Nicholas and Ilgin,
Nicholas, no need to apologize for anyone "butting" in to threads here --
it's an open list! The more the merrier.
In _Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann_ (Cambridge
University Press, 2006), there are, as I mentioned, exactly and only TWO
brief mentions of Foucault's name in over 400 pages. One Foucault reference
substantiates Ilgin's posts; the other adds weight to Nicholas's thesis.
Here are the only two times Foucault appears in _Anatomy of Power_, a
collection of essays about Mann by academia:
This 1st is a quote in line with Ilgin's sentment and is from Philip S.
Gorski, Profesor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Comparative
Research at Yale University:
"[W]hile Marxism may not appear in the opening credit of [Mann's] _Sources
of Social Power_, it does seem to have figured quite heavily behind the
scenes. [...] On the Marxist side the most striking absence [in Mann's
analysis] is the psychoanalytically informed version of Marxism championed,
not only by the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Fromm, etc.),
but also the French school of structural Marxism (e.g. Althusser and
Poulantzas), a school, interestingly, from which Mann draws other important
ideas. Notable, too, is the inattention to, and even dismissal of,
post-modern and post-structural brands of social theory as represented, for
example, by Barthes and Foucault."
And the 2nd and last time Foucault's name appears in this 400 page book on
Mann seems to weigh more on Nicholas's side; it's from Gianfranco Poggi,
Prof. of Sociology at University of Trento:
"[Mann is] among those who emphasize the impact of changing technology of
warfare on political institutions. Among significant contemporary writers
only Foucault, I think, has theorized the relationship between coercion and
the state by emphasizing instead the domestic, repressive,
law-and-order-keeping forces of the former: and in this Foucault agrees with
Weber and disagrees with Mann."
Sidenote: Another contomporary writer/social theorist "who emphasize[s] the
impact of changing technology of warfare on political institutions" is of
course Paul Virilio. Looks like there's room for debate on either Ilgin's or
Nicholas's side. Myself, I've seen Foucault as a crypto-Marxist who expanded
essentially Marxian ideas into new realms and down into new depths. However,
I do feel he neglected a lot of prior and similar research along these
lines, especially the anarchist tradition, or, like I said, Bertrand
Russell's _Power_, which Russell apparently intended to be the _Das Kapital_
of power theory.
That's Foucault, for you. he'd rather resurrect do something "provocative"
and "unexpected," as many French intellectuals do, like re-insert de
Boullainvilliers into the debate rather than obvious forebears like
left-Nietzschean Emma Goldman or Russell.
Cheers,
-Arthur Zinault
On 5/15/07, Nicholas J. Kiersey <nkiersey@xxxxxx> wrote:
Nicholas, no need to apologize for anyone "butting" in to threads here --
it's an open list! The more the merrier.
In _Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann_ (Cambridge
University Press, 2006), there are, as I mentioned, exactly and only TWO
brief mentions of Foucault's name in over 400 pages. One Foucault reference
substantiates Ilgin's posts; the other adds weight to Nicholas's thesis.
Here are the only two times Foucault appears in _Anatomy of Power_, a
collection of essays about Mann by academia:
This 1st is a quote in line with Ilgin's sentment and is from Philip S.
Gorski, Profesor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Comparative
Research at Yale University:
"[W]hile Marxism may not appear in the opening credit of [Mann's] _Sources
of Social Power_, it does seem to have figured quite heavily behind the
scenes. [...] On the Marxist side the most striking absence [in Mann's
analysis] is the psychoanalytically informed version of Marxism championed,
not only by the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Fromm, etc.),
but also the French school of structural Marxism (e.g. Althusser and
Poulantzas), a school, interestingly, from which Mann draws other important
ideas. Notable, too, is the inattention to, and even dismissal of,
post-modern and post-structural brands of social theory as represented, for
example, by Barthes and Foucault."
And the 2nd and last time Foucault's name appears in this 400 page book on
Mann seems to weigh more on Nicholas's side; it's from Gianfranco Poggi,
Prof. of Sociology at University of Trento:
"[Mann is] among those who emphasize the impact of changing technology of
warfare on political institutions. Among significant contemporary writers
only Foucault, I think, has theorized the relationship between coercion and
the state by emphasizing instead the domestic, repressive,
law-and-order-keeping forces of the former: and in this Foucault agrees with
Weber and disagrees with Mann."
Sidenote: Another contomporary writer/social theorist "who emphasize[s] the
impact of changing technology of warfare on political institutions" is of
course Paul Virilio. Looks like there's room for debate on either Ilgin's or
Nicholas's side. Myself, I've seen Foucault as a crypto-Marxist who expanded
essentially Marxian ideas into new realms and down into new depths. However,
I do feel he neglected a lot of prior and similar research along these
lines, especially the anarchist tradition, or, like I said, Bertrand
Russell's _Power_, which Russell apparently intended to be the _Das Kapital_
of power theory.
That's Foucault, for you. he'd rather resurrect do something "provocative"
and "unexpected," as many French intellectuals do, like re-insert de
Boullainvilliers into the debate rather than obvious forebears like
left-Nietzschean Emma Goldman or Russell.
Cheers,
-Arthur Zinault
On 5/15/07, Nicholas J. Kiersey <nkiersey@xxxxxx> wrote:
Sorry to butt in, but I feel that Mann can't use Foucault - to do so
would totally destroy his own intellectual project. [...] In this way, he
distances himself from both Marxist and IR Realism, both of which posit the
function of the state as a function of the particular types of social
power that concern them respectively.