Foucault did not criticise his use of experience in History of Madness per se, but a "very enigmatic use", by which I take him to mean his various references to a "tragic experience of madness."
What the rest of the book describes is precisely the constitution of madness as an object of knowledge in, by, and through, power-knowledge relations.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 03:02:43 -0600
> To: foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] translation question
>
> Funny this conversation has become one of Foucault's ideas on experience.
> I
> highly doubt Foucault would have wanted to his work to be interpreted
> excessively through a lens of philosophy of experience or being. He
> criticized and perhaps unfairly his book "The History of Madness" because
> he
> felt it was too centered on "experience. However, to return to your
> debate,
> I think Foucault wanted his ideas on experience to be interpreted more
> through the lens of being subjects of discursive formation, power
> relations,
> and, in the late work, the lens of subjectivization, how we become
> subject,
> our practices of self versus social techniques of control.
>
> On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 2:51 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi <
> critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 3:07 AM, Kevin Turner <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>>> Therefore, Foucault refused to impose "sexuality" onto Greeks and
>>>> Romans, not speaking of the "Greco-Roman experience of sexuality" or
>>>> things like that.
>>>
>>> True, but he does talk about the "Greco-Roman experience of
>>> aphrodisia" or "the Christian experience of the 'flesh,' and he
>>> talks about these as being the condition of possibility for
>>> 'the formation and development of the experience of sexuality
>>> from the eighteenth century onward.' The fact still remains that
>>> he is not referring to subjective experience, but nor is he talking
>>> about experience as a historical process (i.e. in Hegelian terms).
>>> Rather, experience is a means of rendering certain historical
>>> processes intelligible, and rendering them intelligibly by way of
>>> a history of the relations that have obtained between subjectivity and
>> truth.
>>
>> It would be interesting to do a quantitative analysis of the term
>> expérience in Foucault's works, identifying where and how often the
>> term appears and analyzing how it is used. Such an analysis may help
>> us better understand whether Foucault thought "being" was always
>> already constituted as "experience" or "being" had historically come
>> to be constituted as "experience." To my knowledge, though, Foucault
>> never did any archeology of "experience" as such nor did he elevate
>> the level of his critical elaboration of the term to that of, say,
>> truth, power, knowledge, etc.
>>
>>>> "Sexuality," "madness," etc., or "economy," etc., may one day cease to
>>>> exist, and we may consider under what historical conditions they will
>>>> cease to be intelligible. But till then these historically
>>>> constituted domains of practice will rule our social relations in ways
>>>> that are not subject to conscious individual choice. As a matter of
>>>> fact, even as we speak now, "sexuality," for instance, is likely to be
>>>> becoming an intelligible experience for larger proportions of people
>>>> in the world than before.
>>>
>>> but that does not mean that sexuality exists - it is not a pre-given
>>> object (as Foucault says of madness: 'We can certainly say that
>>> madness "does not exist," but this does not mean that it is nothing',
>>> STP: 118), but is, as you say, an "historically
>>> constituted domains of practices."
>>
>> Nothing is a pre-given object but that doesn't mean that what has come
>> to be historically constituted doesn't exist in ways that objectively
>> shape the lives of people nor is it "less real" than, say, DNA. It's
>> not a matter of false consciousness that a correct understanding on
>> the part of an individual can dispel. That I think is what we can
>> take from Foucault as well as others who help us historicize.
>>
>> Yoshie
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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"
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
____________________________________________________________
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What the rest of the book describes is precisely the constitution of madness as an object of knowledge in, by, and through, power-knowledge relations.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 03:02:43 -0600
> To: foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] translation question
>
> Funny this conversation has become one of Foucault's ideas on experience.
> I
> highly doubt Foucault would have wanted to his work to be interpreted
> excessively through a lens of philosophy of experience or being. He
> criticized and perhaps unfairly his book "The History of Madness" because
> he
> felt it was too centered on "experience. However, to return to your
> debate,
> I think Foucault wanted his ideas on experience to be interpreted more
> through the lens of being subjects of discursive formation, power
> relations,
> and, in the late work, the lens of subjectivization, how we become
> subject,
> our practices of self versus social techniques of control.
>
> On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 2:51 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi <
> critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 3:07 AM, Kevin Turner <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>>> Therefore, Foucault refused to impose "sexuality" onto Greeks and
>>>> Romans, not speaking of the "Greco-Roman experience of sexuality" or
>>>> things like that.
>>>
>>> True, but he does talk about the "Greco-Roman experience of
>>> aphrodisia" or "the Christian experience of the 'flesh,' and he
>>> talks about these as being the condition of possibility for
>>> 'the formation and development of the experience of sexuality
>>> from the eighteenth century onward.' The fact still remains that
>>> he is not referring to subjective experience, but nor is he talking
>>> about experience as a historical process (i.e. in Hegelian terms).
>>> Rather, experience is a means of rendering certain historical
>>> processes intelligible, and rendering them intelligibly by way of
>>> a history of the relations that have obtained between subjectivity and
>> truth.
>>
>> It would be interesting to do a quantitative analysis of the term
>> expérience in Foucault's works, identifying where and how often the
>> term appears and analyzing how it is used. Such an analysis may help
>> us better understand whether Foucault thought "being" was always
>> already constituted as "experience" or "being" had historically come
>> to be constituted as "experience." To my knowledge, though, Foucault
>> never did any archeology of "experience" as such nor did he elevate
>> the level of his critical elaboration of the term to that of, say,
>> truth, power, knowledge, etc.
>>
>>>> "Sexuality," "madness," etc., or "economy," etc., may one day cease to
>>>> exist, and we may consider under what historical conditions they will
>>>> cease to be intelligible. But till then these historically
>>>> constituted domains of practice will rule our social relations in ways
>>>> that are not subject to conscious individual choice. As a matter of
>>>> fact, even as we speak now, "sexuality," for instance, is likely to be
>>>> becoming an intelligible experience for larger proportions of people
>>>> in the world than before.
>>>
>>> but that does not mean that sexuality exists - it is not a pre-given
>>> object (as Foucault says of madness: 'We can certainly say that
>>> madness "does not exist," but this does not mean that it is nothing',
>>> STP: 118), but is, as you say, an "historically
>>> constituted domains of practices."
>>
>> Nothing is a pre-given object but that doesn't mean that what has come
>> to be historically constituted doesn't exist in ways that objectively
>> shape the lives of people nor is it "less real" than, say, DNA. It's
>> not a matter of false consciousness that a correct understanding on
>> the part of an individual can dispel. That I think is what we can
>> take from Foucault as well as others who help us historicize.
>>
>> Yoshie
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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"
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
____________________________________________________________
Receive Notifications of Incoming Messages
Easily monitor multiple email accounts & access them with a click.
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