On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 7:37 PM, Ali Rizvi <ali_m_rizvi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Yoshie, this is an excellent point. Thank
> you for that. I had forgotten all about Marx and how he is absolutely essential
> for understanding Foucault's concerns here. Obviously Foucault's point goes
> much more beyond Marx but as your rightly put it, he's working in the shadow of
> Marx. Ali
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 8:15 PM, Chetan Vemuri <aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> But doesn't Foucault challenge Marx's notion of history as a dialectic?
> Though it is true these thinkers (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze) are all
> working in a post-Marxist space and would not have been possible in a
> pre-Marx era.
I agree with you, Ali and Chetan, on both of your points.
Foucault's criticism went deeper than Marx's in that he could see the
problem of productivism lurking in Marx's criticism of political
economy (productivism that would later become sanctified* by state
socialism) and the problem of idealism, inherited from Hegel, in
Marx's dialectic.
That said, within the tradition of historical materialism there
existed intellectuals such as Walter Benjamin and Ernest Bloch who
would have agreed with Foucault on both of these points and would have
been sympathetic with Foucault's take on spirituality. So, I
sometimes wonder why Foucault, as well as Barthes, Derrida, etc.,
refused to wrestle with Marx inside rather than outside that tradition
(to be sure, the dominant ideology of Marxism was not welcoming of
ideas like Foucault's, but still. . .).
* See, for instance, Ernest Gellner, "Religion and the Profane" (at
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2000-08-28-gellner-en.html>): "The
basic Messianic ideal of Marxism – which had a particular appeal for
the Russian soul – was to abolish the separation of the sacred from
the profane in human life. The idea that the world was bound to be
soiled and miserable, while fulfillment was to be found in another
realm, was merely a reflection of a divided society. The future lay in
a unitary world of total consummation. Of course, Spinoza's image,
historicized by Hegel, was taken over by Marx. One conventional theory
is that man cannot do without religion. The theory I bring forward is
that he cannot do without the profane. The failure of Marxism to keep
a hold on the hearts and minds of the people who were subjected
systematically to its exclusive monopolistic propaganda was due to its
abolition of the profane."
Yoshie
> Yoshie, this is an excellent point. Thank
> you for that. I had forgotten all about Marx and how he is absolutely essential
> for understanding Foucault's concerns here. Obviously Foucault's point goes
> much more beyond Marx but as your rightly put it, he's working in the shadow of
> Marx. Ali
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 8:15 PM, Chetan Vemuri <aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> But doesn't Foucault challenge Marx's notion of history as a dialectic?
> Though it is true these thinkers (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze) are all
> working in a post-Marxist space and would not have been possible in a
> pre-Marx era.
I agree with you, Ali and Chetan, on both of your points.
Foucault's criticism went deeper than Marx's in that he could see the
problem of productivism lurking in Marx's criticism of political
economy (productivism that would later become sanctified* by state
socialism) and the problem of idealism, inherited from Hegel, in
Marx's dialectic.
That said, within the tradition of historical materialism there
existed intellectuals such as Walter Benjamin and Ernest Bloch who
would have agreed with Foucault on both of these points and would have
been sympathetic with Foucault's take on spirituality. So, I
sometimes wonder why Foucault, as well as Barthes, Derrida, etc.,
refused to wrestle with Marx inside rather than outside that tradition
(to be sure, the dominant ideology of Marxism was not welcoming of
ideas like Foucault's, but still. . .).
* See, for instance, Ernest Gellner, "Religion and the Profane" (at
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2000-08-28-gellner-en.html>): "The
basic Messianic ideal of Marxism – which had a particular appeal for
the Russian soul – was to abolish the separation of the sacred from
the profane in human life. The idea that the world was bound to be
soiled and miserable, while fulfillment was to be found in another
realm, was merely a reflection of a divided society. The future lay in
a unitary world of total consummation. Of course, Spinoza's image,
historicized by Hegel, was taken over by Marx. One conventional theory
is that man cannot do without religion. The theory I bring forward is
that he cannot do without the profane. The failure of Marxism to keep
a hold on the hearts and minds of the people who were subjected
systematically to its exclusive monopolistic propaganda was due to its
abolition of the profane."
Yoshie