I think the issues/approaches presented and described by Linda Graham bring up a very interesting problem or area of study. The mere fact that people rarely see Foucault as something that could be considered 'legitimate' I know with my slight experience, Foucault isn't really taken seriously. What made me interested in Foucault in the first place was from a series of lectures that I listen to eradically, Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition from the Teaching Company. In the lecture itself, there seemed be be a 'warning within' for Foucault and his body of work. The first attack or deligimation was through his homosexuality and its relation to his three-volume History of Sexuality, mainly pointing out the fact that Foucault seemed to focus remotely on male sexuality, which the lecturer accounted to his homosexuality. I haven't read his History of Sexuality, so I can't offer my own opinion. And also there was a through critique of his somewhat idosyncratic
reading of history and presenting it in/as a philosophy/psychoanalysis (sexuality, the clinic, the prison, madness, discourse itself) which makes interpreting and/or grouping Foucault difficult as he acts as a kind of ambiguous enigma, if undertaking such an action even matters.
Which also brings forth this whole 'post-modern' or 'post-structualist' taboo, I guess I'll call it? I know not what else it should be called. I think it would certainly be interesting to try and understand the academic alienation from thinkers such as Foucault and Barthes somewhat due to their somewhat liberation from convention and embrace of uncertainty. I can understand the slight problematization through the freedoms of interpretation, but if anything that should be more of an academic pursuit. Foucault read history as a philosopher/psychoanalyst; in doing so, he wasn't looking to simply analyze the past and perhaps present 'objectively' much like Max Weber did, but, instead, to perhaps provide/account for some insight into the future and the history of the present. Are we left with nothing but to indirectly cite Foucault or allude to his works because of this somewhat apparant academic stigma with which he has been regarded?
-Marc J. Beerline
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reading of history and presenting it in/as a philosophy/psychoanalysis (sexuality, the clinic, the prison, madness, discourse itself) which makes interpreting and/or grouping Foucault difficult as he acts as a kind of ambiguous enigma, if undertaking such an action even matters.
Which also brings forth this whole 'post-modern' or 'post-structualist' taboo, I guess I'll call it? I know not what else it should be called. I think it would certainly be interesting to try and understand the academic alienation from thinkers such as Foucault and Barthes somewhat due to their somewhat liberation from convention and embrace of uncertainty. I can understand the slight problematization through the freedoms of interpretation, but if anything that should be more of an academic pursuit. Foucault read history as a philosopher/psychoanalyst; in doing so, he wasn't looking to simply analyze the past and perhaps present 'objectively' much like Max Weber did, but, instead, to perhaps provide/account for some insight into the future and the history of the present. Are we left with nothing but to indirectly cite Foucault or allude to his works because of this somewhat apparant academic stigma with which he has been regarded?
-Marc J. Beerline
---------------------------------
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger?s low PC-to-Phone call rates.