***** from Foucault, _Remarks on Marx_
The problem of the truth of what I say is very difficult for me, and it's also the central problem. It's essentially the question which up to now I have never answered.
In the course of my works, I utilize methods that are part of the classic
repertory: demonstration, proof by means of historical documentation,
quoting other texts, referral to authoritative comments, the relationship
between ideas and facts, the proposal of explanatory patterns, etc.
There's nothing original in that [Yoshie: Because of this very lack of
pretense to 'originality' in the _style_ of writing, Foucault is the most
readable and useful -- for the Marxists who are interested in the history
of modern social control -- among all the postmodernists, who are more
given to the rhetorical gestures of self-reflexivity than Foucault is].
>From this point of view, whatever I assert in my writing can be verified or
refuted as in any other history book.
Despite that, people who read me, even those who appreciate what I do, often say to me, laughing: "but in the end you realize that the things you say are nothing but fictions!" I always reply: who ever thought he was writing anything but fiction! *****
So, as Foucault himself admits, there's nothing in his works that would make it possible for the reader to evaluate them and to prefer them to other historical accounts, independent of conventional criteria of truth, so when the reader does decide Foucault's story is more compelling than, say, John Boswell's (and keep in mind that Boswell disagrees with Foucault on the use of the category 'homosexual' in pre-modern history), s/he must decide either by judging them against prevailing standards (with regard to the object of their research and rules of argument) or following what his or her 'gut feelings' say (i.e. depending on whether Foucault's or Boswell's story has become a conventional wisdom).
And if the reader indeed treats Foucault's account as 'fiction,' why should the reader adopt this fiction, rather than competing stories (which include homophobic ones), as his or her own narrative?
Given his own practice, Foucault fails to justify his 'theoretical' call to dispense with the science/ideology distinction.
Without the science/ideology distinction, what's the reason to prefer, say, Gabriel Kolko's or Noam Chomsky's account to Henry Kissinger's or Robert McNamara's with regard to the Vietnam War? Because the reader thinks the Vietnam War was morally wrong? What makes it morally wrong? Because the reader thinks the Vietnam War was a part of a long history of imperialism? What makes the reader think there is such a thing as imperialism? According to Foucault's criteria, should we think of Kissinger's story as an ideology that is true, as Angela asserts, to which we can say neither yes nor no?
Without the science/ideology distinction, why Marx rather than Smith, Weber, Keynes, nay, even Ayn Rand?
>Well, I don't reckon it's crooked at all. What Habermas called the
>'emancipatory interest' is nothing without both the 'practical'
>(communicative) and the 'instrumental/strategic' (the technical - in its
>place, of course). If Habermas is right (and I think he got the idea from
>the much-maligned Kant), our interests constitute our knowledge, that
>constitutes a bit of a problem, dunnit?
I myself have maligned Kant (much fun!), but I do agree with you that Kant, especially in his _Critique of Pure Reason_, was very much onto the most important antinomy (empiricism or rationalism, Hume or Leibniz, etc.) in the philosophy of science. It is his solution that is incorrect, but the very fact that he called attention to the central problematic (given prevailing discourses) makes him an indispensable interlocutor and opponent.
Yoshie