foucault? relativist? ROTFL!

t byfield tbyfield at panix.com
Sat Oct 30 19:53:53 PDT 1999



> Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 13:59:55 +0000
> From: manders at midway.uchicago.edu (Maureen Therese Anderson)

[...answered this, someone else's question...]


> >Wonder where that critique of Foucault is .

at the moment in a series of essays published in various journals, like maybe _proceedings of the british academy_ and _oceania_ in the mid to late 80s. but keep your eyes peeled for a new anthology, _culture as practice_ (?), due out from zone books Real Soon Now; the essays in question are in part 3.


> Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 21:45:37 -0400
> From: James Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com>
> Subject: Re: litcritter bashing...)


> My position is that science is not ideology, since one of the
> defining characteristics of ideology is that it is unscientific.

that's not a position, it's a tautology. and it sounds like you nicked from doctor spock, to boot.


> Science can, however, contain unscientific ideological elements
> but it is despite them that it is science. Science in class societies
> is suscptible to ideological distortions of various kinds
> (i.e. social Darwinism, "scientific" racism, sociological theories
> of "cultural deprivation" and the like) but from that fact it
> does not follow that science itself is inherently ideological.

there's no such thing as 'science in a classless society,' so science is by definition 'subject to ideological distortions.' small wonder that someone should read what you say as somehow akin to theology.

cheers, t



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