Chatan,
1/ Glad you gain more and more confidence in your views. As I keep restating, Foucault, Gutting, or whoever else, should always be used 'instrumentally'--which is not synonymous with disrespectfully-- for the agenda of your own time, to help you think by yourself. In transposition. Orthodoxy is born out of mummifying the statements of the tradition. The tradition should serve the purposes of the present, not those of the past.
2/ There are many ways to answer the daunting questions you set. I shall answer them via my own process of minute Enlightenment during my doctoral times, which I am about to complete. I will highlight two reciprocal processes:
A/ This frist point is a rephrasing of 1/. Glad there are "founders of discursivity" (cf 'What is an author?'). It is really them who help you think. Not because you shall be in agreement with them, but because they incite you to be in agreement with them with a twist-and this twist is your precious contribution to knowledge.
B/ Without The Order of Things -and other works, I would have been unable to think -or rather, unthink, elaborate a critique of- 'sustainability'. So yes, the 'fiction' that Foucault sets out in OT paves the ground for a transition away from the modern mode of being -in my case- not so much towards a postmodern as to an ecocidal mode of being.
Maybe on grounds of the eccentricity of this work, The OT has served the purposes of my own scholarship enormously. Way better than a great deal that goes by the name of "environmentalism", "sustainable development", etc. And regardless as well of the position of the critique on this work. Repeating myself ad nauseam, I harness all my sources instrumentally.
Ruth Thomas-Pellicer
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"After Nietzsche's devastating criticism of those 'last men' who 'invented happiness,' I may leave aside altogether the naïve optimism in which science -that is, the technique of mastering life which rests upon science- has been celebrated as the way to happiness. Who believes in this? -aside from a few big children in university chairs or editorial offices." -Max Weber
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
1/ Glad you gain more and more confidence in your views. As I keep restating, Foucault, Gutting, or whoever else, should always be used 'instrumentally'--which is not synonymous with disrespectfully-- for the agenda of your own time, to help you think by yourself. In transposition. Orthodoxy is born out of mummifying the statements of the tradition. The tradition should serve the purposes of the present, not those of the past.
2/ There are many ways to answer the daunting questions you set. I shall answer them via my own process of minute Enlightenment during my doctoral times, which I am about to complete. I will highlight two reciprocal processes:
A/ This frist point is a rephrasing of 1/. Glad there are "founders of discursivity" (cf 'What is an author?'). It is really them who help you think. Not because you shall be in agreement with them, but because they incite you to be in agreement with them with a twist-and this twist is your precious contribution to knowledge.
B/ Without The Order of Things -and other works, I would have been unable to think -or rather, unthink, elaborate a critique of- 'sustainability'. So yes, the 'fiction' that Foucault sets out in OT paves the ground for a transition away from the modern mode of being -in my case- not so much towards a postmodern as to an ecocidal mode of being.
Maybe on grounds of the eccentricity of this work, The OT has served the purposes of my own scholarship enormously. Way better than a great deal that goes by the name of "environmentalism", "sustainable development", etc. And regardless as well of the position of the critique on this work. Repeating myself ad nauseam, I harness all my sources instrumentally.
Ruth Thomas-Pellicer
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"After Nietzsche's devastating criticism of those 'last men' who 'invented happiness,' I may leave aside altogether the naïve optimism in which science -that is, the technique of mastering life which rests upon science- has been celebrated as the way to happiness. Who believes in this? -aside from a few big children in university chairs or editorial offices." -Max Weber
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *