Wow Kaori, you are being very active on the list during Golden Week!
I have had a couple of days teaching and then engaged in drunken
silliness with friends during the local Yotaka Matsuri and its
aftermath.
I will try to write something - seeing as I was one of those enfants terribles who defended Arianna - but I have that sword of damocles called "my book manuscript" dangling over my head whenever I turn towards this computer.
One thing I would say is that "What is Enlightenment?" is not Foucault's title per se, but rather Kant's: he was writing on Kant's "Was ist Aufklärung?" essay/book.
Another thing is that I would be wary of attributing an ouevre to Foucault, the author, given all that he said regarding the author- function, and the problem of agency seems closely related to this, and, drawing on the French context of Foucault's work again, I would suggest looking at the work of Althusser, Macherey, Deleuze and others of the "Spinozian" tendency in French thought at that time - who were also Nietzcheans in many respects - to gain more understanding of the relationship between notions of "authorship", "agency", and the notion of God as agent. The immanence of God in Spinozian thinking is a critique of transcendence, and Althusser's account of Feuerbach and the Feuerbachian tendency in Marx's thought is also relevant here. Everyone who knows me on the list at all knows that I am a friend of Warren Montag, and at the risk of being seen as yet another shameless plug for his work I would recommend looking at his writings on this subject, especially his books on Spinoza and Althusser and the essays he has written on Foucault.
This of course might represent a Marxist tendency obnoxious to you (Arianna, myself, and some others on the list are very interested in Autonomia as well as Foucault) - if you are indeed close to Nikolas Rose, who is not so keen on such thinking - but anyway I'm happy to chat about such things when I find time, and hopefully I will get the chance to chat with you in Nagoya sometime before I leave Japan in August, if I can make some decent headway on this book, which is already advertised on Amazon and which I have to submit by September 1st, not to mention the interminable job applications which seem to be getting nowhere. I am doing a lot of reading/thinking within the postcolonial/feminist usages of Foucault at the moment - although I work on European images of Asia (especially India), rather than Asian discourses themselves - and I don't think that Foucault has as many problems for being used to think about such things as you do. He is certainly more useful than stuff like Charles Taylor, whose work some (e.g. Javed Majeed) have suggested to use in postcolonial writing rather than Foucault, and I think that the agency issue is better thought about in terms of lines of flight, contingency, and forms of subjection/action than in attempts to reintroduce notions like "agency" and "consciousness" from Enlightenment stuff.
Sorry about some of the horrible sentences in this email, anyway I hope it helps stimulate things.
take care
David
Dr. David McInerney
http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/issues/vol4no2.html
http://materialist.blogsome.com
On 04/05/2007, at 2:53 PM, <tsuru@xxxxxxxxxx> <tsuru@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I will try to write something - seeing as I was one of those enfants terribles who defended Arianna - but I have that sword of damocles called "my book manuscript" dangling over my head whenever I turn towards this computer.
One thing I would say is that "What is Enlightenment?" is not Foucault's title per se, but rather Kant's: he was writing on Kant's "Was ist Aufklärung?" essay/book.
Another thing is that I would be wary of attributing an ouevre to Foucault, the author, given all that he said regarding the author- function, and the problem of agency seems closely related to this, and, drawing on the French context of Foucault's work again, I would suggest looking at the work of Althusser, Macherey, Deleuze and others of the "Spinozian" tendency in French thought at that time - who were also Nietzcheans in many respects - to gain more understanding of the relationship between notions of "authorship", "agency", and the notion of God as agent. The immanence of God in Spinozian thinking is a critique of transcendence, and Althusser's account of Feuerbach and the Feuerbachian tendency in Marx's thought is also relevant here. Everyone who knows me on the list at all knows that I am a friend of Warren Montag, and at the risk of being seen as yet another shameless plug for his work I would recommend looking at his writings on this subject, especially his books on Spinoza and Althusser and the essays he has written on Foucault.
