Kaori
<Wasn’t the height
of the Habermas-Foucault debate in the 70’s, during the so-called ‘structuralist’
phase of Foucault’s thinking?
There was a lot of general debate around Habermas and the Frankfurt School
starting in the late 70s which remained highly topical into the 1980s. Foucault
started to dissociate himself from what the media termed 'structuralism' in
1967.
‘What is Enlightenment?’ was written, well, I don’t
known when it was written, but it was printed for the first time in 1984, so I had
always seen it as Foucault’s last say in situating his own work within the
academic field,
I don't agree that this article is about Foucault situating his work within the
'academic field' or that it forms some kind of definitive intellectual positioning
of himself as a European enlightenment thinker. I don't think he was particularly
interested in defining himself in this kind of way. As he says elsewhere it is not
a question of being 'for' or 'against' the Enlightenment - it is a question of a
historical analysis of a given set of ideas.
I think the bottom line is that Foucault was interested in demonstrating that
nothing in our culture, society or experience is fixed or self evident and he used
methods of intellectual argumentation and tools from his own cultural heritage
to put forward this position. He said on a few occasions that he expected his
own work to be superseded as well.
The methods of intellectual argumentation he used are not the sole property of
European Enlightenment thinkers - as those Enlightenment thinkers would like
us to believe incidentally - a convenient way of condemning everybody else to
silence and incoherence.
Clare
****************************************
Clare O'Farrell
email: c.ofarrell@xxxxxxxxxx
website: http://www.michel-foucault.com
****************************************
<Wasn’t the height
of the Habermas-Foucault debate in the 70’s, during the so-called ‘structuralist’
phase of Foucault’s thinking?
There was a lot of general debate around Habermas and the Frankfurt School
starting in the late 70s which remained highly topical into the 1980s. Foucault
started to dissociate himself from what the media termed 'structuralism' in
1967.
‘What is Enlightenment?’ was written, well, I don’t
known when it was written, but it was printed for the first time in 1984, so I had
always seen it as Foucault’s last say in situating his own work within the
academic field,
I don't agree that this article is about Foucault situating his work within the
'academic field' or that it forms some kind of definitive intellectual positioning
of himself as a European enlightenment thinker. I don't think he was particularly
interested in defining himself in this kind of way. As he says elsewhere it is not
a question of being 'for' or 'against' the Enlightenment - it is a question of a
historical analysis of a given set of ideas.
I think the bottom line is that Foucault was interested in demonstrating that
nothing in our culture, society or experience is fixed or self evident and he used
methods of intellectual argumentation and tools from his own cultural heritage
to put forward this position. He said on a few occasions that he expected his
own work to be superseded as well.
The methods of intellectual argumentation he used are not the sole property of
European Enlightenment thinkers - as those Enlightenment thinkers would like
us to believe incidentally - a convenient way of condemning everybody else to
silence and incoherence.
Clare
****************************************
Clare O'Farrell
email: c.ofarrell@xxxxxxxxxx
website: http://www.michel-foucault.com
****************************************