I am writing to ask for your advise on an independent essay I have
assigned to do for my comparative literature course. The question I've
set myself is " 'theory has the capacity to liberate' discuss with
reference to Foucault's History of Sexuality 1 and Marx's Communist
Manifesto". For Foucault I'd suggest that his work is rather dubious
about the very notion of liberation. For me, HS1 is a coded critique
of the supposed liberatory force of self-disclosure in relation to
confession and speaking desire -- basically psychoanalysis. As such
Foucault's work is sceptical about the extent to which we can free
ourselves -- if we can't stand outside of the nexus of relations of
power-knowledge-subjectivity then for him liberation takes on a small
scale, local and tactical notion of resistance from within. In that
sense he'd be quite contrary to Marx, I'd have thought. Moreover, his
repressive hypothesis bears an uncanny resemblance to Marxist and
early feminist modes of thought that impose a repressor/repressed
dichotomy and a more simplified view of power. But how could I relate
Foucault and Marx further? I've also written a bit of how Marx's
theory had been appropriated by Lenin and abused by Stalin. How can I
like the abuse of theory to Foucault?
assigned to do for my comparative literature course. The question I've
set myself is " 'theory has the capacity to liberate' discuss with
reference to Foucault's History of Sexuality 1 and Marx's Communist
Manifesto". For Foucault I'd suggest that his work is rather dubious
about the very notion of liberation. For me, HS1 is a coded critique
of the supposed liberatory force of self-disclosure in relation to
confession and speaking desire -- basically psychoanalysis. As such
Foucault's work is sceptical about the extent to which we can free
ourselves -- if we can't stand outside of the nexus of relations of
power-knowledge-subjectivity then for him liberation takes on a small
scale, local and tactical notion of resistance from within. In that
sense he'd be quite contrary to Marx, I'd have thought. Moreover, his
repressive hypothesis bears an uncanny resemblance to Marxist and
early feminist modes of thought that impose a repressor/repressed
dichotomy and a more simplified view of power. But how could I relate
Foucault and Marx further? I've also written a bit of how Marx's
theory had been appropriated by Lenin and abused by Stalin. How can I
like the abuse of theory to Foucault?