This is getting really burdensome. I enjoyed it at first but I can't get any rest!!
Before I enter into this debate, please tell me what consequence it is that you think I'm drawing. (Please note: In my response to Thomas Lord, I have already agreed that Foucault's method is useful to me.)
Kaori
>Arguing that Foucault is a western thinker is obvious and pointless. Arguing that he is therefore necessarily a) a colonizing thinker, and b) therefore of no use to anyone outside the west are two very different things. Even if Foucault does announce himself to be a member of the "boys club" of Enlightenment thinkers, which I think is a pretty tendentious reading, that fact wouldn't necessarily lead to the consequences you are drawing.
>
>Allen
>
>Paul Allen Miller
>Carolina Distinguished Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature
>Director of Comparative Literature
>Editor, Transactions of the American Philological Association
>Languages, Literatures and Cultures
>University of South Carolina
>Columbia, SC 29208
>803-777-0951
>pamiller@xxxxxx
>>>> tsuru@xxxxxxxxxx 05/03/07 11:44 AM >>>
>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
>>
>><Wasnt the height
>>of the Habermas-Foucault debate in the 70s, during the so-called structuralist
>>phase of Foucaults 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 dont
>>known when it was written, but it was printed for the first time in 1984, so I had
>>always seen it as Foucaults 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
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Foucault-L mailing list
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Foucault-L mailing list
Before I enter into this debate, please tell me what consequence it is that you think I'm drawing. (Please note: In my response to Thomas Lord, I have already agreed that Foucault's method is useful to me.)
Kaori
>Arguing that Foucault is a western thinker is obvious and pointless. Arguing that he is therefore necessarily a) a colonizing thinker, and b) therefore of no use to anyone outside the west are two very different things. Even if Foucault does announce himself to be a member of the "boys club" of Enlightenment thinkers, which I think is a pretty tendentious reading, that fact wouldn't necessarily lead to the consequences you are drawing.
>
>Allen
>
>Paul Allen Miller
>Carolina Distinguished Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature
>Director of Comparative Literature
>Editor, Transactions of the American Philological Association
>Languages, Literatures and Cultures
>University of South Carolina
>Columbia, SC 29208
>803-777-0951
>pamiller@xxxxxx
>>>> tsuru@xxxxxxxxxx 05/03/07 11:44 AM >>>
>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
>>
>><Wasnt the height
>>of the Habermas-Foucault debate in the 70s, during the so-called structuralist
>>phase of Foucaults 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 dont
>>known when it was written, but it was printed for the first time in 1984, so I had
>>always seen it as Foucaults 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
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Foucault-L mailing list
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Foucault-L mailing list