Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary power has been compared to Weber’s
description of the mechanisms of domination at play in capitalist
rationality. (Arpad Szakolczai, Max Weber and Michel Foucault: Parallel
Life-Works. London: Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought,
8. Routledge, 1998. This book is a somewhat existentialist attempt at
biographising theories. Half biographical, half theoretical, the
comparison between Weber and Foucault remains unconvincing. For a more
Nietzschean reading of the discourse on genealogies of reason, see also
David Owen, Maturity and Modernity: Nietzsche, Weber, Foucault and the
Ambivalence of Reason. London: Routledge, 1994)
The main point of difference Foucault claims with respect to Weber is that he is not working through ideal types, nor writing a history of rationalisation per se, with any ‘anthropological’ invariable. Foucault’s genealogies take rationalities as the operative framework of discursive practices. (see M. Foucault, ‘Questions of method’ in G. Burchell (ed.), The Foucault effect: Studies in Governmentality, Hertfordshire: Harvester Press, 1991, p.79)
"No given form of rationality is actually reason. […] I do not speak of the point at which reason became instrumental. At present, for example, I am studying the problem of techniques of the self in Greek and Roman antiquity; how man, human life, and the self were all objects of a certain number of tekhnai that, with their exacting rationality, could well be compared to any technique of production. " (M. Foucault, ‘Structuralism and Post-structuralism’ in Essential Works: Aesthetics, 2000, p. 442)
bradley nitins wrote:
The main point of difference Foucault claims with respect to Weber is that he is not working through ideal types, nor writing a history of rationalisation per se, with any ‘anthropological’ invariable. Foucault’s genealogies take rationalities as the operative framework of discursive practices. (see M. Foucault, ‘Questions of method’ in G. Burchell (ed.), The Foucault effect: Studies in Governmentality, Hertfordshire: Harvester Press, 1991, p.79)
"No given form of rationality is actually reason. […] I do not speak of the point at which reason became instrumental. At present, for example, I am studying the problem of techniques of the self in Greek and Roman antiquity; how man, human life, and the self were all objects of a certain number of tekhnai that, with their exacting rationality, could well be compared to any technique of production. " (M. Foucault, ‘Structuralism and Post-structuralism’ in Essential Works: Aesthetics, 2000, p. 442)
bradley nitins wrote:
It seems to me that just as the intellectual history of the 19th century can be distilled down to two seminal names, Marx and Nietzsche, that of the 20th C is encapsulated in the names Weber and Foucault. The intimate connections between them are increasingly being made clear by a number of scholarly works and articles. The consensus being that both shared a concern for the inscription of power upon the modern body. But is this not the result of simply concentrating upon two of the most popular works of these thinkers, that of the _Protestant Ethic_ and _Discipline and Punish_ respectively? What if we broaden our perspective to encompass their entire oeuvre? What consonances do we find now? Perhaps now it is embodied in their historical analysis of the social production types of modern rationality? This seems rather clear in reference to Weber, but cloudier when applied to Foucault, especially in regards to his earlier works. Can we see this concern binding together _Madness and Civilization_ , _The Order of Things_ and _Discipline and Punish_? What do the list members think? Is the analysis of a historical episteme in _Order of Things_ centered on a form of discriminating judgement, of the disappearance of a world of undifferentiated similitude and its replacement by a world founded in the anxious need for rigorous analysis, a prefiguring- on an archeological level, that is, on the level of formations of discourse- what _Discipline and Punish_ does on a genealogical level, on the level of material practices? Can the common dominator for both historical accounts be simply reduced to a concern for elucidating modern forms of rationality? Or do list members see another binding thread here? What, in the list members opinions, are the best scholarly works treating the convergences [or for that matter divergences] between _Order of Things_ and _Discipline and Punish_? I look forward to your responses.
best
bradley
"Of all writings I love only those which the writer writeth with his blood. Write in blood, and thou shalt learn that blood is spirit"
Nietzsche. "Thus Spake Zarathustra".
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