Well, as I said, I don't have my resources here with me so I find it plausible that I got my dates wrong.
As for the reading that I give to 'What is Enlightenment?', I'm not willing to completely deny your view but then, neither am I willing to accede so willingly. In my defense, I would like to say that this was the interpretation I presented in my PhD, which was supervised by Nikolas Rose and examined by Anthony Woodiwiss and Paul Gilroy. There also is literature available which also makes similar readings. I don't have my thesis with me so I can't give you the exact titles, but one that crops to mind is David Owen's book whose title as I recall it begins with 'Maturity and Modernity'. I think it was published in 1994. It's a book where he traces the historical lineage of western modern thought from Kant, Nietzsche, Weber to Foucault.
Kaori
--- "Mailing-list" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ---
>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own work to be superseded as well.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
>****************************************
>
>_______________________________________________
>Foucault-L mailing list
As for the reading that I give to 'What is Enlightenment?', I'm not willing to completely deny your view but then, neither am I willing to accede so willingly. In my defense, I would like to say that this was the interpretation I presented in my PhD, which was supervised by Nikolas Rose and examined by Anthony Woodiwiss and Paul Gilroy. There also is literature available which also makes similar readings. I don't have my thesis with me so I can't give you the exact titles, but one that crops to mind is David Owen's book whose title as I recall it begins with 'Maturity and Modernity'. I think it was published in 1994. It's a book where he traces the historical lineage of western modern thought from Kant, Nietzsche, Weber to Foucault.
Kaori
--- "Mailing-list" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ---
>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
>****************************************
>
>_______________________________________________
>Foucault-L mailing list