This of course might represent a Marxist tendency obnoxious to you (Arianna, myself, and some others on the list are very interested in Autonomia as well as Foucault) - if you are indeed close to Nikolas Rose, who is not so keen on such thinking - but anyway I'm happy to chat about such things when I find time, and hopefully I will get the chance to chat with you in Nagoya sometime before I leave Japan in August, if I can make some decent headway on this book, which is already advertised on Amazon and which I have to submit by September 1st, not to mention the interminable job applications which seem to be getting nowhere. I am doing a lot of reading/thinking within the postcolonial/feminist usages of Foucault at the moment - although I work on European images of Asia (especially India), rather than Asian discourses themselves - and I don't think that Foucault has as many problems for being used to think about such things as you do. He is certainly more useful than stuff like Charles Taylor, whose work some (e.g. Javed Majeed) have suggested to use in postcolonial writing rather than Foucault, and I think that the agency issue is better thought about in terms of lines of flight, contingency, and forms of subjection/action than in attempts to reintroduce notions like "agency" and "consciousness" from Enlightenment stuff.
Sorry about some of the horrible sentences in this email, anyway I hope it helps stimulate things.
take care
David
Dr. David McInerney
http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/issues/vol4no2.html
http://materialist.blogsome.com
On 04/05/2007, at 2:53 PM, <tsuru@xxxxxxxxxx> <tsuru@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It’s really interesting that this discussion has got to a point where we’re deliberating upon the question of whether or not Foucault was an ‘E/enlightenment’ thinker. I have to admit I never actually stated in my thesis that he was one. I also never actually stated that Foucault claimed himself to be a member of the ‘western enlightened boy’s club’, an expression which I used because I was writing to an internet discussion group. However, I now realize that it was far too flippant a choice of words and the cause for some misunderstandings to transpire---I’m sorry if I caused offense using those words. What I did do at one point (as I recall) was to cite ‘What is Enlightenment?’ and argue that Foucault was putting forward the case for seeing the project of Enlightenment as a process which inculcates a more self-reflexive attitude to one’s ‘self’, one that becomes evermore aware of i
tself as it enacts the social practice of ‘thinking’.
To someone who has a Foucaultian mindset, the suggestion that ‘thought’ is not dependent on Reason alone but is more an assemblage of social practices would not be any cause for consternation. I guess what’s problematic is any suggestion that Foucault’s work could be seen as an outcome of Enlightenment. I understand how indigestible that is. I did some serious mental swearing when I, at least, came to the conclusion that he was making a case for himself as such.
Maybe he wanted to wrest the history of ‘thought’ away from the iron hand of Reason, and the best way to do that was to make a case for himself as an Enlightenment thinker? Maybe he just wanted to be a dilettante? Maybe he wanted to own up to the power of his own texts before he died (which is the one I argued for earlier)? Maybe he made a bad choice in titling that article 'What is Enlightenment?' Maybe he's not an Enlightenment thinker? It’s a fascinating question.
--- "Mailing-list" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ---
isn't it recognized that the piece titled 'foucault, michel, 1926-' written
by maurice florence does what others are suggesting 'what is enlightenment'
does? the first edition of the 'cambridge companion to foucault' edited by
gary gutting claims that the author this paper was foucault himself.
foucault does claim to be at home in the critical tradition of kant, but
this is not a claim that he is an enlightenment thinker. foucault goes to
great lengths to 'critique' critique itself. i think claire has already
outlined much of what distinguishes foucault's thought from that tradition.
all i would add is that to appreciate the extent to which foucault was not
an enlightenment thinker, one would need to search out the nietzschean
element of his thinking. deleuze's book 'nietzsche and philosophy' is one
example wherein a 'mood' can be created that facilitates this. foucault
credits nietzsche, and heidegger, as impacting greatly on his ability to
write, but he rarely cites them. pehaps in neitzsche we can discover the
preliminary responses to these questions, or at least establish the mood
required to engage with them. this is of little help, and i apologize for
this. just some ramblings.
cheers
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