Experience, for Foucault, is not a transhistorical phenomena, it is a grid of historical intelligibility, an analytical tool for posing questions to and thinking about certain historical processes. It thus has no equivalence to the notion of production in Marx or for Marxists.
Foucault was not talking about the Greek experience of sexuality, of how the Greeks themselves experienced their own sexuality, and more than he was talking about how the classical age experienced madness. When he refers to the classical experience of madness or the Greco-Roman experience of sexuality, the “of” in these phrases is not an objective genitive: madness is not an object that those who lived in the classical age experience, just as sexuality is not an object experience by those in classical Greek or Roman culture. Madness and sexuality are not in or about consciousness, rather, it is madness or sexuality that undergo experience: i.e. that undergo a process of transformation that results in the reciprocal genesis of subject and object: of the subject capable of knowing madness, and madness as an object to be known; as a subject capable of knowing themselves as an object of self-reflection.
Thus, like I said, experience is not a transhistorical phenomena, but a means of rendering certain historical processes intelligible.
For Foucault’s description of this understanding of experience, see the Trombadori interview in Power, Essential Works Vol. 3.
Regards,
Kevin.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 15:06:15 -0500
> To: foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] translation question
>
> On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 1:37 PM, Kevin Turner <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>> as regards the relation to modernity, this seems somewhat
>> more tenuous, since in the text cited, Foucault is writing
>> about classical Greek experience of Aphrodisia: i.e.
>> how free Greek males constituted certain aspects of
>> themselves as object of reflection, intervention, and
>> transformation: i.e. how they constituted themselves as
>> both knowing subject and known object.
>
> The sentence in question comes in the introduction where Foucault is
> describing his plan of action, his approach to history, rather than in
> the rest of the book where he discusses what free men of ancient
> Greece did and thought. If my memory serves me, after the
> introduction the term "experience" seldom, if ever, appears in The Use
> of Pleasure, which is one of the reasons why I think for Foucault
> "being as experience" is a product of historical transformation,
> rather than a transhistorical phenomenon, though Foucault does
> sometimes use the term experience to refer to pre-modern worlds (again
> if remember correctly).
>
> The term experience is as much of a problem for Foucault as the term
> production is for Marx and Marxists. On one hand, throughout history,
> we can say that human beings experienced, just as they produced; on
> the other hand, terms like experience and production can obscure the
> specificity of modernity by virtue of their transhistorical utility, a
> problem for philosophers of discontinuity like Foucault and Marx, who
> wish to unearth, for instance, how exactly "sexuality" (for Foucault)
> and "economy" (for Marx) became disembedded from a variety of moral
> regulations of mutual though hierarchical obligation and dependency
> that had existed before modernity. To my knowledge, though, Foucault
> never explicitly define what experience is.
>
> Yoshie
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
Foucault was not talking about the Greek experience of sexuality, of how the Greeks themselves experienced their own sexuality, and more than he was talking about how the classical age experienced madness. When he refers to the classical experience of madness or the Greco-Roman experience of sexuality, the “of” in these phrases is not an objective genitive: madness is not an object that those who lived in the classical age experience, just as sexuality is not an object experience by those in classical Greek or Roman culture. Madness and sexuality are not in or about consciousness, rather, it is madness or sexuality that undergo experience: i.e. that undergo a process of transformation that results in the reciprocal genesis of subject and object: of the subject capable of knowing madness, and madness as an object to be known; as a subject capable of knowing themselves as an object of self-reflection.
Thus, like I said, experience is not a transhistorical phenomena, but a means of rendering certain historical processes intelligible.
For Foucault’s description of this understanding of experience, see the Trombadori interview in Power, Essential Works Vol. 3.
Regards,
Kevin.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 15:06:15 -0500
> To: foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] translation question
>
> On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 1:37 PM, Kevin Turner <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>> as regards the relation to modernity, this seems somewhat
>> more tenuous, since in the text cited, Foucault is writing
>> about classical Greek experience of Aphrodisia: i.e.
>> how free Greek males constituted certain aspects of
>> themselves as object of reflection, intervention, and
>> transformation: i.e. how they constituted themselves as
>> both knowing subject and known object.
>
> The sentence in question comes in the introduction where Foucault is
> describing his plan of action, his approach to history, rather than in
> the rest of the book where he discusses what free men of ancient
> Greece did and thought. If my memory serves me, after the
> introduction the term "experience" seldom, if ever, appears in The Use
> of Pleasure, which is one of the reasons why I think for Foucault
> "being as experience" is a product of historical transformation,
> rather than a transhistorical phenomenon, though Foucault does
> sometimes use the term experience to refer to pre-modern worlds (again
> if remember correctly).
>
> The term experience is as much of a problem for Foucault as the term
> production is for Marx and Marxists. On one hand, throughout history,
> we can say that human beings experienced, just as they produced; on
> the other hand, terms like experience and production can obscure the
> specificity of modernity by virtue of their transhistorical utility, a
> problem for philosophers of discontinuity like Foucault and Marx, who
> wish to unearth, for instance, how exactly "sexuality" (for Foucault)
> and "economy" (for Marx) became disembedded from a variety of moral
> regulations of mutual though hierarchical obligation and dependency
> that had existed before modernity. To my knowledge, though, Foucault
> never explicitly define what experience is.
>
> Yoshie
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list