Andrew Cady wrote:
Indeed. That is my point.
You asked what I meant by saying that Jani's
answer "didn't quite parse". I meant just that:
I had trouble with the language in it.
My best guess is that Jani was saying that, in Foucault,
agency exists, at *any* point in history, in each
person's degrees of informed freedom to behave as a person.
These degrees of freedom can be changed by a new
idea, at a given point in history, but only if it is
"intelligible" within "neighboring practices".
Ok, that sounds vaguely familiar but still far off the
mark:
Saying that agency is to be found in a person's
degrees of informed freedom is superfluous at best.
The word "agent" doesn't add anything there: why
aren't we just talking about degrees of freedom
directly? Evidently there is some implication
intended there so that Foucault is giving us theories
*about agency* rather than about the things
he directly writes about. Why do we need this
a-historic, transcendent "agent"? Why not just
talk about what people are/were free or not free
to do in specific times and places? If we were to
"find the agent" somewhere in Foucault, then are
we next obligated to "find the structure?" And
then, having fit the work into a framework of
agent and structure, having reduced it to just a specific
position in a particular debate in sociology, perhaps
we are then done with Foucault?
Next, yes, Foucault did write that it often isn't arbitrary
when exactly in history a new idea enters a field and
changes it. And he did write that the new discourse
around the idea changes the world around it, and that it
is simultaneously changed by the other discourses surround
it. He suggested and demonstrated studying that timing, and
that interaction, to see if we can analyze it and understand it,
in a general way. He examined the history of several major
institutions -- those with a very large impact on people's
degrees of freedom -- looking at how the complex of
discourses in and around those institutions played out.
Yet, that analysis in Foucault does not point to any
kind of general theory about the conditions under which
a new idea becomes liberating. Once again, the jargon
gets in the way: To say that an idea only makes a
difference if it is "intelligible" seems like a fancy way
to say that an idea has effect if and only if it has effect
(true, but empty). Foucault was heard to remark that
he might someday want to write a "history of thought"
that would talk in some general, a-historic way about
when and how new thoughts might be formed, and
spread -- but he didn't actually do that and didn't mean
to do that.
My proposed last word answer (to go in the Foucault FAQ? :-)
is to make fun of the question "where is the agent in Foucault"
by adding some quote marks: "where is 'the agent' in Foucault"
and then giving a straight answer: 'the agent' is a contentious
term that arose in the literature of sociology at a particular
point in history. That answer is true, literal and it *is* *the* starting
point for an examination of the term "in the style of Foucault"
(because it invites us to ask why it arose just then, what it
changed, how it was changed, how it was expressed in action,
etc.)
-t
But Jani's answer seemed to have
more content than that.
Indeed. That is my point.
You asked what I meant by saying that Jani's
answer "didn't quite parse". I meant just that:
I had trouble with the language in it.
My best guess is that Jani was saying that, in Foucault,
agency exists, at *any* point in history, in each
person's degrees of informed freedom to behave as a person.
These degrees of freedom can be changed by a new
idea, at a given point in history, but only if it is
"intelligible" within "neighboring practices".
Ok, that sounds vaguely familiar but still far off the
mark:
Saying that agency is to be found in a person's
degrees of informed freedom is superfluous at best.
The word "agent" doesn't add anything there: why
aren't we just talking about degrees of freedom
directly? Evidently there is some implication
intended there so that Foucault is giving us theories
*about agency* rather than about the things
he directly writes about. Why do we need this
a-historic, transcendent "agent"? Why not just
talk about what people are/were free or not free
to do in specific times and places? If we were to
"find the agent" somewhere in Foucault, then are
we next obligated to "find the structure?" And
then, having fit the work into a framework of
agent and structure, having reduced it to just a specific
position in a particular debate in sociology, perhaps
we are then done with Foucault?
Next, yes, Foucault did write that it often isn't arbitrary
when exactly in history a new idea enters a field and
changes it. And he did write that the new discourse
around the idea changes the world around it, and that it
is simultaneously changed by the other discourses surround
it. He suggested and demonstrated studying that timing, and
that interaction, to see if we can analyze it and understand it,
in a general way. He examined the history of several major
institutions -- those with a very large impact on people's
degrees of freedom -- looking at how the complex of
discourses in and around those institutions played out.
Yet, that analysis in Foucault does not point to any
kind of general theory about the conditions under which
a new idea becomes liberating. Once again, the jargon
gets in the way: To say that an idea only makes a
difference if it is "intelligible" seems like a fancy way
to say that an idea has effect if and only if it has effect
(true, but empty). Foucault was heard to remark that
he might someday want to write a "history of thought"
that would talk in some general, a-historic way about
when and how new thoughts might be formed, and
spread -- but he didn't actually do that and didn't mean
to do that.
My proposed last word answer (to go in the Foucault FAQ? :-)
is to make fun of the question "where is the agent in Foucault"
by adding some quote marks: "where is 'the agent' in Foucault"
and then giving a straight answer: 'the agent' is a contentious
term that arose in the literature of sociology at a particular
point in history. That answer is true, literal and it *is* *the* starting
point for an examination of the term "in the style of Foucault"
(because it invites us to ask why it arose just then, what it
changed, how it was changed, how it was expressed in action,
etc.)
-t