Chetan,in the academic world of today, in which publications, tenure, and
promotion are both important and difficult to achieve, there is always
someone, or some publisher, telling us that we 'can't understand
such-and-such' without considering 'x'. And, hey presto, it turns out that
said publisher or individual happens to have just the product, 'x', to
correct this possible mis-reading.
The publication of Foucault's lecture courses are a good example of this, as
they offer material for a whole new round of interpretation and debate; a
new round that sells books, gets papers published, boosts careers, and so
on.
I'm not saying the lecture courses aren't important, nor am I saying there's
something wrong with selling a book or boosting one's career. I'm just
casting doubt on the general idea that some new key to interpretation has
come along that will help us to understand things which had remained
obscure. In other words, the whole framework in which the lectures are
edited, published, marketed, and discussed is perhaps (only perhaps) as
interesting as the lectures themselves.
Timothy
On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 3:15 PM, Chetan Vemuri <aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> I've found recently that for me, reading the college course "Hermeneutic of
> the Subject" has extensively clarified the philosophic context under which
> Foucault wrote his 2nd and 3rd volumes of the History of Sexuality. On
> their
> own, one can very easily mistakenly read them as sexual dandyistic gross
> simplifications of a complex set of practices in greek and roman
> philosophy,
> as they were criticized for being by several, including Pierre Hadot,
> though
> they were clearly intended not to constitute the whole of Foucault's
> interpretation of the practices of the self. Reading this lecture course
> proves this intention so, and shows both of these books in their true light
> as subset analysis within a broader, richer framework of the practices of
> subjectivization that Foucault was setting up, a framework that would be
> expanded to also focus on parrhesia or the practices of truth telling.
> Can one simply read the 2nd and 3rd volumes of The History of Sexuality on
> their own to appreciate his late work, or would you think reading them
> alone
> could potentially lead to misunderstandings of his project that can only be
> clarified by the detailed lectures from 1982 and 1983?
>
>
> --
> 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
>
promotion are both important and difficult to achieve, there is always
someone, or some publisher, telling us that we 'can't understand
such-and-such' without considering 'x'. And, hey presto, it turns out that
said publisher or individual happens to have just the product, 'x', to
correct this possible mis-reading.
The publication of Foucault's lecture courses are a good example of this, as
they offer material for a whole new round of interpretation and debate; a
new round that sells books, gets papers published, boosts careers, and so
on.
I'm not saying the lecture courses aren't important, nor am I saying there's
something wrong with selling a book or boosting one's career. I'm just
casting doubt on the general idea that some new key to interpretation has
come along that will help us to understand things which had remained
obscure. In other words, the whole framework in which the lectures are
edited, published, marketed, and discussed is perhaps (only perhaps) as
interesting as the lectures themselves.
Timothy
On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 3:15 PM, Chetan Vemuri <aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> I've found recently that for me, reading the college course "Hermeneutic of
> the Subject" has extensively clarified the philosophic context under which
> Foucault wrote his 2nd and 3rd volumes of the History of Sexuality. On
> their
> own, one can very easily mistakenly read them as sexual dandyistic gross
> simplifications of a complex set of practices in greek and roman
> philosophy,
> as they were criticized for being by several, including Pierre Hadot,
> though
> they were clearly intended not to constitute the whole of Foucault's
> interpretation of the practices of the self. Reading this lecture course
> proves this intention so, and shows both of these books in their true light
> as subset analysis within a broader, richer framework of the practices of
> subjectivization that Foucault was setting up, a framework that would be
> expanded to also focus on parrhesia or the practices of truth telling.
> Can one simply read the 2nd and 3rd volumes of The History of Sexuality on
> their own to appreciate his late work, or would you think reading them
> alone
> could potentially lead to misunderstandings of his project that can only be
> clarified by the detailed lectures from 1982 and 1983?
>
>
> --
> 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
>