No
not at all
I was just expressing an opinion
although of course it depends on what the individual reader gets out of it
and what importance they place on what's included versus what's not included
On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 2:53 AM, Frieder Vogelmann <f.vogelmann@xxxxxxx>wrote:
> Well,
> thanks for the reference, I'll take a look at it.
> Just to clarify my position a bit: 1) I never claimed that power is
> absent from AK - I do think, however, that since Foucault's concept of
> power evolved in the course of his research, and since I take this late
> concept as an important cornerstone of my own work, one has to
> reconsider the connection between this late concept of power and the
> (early) conception of discourse and discursive practices.
> 2) I did not mean to point out "weaknesses" - in fact, I'm not so much
> in favor of an "love it or leave it" approach to the AK. I think it to
> be important and find a lot of useful conceptual tools for my own work
> in it, so I'm trying to use them. And naturally, once you use other
> people's concepts on different subjects or in different times, you
> encounter different questions that need to be answered. Is it unfair to
> say that these are - of course - not answered by the AK?
> Frieder
>
> Chetan Vemuri schrieb:
> > Professor,
> > you're absolutely right.
> > I just was disagreeing with the objections the above raised towards The
> > Archaeology of Knowledge.
> > Call it immaturity of a Foucault lover on my part, but I've always valued
> > The Archaeology of Knowledge as a favorite Foucault text of mine because
> I
> > find it to be an indispensible guide to understanding his notion of
> > discourse and a beautiful reflection on archaeology as a whole.
> > I find it to be unfairly criticized as weak and often dismissed for this
> > "weakness".
> > I actually preferred it in many ways to The Order of Things but that was
> > just me.
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 3:37 PM, Nathan Widder <n.e.widder@xxxxxxxxxx
> >wrote:
> >
> >> Well, power is not an explicit object of analysis in the later work, but
> it
> >> is not, in fact absent from AK
> >>
> >> "In this sense, discourse ceases to be what it is for the exegetic
> >> attitude:
> >> an inexhaustible treasure from which one can always draw new, and always
> >> unpredictable riches; a providence that has always spoken in advance,
> and
> >> which enables one to hear, when one knows how to listen, retrospective
> >> oracles; it appears as an asset – finite, limited, desirable, useful –
> that
> >> has its own rules of appearance, but also its own conditions of
> >> appropriation and operation; an asset that consequently, from the moment
> of
> >> its existence (and not only in its 'practical applications'), poses the
> >> question of power; an asset that is, by nature, the object of a
> struggle, a
> >> political struggle" (p. 120 of English translation)
> >>
> >> I think that the dynamic of power relations in the genealogical work is
> >> fundamentally taken from the idea of dispersion in the Archaeology,
> >> although
> >> the term really needs to be understood in its technical sense (viz. in
> >> chemistry, for example, a dispersion is a mixture of heterogeneous
> >> substances, such as an aerosol -- a liquid in a gas). If it's not too
> >> presumptuous to recommend some of my own work, this is something I
> argued
> >> in
> >> a piece, "Foucault and Power Revisited" published in 2004 in the
> European
> >> Journal of Political Theory.
> >>
> >> I think an interesting and illuminating way of approaching AK is to put
> it
> >> in conversation with Deleuze and Lacan's work from the same time. If
> you
> >> read it alongside Deleuze's Logic of Sense and Lacan's Seminar XI, you
> can
> >> see a lot of resonances and what is effectively a conversation going on
> >> among the three of them.
> >>
> >> Nathan
> >>
> >> Dr. Nathan Widder
> >> Senior Lecturer in Political Theory
> >> Royal Holloway, University of London
> >> Department of Politics and International Relations
> >> Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, United Kingdom
> >> Web page:
> >> http://www.rhul.ac.uk/politics-and-IR/About-Us/Widder/Index.html
> >> Genealogies of Difference:
> http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s02/widder.html
> >> Reflections on Time and Politics:
> >> http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-03394-5.html
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> [mailto:foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Chetan Vemuri
> >> Sent: 15 October 2008 21:19
> >> To: Mailing-list
> >> Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] The Archaeology of Knowledge
> >>
> >> I would definitely refer to Part 2, chapters 2-3 on "The Formation of
> >> Objects" as they talk about what you ask in depth.
> >>
> >> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:18 PM, Chetan Vemuri
> >> <aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> >>
> >>> Well, with regards to the third question, that was not even an issue
> >> until
> >>> way after the time of A&K so it might be a bit anachronistic to ask
> that
> >> of
> >>> this book.
> >>> I have to rush quickly so I'll respond to the previous two later
> tongiht,
> >>> but are you positing those as weaknesses of the book?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 10/15/08, Frieder Vogelmann <f.vogelmann@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>> no, not in the sense that it's hard to read - I don't consider it to
> be
> >>>> more difficult than "The Order of Things" or "Madness and
> Civiliization"
> >>>> What I mean is that it requires a lot of work on questions like:
> >>>> - How specific must rules of formation be? They should delimit one
> >>>> discourse from another, though must be broad enough to allow for all
> the
> >>>> variance possible within one discourse. What is the criterion used?
> >>>> - How do these rules exactly work (if we presume that Dreyfus &
> >>>> Rabinow got it wrong)?
> >>>> - What exactly is the relationship between power (as in Foucaults
> >>>> later texts, that is, a restructuring of the field of possible
> actions)
> >>>> and discursive practices?
> >>>>
> >>>> Answering these question and "working" with the archeological method
> on
> >>>> the material I try to analyze is the hard part - at least for me, as I
> >>>> am trying to use the Archeology of Knowledge as a reearch tool.
> >>>> What do you think? What's your approach on the Archeology?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Chetan Vemuri schrieb:
> >>>>
> >>>>> hard to work with in what way?
> >>>>> In that its difficult to read?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 1:56 AM, Frieder Vogelmann <
> >> f.vogelmann@xxxxxxx
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Yes, I do! I do like the book's style, but more important is the
> >> impact
> >>>>>> of archeology as a method on Foucault's later texts. I'm thinking
> >>>>>> especially on the two lectures on the History of Governementalité
> >>>>>> (1978-1979), which is often misread as a piece of history of
> >> political
> >>>>>> ideas. If one instead takes it to use archeology, the term
> >> "population"
> >>>>>> acquires the importance it is given by Foucault when he claims it
> >> being
> >>>>>> the operator that drove the transformation described in "The order
> of
> >>>>>> things" (see the end of Lecture 3 on January 25th, 1978).
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Bringing archeology back in also helps, I think, in giving up the
> >>>>>> strange trend of breaking up "governementalité" in "gouverner" and
> >>>>>> "mentalité" (at least this was a trend in the German and English
> >>>>>> literature, ignoring the editor of the lectures, M.Senellart, who
> >>>>>> explains it to be derived from "governemental"), which in turn makes
> >>>> the
> >>>>>> study of Governementalités into a study of mentalities.
> Acknowledging
> >>>>>> the archeological method, studying forms of governementalité means
> >>>> first
> >>>>>> of all determining the "form of problematization" a specific
> >> political
> >>>>>> rationality reacts to.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> These are just two reasons I would put some emphasis on the
> >> Archeology
> >>>>>> of Knowledge, though I admit that it is a book that is hard to work
> >>>> with.
> >>>>>> Frieder
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Chetan Vemuri schrieb:
> >>>>>>> So there's a debate over the usefulness of The Archaeology of
> >>>> Knowledge
> >>>>>> in
> >>>>>>> Foucault's oeuvre. Some feel its the black sheep of his work, a
> >> failed
> >>>>>>> attempt at defining his methodology, others feel its a rich,
> >>>> fascinating
> >>>>>> set
> >>>>>>> of studies of discursive practices. Some feel it is flawed, others
> >>>> think
> >>>>>>> not. This has been one of my favorite Foucault books yet many find
> >> it
> >>>>>> dull
> >>>>>>> and uninteresting.
> >>>>>>> Is there anyone else that defends its strong merits and value for
> >>>>>>> understanding Foucault's work in general?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Chetan Vemuri
> >>> West Des Moines, IA
> >>> aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx
> >>> (515)-418-2771
> >>> "You say you want a Revolution! Well you know, we all want to change
> the
> >>> world"
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Chetan Vemuri
> >> West Des Moines, IA
> >> aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx
> >> (515)-418-2771
> >> "You say you want a Revolution! Well you know, we all want to change the
> >> world"
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
>
--
Chetan Vemuri
West Des Moines, IA
aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx
(515)-418-2771
"You say you want a Revolution! Well you know, we all want to change the
world"
not at all
I was just expressing an opinion
although of course it depends on what the individual reader gets out of it
and what importance they place on what's included versus what's not included
On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 2:53 AM, Frieder Vogelmann <f.vogelmann@xxxxxxx>wrote:
> Well,
> thanks for the reference, I'll take a look at it.
> Just to clarify my position a bit: 1) I never claimed that power is
> absent from AK - I do think, however, that since Foucault's concept of
> power evolved in the course of his research, and since I take this late
> concept as an important cornerstone of my own work, one has to
> reconsider the connection between this late concept of power and the
> (early) conception of discourse and discursive practices.
> 2) I did not mean to point out "weaknesses" - in fact, I'm not so much
> in favor of an "love it or leave it" approach to the AK. I think it to
> be important and find a lot of useful conceptual tools for my own work
> in it, so I'm trying to use them. And naturally, once you use other
> people's concepts on different subjects or in different times, you
> encounter different questions that need to be answered. Is it unfair to
> say that these are - of course - not answered by the AK?
> Frieder
>
> Chetan Vemuri schrieb:
> > Professor,
> > you're absolutely right.
> > I just was disagreeing with the objections the above raised towards The
> > Archaeology of Knowledge.
> > Call it immaturity of a Foucault lover on my part, but I've always valued
> > The Archaeology of Knowledge as a favorite Foucault text of mine because
> I
> > find it to be an indispensible guide to understanding his notion of
> > discourse and a beautiful reflection on archaeology as a whole.
> > I find it to be unfairly criticized as weak and often dismissed for this
> > "weakness".
> > I actually preferred it in many ways to The Order of Things but that was
> > just me.
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 3:37 PM, Nathan Widder <n.e.widder@xxxxxxxxxx
> >wrote:
> >
> >> Well, power is not an explicit object of analysis in the later work, but
> it
> >> is not, in fact absent from AK
> >>
> >> "In this sense, discourse ceases to be what it is for the exegetic
> >> attitude:
> >> an inexhaustible treasure from which one can always draw new, and always
> >> unpredictable riches; a providence that has always spoken in advance,
> and
> >> which enables one to hear, when one knows how to listen, retrospective
> >> oracles; it appears as an asset – finite, limited, desirable, useful –
> that
> >> has its own rules of appearance, but also its own conditions of
> >> appropriation and operation; an asset that consequently, from the moment
> of
> >> its existence (and not only in its 'practical applications'), poses the
> >> question of power; an asset that is, by nature, the object of a
> struggle, a
> >> political struggle" (p. 120 of English translation)
> >>
> >> I think that the dynamic of power relations in the genealogical work is
> >> fundamentally taken from the idea of dispersion in the Archaeology,
> >> although
> >> the term really needs to be understood in its technical sense (viz. in
> >> chemistry, for example, a dispersion is a mixture of heterogeneous
> >> substances, such as an aerosol -- a liquid in a gas). If it's not too
> >> presumptuous to recommend some of my own work, this is something I
> argued
> >> in
> >> a piece, "Foucault and Power Revisited" published in 2004 in the
> European
> >> Journal of Political Theory.
> >>
> >> I think an interesting and illuminating way of approaching AK is to put
> it
> >> in conversation with Deleuze and Lacan's work from the same time. If
> you
> >> read it alongside Deleuze's Logic of Sense and Lacan's Seminar XI, you
> can
> >> see a lot of resonances and what is effectively a conversation going on
> >> among the three of them.
> >>
> >> Nathan
> >>
> >> Dr. Nathan Widder
> >> Senior Lecturer in Political Theory
> >> Royal Holloway, University of London
> >> Department of Politics and International Relations
> >> Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, United Kingdom
> >> Web page:
> >> http://www.rhul.ac.uk/politics-and-IR/About-Us/Widder/Index.html
> >> Genealogies of Difference:
> http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s02/widder.html
> >> Reflections on Time and Politics:
> >> http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-03394-5.html
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> [mailto:foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Chetan Vemuri
> >> Sent: 15 October 2008 21:19
> >> To: Mailing-list
> >> Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] The Archaeology of Knowledge
> >>
> >> I would definitely refer to Part 2, chapters 2-3 on "The Formation of
> >> Objects" as they talk about what you ask in depth.
> >>
> >> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:18 PM, Chetan Vemuri
> >> <aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> >>
> >>> Well, with regards to the third question, that was not even an issue
> >> until
> >>> way after the time of A&K so it might be a bit anachronistic to ask
> that
> >> of
> >>> this book.
> >>> I have to rush quickly so I'll respond to the previous two later
> tongiht,
> >>> but are you positing those as weaknesses of the book?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 10/15/08, Frieder Vogelmann <f.vogelmann@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>> no, not in the sense that it's hard to read - I don't consider it to
> be
> >>>> more difficult than "The Order of Things" or "Madness and
> Civiliization"
> >>>> What I mean is that it requires a lot of work on questions like:
> >>>> - How specific must rules of formation be? They should delimit one
> >>>> discourse from another, though must be broad enough to allow for all
> the
> >>>> variance possible within one discourse. What is the criterion used?
> >>>> - How do these rules exactly work (if we presume that Dreyfus &
> >>>> Rabinow got it wrong)?
> >>>> - What exactly is the relationship between power (as in Foucaults
> >>>> later texts, that is, a restructuring of the field of possible
> actions)
> >>>> and discursive practices?
> >>>>
> >>>> Answering these question and "working" with the archeological method
> on
> >>>> the material I try to analyze is the hard part - at least for me, as I
> >>>> am trying to use the Archeology of Knowledge as a reearch tool.
> >>>> What do you think? What's your approach on the Archeology?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Chetan Vemuri schrieb:
> >>>>
> >>>>> hard to work with in what way?
> >>>>> In that its difficult to read?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 1:56 AM, Frieder Vogelmann <
> >> f.vogelmann@xxxxxxx
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Yes, I do! I do like the book's style, but more important is the
> >> impact
> >>>>>> of archeology as a method on Foucault's later texts. I'm thinking
> >>>>>> especially on the two lectures on the History of Governementalité
> >>>>>> (1978-1979), which is often misread as a piece of history of
> >> political
> >>>>>> ideas. If one instead takes it to use archeology, the term
> >> "population"
> >>>>>> acquires the importance it is given by Foucault when he claims it
> >> being
> >>>>>> the operator that drove the transformation described in "The order
> of
> >>>>>> things" (see the end of Lecture 3 on January 25th, 1978).
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Bringing archeology back in also helps, I think, in giving up the
> >>>>>> strange trend of breaking up "governementalité" in "gouverner" and
> >>>>>> "mentalité" (at least this was a trend in the German and English
> >>>>>> literature, ignoring the editor of the lectures, M.Senellart, who
> >>>>>> explains it to be derived from "governemental"), which in turn makes
> >>>> the
> >>>>>> study of Governementalités into a study of mentalities.
> Acknowledging
> >>>>>> the archeological method, studying forms of governementalité means
> >>>> first
> >>>>>> of all determining the "form of problematization" a specific
> >> political
> >>>>>> rationality reacts to.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> These are just two reasons I would put some emphasis on the
> >> Archeology
> >>>>>> of Knowledge, though I admit that it is a book that is hard to work
> >>>> with.
> >>>>>> Frieder
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Chetan Vemuri schrieb:
> >>>>>>> So there's a debate over the usefulness of The Archaeology of
> >>>> Knowledge
> >>>>>> in
> >>>>>>> Foucault's oeuvre. Some feel its the black sheep of his work, a
> >> failed
> >>>>>>> attempt at defining his methodology, others feel its a rich,
> >>>> fascinating
> >>>>>> set
> >>>>>>> of studies of discursive practices. Some feel it is flawed, others
> >>>> think
> >>>>>>> not. This has been one of my favorite Foucault books yet many find
> >> it
> >>>>>> dull
> >>>>>>> and uninteresting.
> >>>>>>> Is there anyone else that defends its strong merits and value for
> >>>>>>> understanding Foucault's work in general?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Chetan Vemuri
> >>> West Des Moines, IA
> >>> aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx
> >>> (515)-418-2771
> >>> "You say you want a Revolution! Well you know, we all want to change
> the
> >>> world"
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Chetan Vemuri
> >> West Des Moines, IA
> >> aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx
> >> (515)-418-2771
> >> "You say you want a Revolution! Well you know, we all want to change the
> >> world"
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
>
--
Chetan Vemuri
West Des Moines, IA
aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx
(515)-418-2771
"You say you want a Revolution! Well you know, we all want to change the
world"