This is a publication of a private conversation. Thought it might help other doctoral students (to stand up to the word of established thinkers who also operate as critics of Foucault).
The open question was: Is Foucault relavant today despite heavy criticsim undermining the value of his shcolarship?
NB. Happy to hear other doctoral candidates on this query.
a/ Is Foucault helping you think? As to me he is; like few other thinkers and a few other ones, way better than many of his critics, whom I tend to find endlessly heavy an quite flat in comparison to F.
b/ Once you start understanding Foucault, read him straight from his own books --in the original French if possible-- and only seldom refer to commentators. Remember that the latter too are trying to make a living -find their academic space-- out of 'critiquing' F.
c/ Personally, thanks to reading Nietzsche, Foucault and Derrida, Marx, Georgescu-Roegen and Polanyi from their own books I have managed to do some conceptual acrobatics in my PhD -it has hardly been by virtue of the critique of the authors at hand.
d/ I understand we are very vulnerable as we start thinking by ourselves...yet this should not prevent us from standing firm in our postions in the teeth of other influential thinkers. Let's not doubt ourselves so much in face of the written, printed word -which is not the same as 'don't be critical of yourself'. Only if we all could be our best critics.
Ruth
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"The fact that at present people all talk of things which they CANNOT have any experience, is true more especially and unfortunately as concerns the philosopher and philosophical matters: [...] thinking itself is regarded by them as something slow and hesitating, almost as a trouble, and often enough as 'worthy of the SWEAT of the noble' -but not at all as something easy [...], closely related to dancing and exuberance!"--Friedrich Nietzsche
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The open question was: Is Foucault relavant today despite heavy criticsim undermining the value of his shcolarship?
NB. Happy to hear other doctoral candidates on this query.
a/ Is Foucault helping you think? As to me he is; like few other thinkers and a few other ones, way better than many of his critics, whom I tend to find endlessly heavy an quite flat in comparison to F.
b/ Once you start understanding Foucault, read him straight from his own books --in the original French if possible-- and only seldom refer to commentators. Remember that the latter too are trying to make a living -find their academic space-- out of 'critiquing' F.
c/ Personally, thanks to reading Nietzsche, Foucault and Derrida, Marx, Georgescu-Roegen and Polanyi from their own books I have managed to do some conceptual acrobatics in my PhD -it has hardly been by virtue of the critique of the authors at hand.
d/ I understand we are very vulnerable as we start thinking by ourselves...yet this should not prevent us from standing firm in our postions in the teeth of other influential thinkers. Let's not doubt ourselves so much in face of the written, printed word -which is not the same as 'don't be critical of yourself'. Only if we all could be our best critics.
Ruth
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"The fact that at present people all talk of things which they CANNOT have any experience, is true more especially and unfortunately as concerns the philosopher and philosophical matters: [...] thinking itself is regarded by them as something slow and hesitating, almost as a trouble, and often enough as 'worthy of the SWEAT of the noble' -but not at all as something easy [...], closely related to dancing and exuberance!"--Friedrich Nietzsche
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *