[Foucault-L] Intro and Question

Hello, all, this is my first post although I have been lurking for quite
some time. My name is Beth Davies, and I live in Denver, Colorado, USA. I
have a number of interests, chief among them guerrilla warfare. I've also
begun doing work in popular culture. I earned my doctorate from University
of Toronto, specializing in comparative religious ethics.

As another new poster just said, I'm not strictly focused on Foucault. I
subscribed to the list because all too often I searched for something on the
web and the Google results took me to this list's archive. I think after I
read all the posts on reflexivity, I decided to subscribe.

I first read Foucault as an undergraduate in 1983. I was taking a class in
global politics and the Third World, and for my final paper, I read
Power/Knowledge and wrote a rather speculative (and immature!) piece on how
Foucault's ideas should alter the field of international relations and
development theory. I didn't really have any mature scholarship to refer
to, but I like to think that my ideas were prescient!

_Power/Knowledge_ just barely whetted my appetite, and I went on to read
_Madness and Civilization_, and the various volumes of _History of
Sexuality_ as they were released. Now it seems my research has led me back
into Foucauldian terrain. I'm not very surprised at seeing just how deeply
and permanently Foucault's ideas structured my way of thinking, and even
living.

Now for my question. This is a long shot, I know, since it is not specific
to Foucualt. In the DVD biography of Luis Bunuel, "A proposito de Bunuel",
one of the actors who worked with Bunuel tells the camera that Bunuel taught
everyone who worked with him not to fear the catastrophes of existence.

I am so intrigued by that concept, "catastrophes of existence." I have
found some references to the same concept in post-WWII American theology,
e.g. Reinhold Niebuhr. Does anyone else recognize the phrase?

Yours,
Beth Davies
bdavies@xxxxxxxxxxx
www.bethdavies.blogspot.com



Replies
Re: [Foucault-L] Freedom of Conscience., michael bibby
Re: [Foucault-L] Freedom of Conscience., Lionel Boxer
Re: [Foucault-L] Freedom of Conscience., bradley nitins
Partial thread listing: