Hi Geoff,
Thanks for your questions and for forcing me to clarify certain things...
1) the term “negative” was Foucault’s not mine (deux tâches négatives): and I take him to be using this term in the sense of “negating a position,” or of moving in opposition to or in an opposite direction to that position.
2) my point was that in the 1954 text, Foucault was employing something like a general theory of the human being (as expressed in the previously discussed retrospective), but that posing the question concerning the very historicity of forms of experience, he came to question any such theory and, more specifically, he came to ask the question of how such theories came about and, more importantly, at what cost.
3) Again this is Foucault’s term not my own (déplacement): and I take him to be using this term in the sense of “to move something” – i.e. a move away from the economic and social context, contradiction and alienation, dialectical materialism, towards a different history of societies, one which addresses them in terms of the domain of the history of thought (EW1: 200; DEII: 1398).
To clarify my position: my aim is not to reconstruct the trajectory of Foucault’s thought through such retrospectives. Rather, I am trying to work out what his invocation of this 1954 project (Maladie mentale et personnalité) in this 1984 (Preface to the History of Sexuality, Volume Two - PHS) retrospective can tell me about what he was attempting to describe in this 1984 text regarding analysing forms of experience in their historicity. That is to say, I am trying to form an understanding of what Foucault is describing in PHS, not to reconstruct its genesis or condition of possibility. My aim being to think about how we can use this notion of forms of experience, as it is formulated in PHS, to think about how we might effectively bring together the different movements of Foucault’s thought (knowledge, power relations, ethics) in doing future research.
One question that I forgot to ask, however, is in what ways does playing on the alternative of a philosophical anthropology and a social history necessarily result in the dilemma mentioned by Foucault?
Regards,
Kevin.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: deadmendontwearafros@xxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:41:07 +1000
> To: foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] Maladie mentale et personnalité - 2
>
> some questions in response
> 1) in what sense are you using the term "negative"
> 2) it's my understanding that any such theory of the human being would be
> constitutive of the human being, not an imposition from outside/beyond -
> so
> wouldn't the discourse produce the body/of knowledge you're terming the
> human being, but Foucault may well call Man
> 3) in terms of displacement, might it be better thought of as a shifting
> of
> focus that again constitutes, rather than imposes, and part of its
> function
> is to suggest a single grid?
>
> As for your second question, though Foucault disliked the notion of an
> oeuvre, he also retrospectively linked his work back to earlier work -
> whether the expression refers to it or not may not be answerable; perhaps
> instead, we can look at what is the result/consequence of such a
> referral?
>
> And to the third, Foucault's terminology differs - again he used
> genealogy,
> a history of the present - as did what he considered he was doing at
> different stages - so maybe the question is, in his work on the ethics of
> the self, what evidence is there that he undertook such a work, that it
> related to his previous work, and what can be elucidated by seeing those
> connections, and just as importantly, what are the tensions that exist if
> such a conjunction occurs.
>
> And apologies that this answers nothing, only poses more :-)
> Geoff Parkes
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kevin Turner" <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx>
>> Finally, my questions:
>> Firstly, would I be correct in thinking that one of the things that
>> motivate both of these negative tasks is the question of imposition?
>> (1) imposing a general theory of the human being upon human beings
>> (hence
>> the nominalist reduction of philosophical anthropology), and
>> (2) imposing a single grid of intelligibility upon all historical
>> processes (hence the displacement relative to social history).
>>
>> Secondly, I initially thought that "philosophical anthropology" referred
>> exclusively to existentialism/phenomenology (i.e. to Chapter 4 of
>> MMPer).
>> However, following our discussion of the internal/external dimension,
>> and
>> given that Foucault states that what he means by "philosophical
>> anthropology" is "a general theory of the human being," would I now be
>> right in thinking that this expression refers to the analysis undertaken
>> in the whole of Part One of Maladie mentale et personnalité?
>>
>> Third and lastly, would I be correct to state that the displacement that
>> Foucault undertook relative to the domain (economic and social context),
>> the concepts (contradiction, alienation), and the methods (dialectics)
>> of
>> the history of societies was a displacement in the direction of a
>> (critical) history of (systems of) thought?
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
Thanks for your questions and for forcing me to clarify certain things...
1) the term “negative” was Foucault’s not mine (deux tâches négatives): and I take him to be using this term in the sense of “negating a position,” or of moving in opposition to or in an opposite direction to that position.
2) my point was that in the 1954 text, Foucault was employing something like a general theory of the human being (as expressed in the previously discussed retrospective), but that posing the question concerning the very historicity of forms of experience, he came to question any such theory and, more specifically, he came to ask the question of how such theories came about and, more importantly, at what cost.
3) Again this is Foucault’s term not my own (déplacement): and I take him to be using this term in the sense of “to move something” – i.e. a move away from the economic and social context, contradiction and alienation, dialectical materialism, towards a different history of societies, one which addresses them in terms of the domain of the history of thought (EW1: 200; DEII: 1398).
To clarify my position: my aim is not to reconstruct the trajectory of Foucault’s thought through such retrospectives. Rather, I am trying to work out what his invocation of this 1954 project (Maladie mentale et personnalité) in this 1984 (Preface to the History of Sexuality, Volume Two - PHS) retrospective can tell me about what he was attempting to describe in this 1984 text regarding analysing forms of experience in their historicity. That is to say, I am trying to form an understanding of what Foucault is describing in PHS, not to reconstruct its genesis or condition of possibility. My aim being to think about how we can use this notion of forms of experience, as it is formulated in PHS, to think about how we might effectively bring together the different movements of Foucault’s thought (knowledge, power relations, ethics) in doing future research.
One question that I forgot to ask, however, is in what ways does playing on the alternative of a philosophical anthropology and a social history necessarily result in the dilemma mentioned by Foucault?
Regards,
Kevin.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: deadmendontwearafros@xxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:41:07 +1000
> To: foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] Maladie mentale et personnalité - 2
>
> some questions in response
> 1) in what sense are you using the term "negative"
> 2) it's my understanding that any such theory of the human being would be
> constitutive of the human being, not an imposition from outside/beyond -
> so
> wouldn't the discourse produce the body/of knowledge you're terming the
> human being, but Foucault may well call Man
> 3) in terms of displacement, might it be better thought of as a shifting
> of
> focus that again constitutes, rather than imposes, and part of its
> function
> is to suggest a single grid?
>
> As for your second question, though Foucault disliked the notion of an
> oeuvre, he also retrospectively linked his work back to earlier work -
> whether the expression refers to it or not may not be answerable; perhaps
> instead, we can look at what is the result/consequence of such a
> referral?
>
> And to the third, Foucault's terminology differs - again he used
> genealogy,
> a history of the present - as did what he considered he was doing at
> different stages - so maybe the question is, in his work on the ethics of
> the self, what evidence is there that he undertook such a work, that it
> related to his previous work, and what can be elucidated by seeing those
> connections, and just as importantly, what are the tensions that exist if
> such a conjunction occurs.
>
> And apologies that this answers nothing, only poses more :-)
> Geoff Parkes
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kevin Turner" <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx>
>> Finally, my questions:
>> Firstly, would I be correct in thinking that one of the things that
>> motivate both of these negative tasks is the question of imposition?
>> (1) imposing a general theory of the human being upon human beings
>> (hence
>> the nominalist reduction of philosophical anthropology), and
>> (2) imposing a single grid of intelligibility upon all historical
>> processes (hence the displacement relative to social history).
>>
>> Secondly, I initially thought that "philosophical anthropology" referred
>> exclusively to existentialism/phenomenology (i.e. to Chapter 4 of
>> MMPer).
>> However, following our discussion of the internal/external dimension,
>> and
>> given that Foucault states that what he means by "philosophical
>> anthropology" is "a general theory of the human being," would I now be
>> right in thinking that this expression refers to the analysis undertaken
>> in the whole of Part One of Maladie mentale et personnalité?
>>
>> Third and lastly, would I be correct to state that the displacement that
>> Foucault undertook relative to the domain (economic and social context),
>> the concepts (contradiction, alienation), and the methods (dialectics)
>> of
>> the history of societies was a displacement in the direction of a
>> (critical) history of (systems of) thought?
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list