These parts are very confused:
On Wed, 2008-12-24 at 09:52 -0600, Chetan Vemuri wrote:
> "[....]
> [...] Powerful insights into the deep
> interaction of nature and nurture have
> already established that Foucault's
> notions of subjectification and social
> construction are pretty far off the
> mark. [...]"
and
>"Chetan, read The History of Sexuality.
> Please show me where Foucault gives
> any serious consideration to genetic
> predisposition in gendered roles. The
> entire subcontext, especially when he
> considers science and sexuality, is to
> undermine and undo what he thinks to be
> entirely socially constructed norms
> of sexuality. [....]"
Um.
There are many ways to begin
to approach the layers of error upon
error in such a statement. Here
are two:
1) Challenge the speaker to produce
even one empirical claim, anywhere,
for which he gives one account, the
evolutionary psychologists (or whatever
group you like another), and where
the latter account displaces the former.
None of this hand-waving: let's have
one concrete example. (Hint: there are none.)
If he gives an answer we can have a debate.
If he doesn't, he's blowing hot air.
2) Foucault examines the history of sexuality
in recent millennia and specifically in its
relation to political, pedagogical, and other
systems of power within the self-reproducing
arrangements of societies. He pays particular
attention to how these arrangements change
over time, not infrequently considering how
change emerges out of the interaction between
contemporary systems of thought (such as
scientific theories meeting juridical theories).
Now, the evolutionary psychologists, on the
other hand, have very very little to say about
these changes for these same changes *did not
take place on evolutionary timescales*.
Maybe the right response is to say to the
speaker "I'll answer that but only if you first
answer a similar question: 'When did you stop
beating your wife?'"
That said, it's funny that your teacher
looks at some of the in-vogue and often
factually misinterpreted science and characterizes
it as "powerful".
Indeed. The scientific discourse around things
like evolutionary psychology *is* a focus of
power. You could go count mentions of it at,
say, Ted conferences, if you like. You could go
find the number of times its referred to in,
for example, current civil rights debates.
I think Foucault would be quite fascinated with
evolutionary psychology and similar in-vogue
theories as they are applied today, including by
your teacher.
-t