The point Foucault was making was quite simple. His knowledge was
limited to the "West" ... but I'd say that, like most French
intellectuals, he took France as typical of "the West" and just
generalized from the French experience. This is quite evident in
Discipline and Punish, for example.
I don't think you can blame him for not extending his analysis to, say, Cambodia. You can use and extend his conceptual apparatus to analyze those countries that are not "Western". But what you can point out as a shortcoming of Foucault's work is that it does not explore how images of "the East" are constitutive of this category of "the West" and thus lend an imaginary homogeneity to what he claims as his own object ... it is that procedure that enables him to ignore both "the East" and the differences within "the West" ...
So postcolonialism can have something to say about Foucault, if it turns from his "neglect" of the empires and considers how Foucault ignores the effects of images of the Other in constituting "the West" as a seemingly coherent object of analysis.
Also postcolonial studies using Foucault's conceptual apparatus can lead to revision of Foucault's periodization and historical accounts of the discourses that he analyzes, given that many of them in fact originated in colonial situations ... e.g. see Ann Laura Stoler's work
I hope this makes sense.
On 14/12/2008, at 10:36 AM, Chetan Vemuri wrote:
I don't think you can blame him for not extending his analysis to, say, Cambodia. You can use and extend his conceptual apparatus to analyze those countries that are not "Western". But what you can point out as a shortcoming of Foucault's work is that it does not explore how images of "the East" are constitutive of this category of "the West" and thus lend an imaginary homogeneity to what he claims as his own object ... it is that procedure that enables him to ignore both "the East" and the differences within "the West" ...
So postcolonialism can have something to say about Foucault, if it turns from his "neglect" of the empires and considers how Foucault ignores the effects of images of the Other in constituting "the West" as a seemingly coherent object of analysis.
Also postcolonial studies using Foucault's conceptual apparatus can lead to revision of Foucault's periodization and historical accounts of the discourses that he analyzes, given that many of them in fact originated in colonial situations ... e.g. see Ann Laura Stoler's work
I hope this makes sense.
On 14/12/2008, at 10:36 AM, Chetan Vemuri wrote:
haha
i love the irony
no way is this the happiest season of the year.
especially for us non-christians.
Yeah, Foucault did say in a Japanese lecture that his case studies were
specific to european contexts and would not necessarily be applicable to
societies like Japan, China, India etc. But he did feel that his methods
could be of use outside of the West.
On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Kaelin Alexander <
kaelin.alexander@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thomas (and Chetan),
One could also make the argument (which Halperin does) that Foucault's
overall emphasis on the discursive formation of sexuality already points
and
admits to the limits of his stated analysis, while also pointing towards
the
usefulness of his methodology in looking at discursive sexual practices in
other time time periods, and outside the West.
While this sort of thing could easily become a kind of navel-gazing
claim--"But are we ever discursive enough?"--and sometimes it *does, *a
work
that takes this sort of methodology up fairly well is William Naphy's *Born
to be Gay.* The title here is very misleading, so please don't read too far
into it. It's a nice, well-researched survey of sexual practices on a more
global scale--going back, I think to Sumeria. It's better as an
introductory
work which points towards *other* texts, but it's still quite informative
and highly readable.
Apologies for my rather clipped earlier response. It's definitely that time
of year. "Hap, Happiest Season of All" my foot. Haha.
Best,
Kaelin Alexander
Graduate Student
Cornell University
Department of English
On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 6:12 PM, Thomas Lord <lord@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 2008-12-13 at 17:36 -0500, Kaelin Alexander wrote:_______________________________________________
Chetan,
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Read Halperin's *Saint Foucault.*
Perhaps one of the real scholars can fill in my
memory on something I half remember: there's a
piece by Foucault or a transcript of a conversation
where he talks about the application of his ideas
outside the west. I don't recall whether he talked
about History of Sexuality specifically or not but
he did make sort of overarching (his whole program)
statements to the effect he was analyzing specific
cases and yes those cases were all in what one
could informally call "the West" and that while
his mode of analysis had applicability elsewhere
his historical narrative did not. Does that
ring any bells?
-t
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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"
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