertinent question seems to me to be how does Foucault interpret
>> the constitution of the "mad subject" and how do the different shifts and
>> reevaluations throughout his life change that interpretation. The
>> concept
>> of power is important to Foucault's concept of subjectivity and how
>> subjectivity is constituted by practice, but it seems to me that we have
>> a
>> tendency of emphasizing the concept of power and losing the focal point
> that
>> is Foucault's dialogue with the philosophical discourse that is
>> problematizing the nature of subjectivity. Discourse, power, ethics are
> the
>> central parts to Foucault's grammar about subjectivity, but if we choose
> to
>> only analyse the concept of power itself, then all we gain from Foucault
> is
>> a novel idea about power but we don't know what work it can do. How many
>> studies can we point to that suggest they are "using" his concept of
> power,
>> but fail to understand its link with the philosophical question of the
>> subject.
>>
>> Kevin, if we agree that the question of the subject is the central
> question
>> that Foucault asks, in all his work, how is our understanding of his
>> approach to that question enhanced by "trying to bring to the fore" a
>> conceptualization of power used in M/C but not theorized? If we say that
> he
>> uses a "repressive" notion of power in M/C, how does that impact the way
> we
>> relate to his discussion of the constitution of the "mad subject"? Is the
>> "early work" devalued by your thesis that he is using a notion of power
> that
>> he later rejects?
>>
>> I think the importance of the "early work" is to watch Foucault situate
>> subjectivity in discourse and not consciousness. Yes, he is using a
> notion
>> of power that he would later rework to explain how language and practice
>> form a productive relation with one another, but that was a step built on
>> the initial theorization that our experience of ourselves as subjects is
> an
>> experience constituted by practice, specifically discursive practices.
> What
>> I am having trouble following is the "significance" of your thesis about
> the
>> "early work" and power for our understanding of Foucualt. What
> possibility
>> of understanding about his project does it open up?
>>
>> Cheers, Brodie
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
> Version: 7.0.289 / Virus Database: 265.4.7 - Release Date: 07/12/2004
>