Yoshie wrote:
>Why should we
>stay with the Self/Other problematic (be the Other reducibile or
>irreducible), though?
Who said anything about taking up ontological residency? If indeed, as I think it is, the statement 'migrants steak our jobs' (or 'our way of life') is linked to a whole series of statements about birth, sovereignty and rights that the French Revolution announced and which continue to be iterated in various ways (both as racism and its ostensible criticisms), then why ignore the 'self/other problematic'. Or, as this discussion began, why ignore the continuing bond between desire and scarcity in the familial (and oedipal) terms of Malthus and neomalthusianism?
In any event, I don't recall Althusser using 'problematic' as a choice on a potential list of academic topics...
Which does raise the issue at hand, once again: that is, that you evoke Foucault in order to 'fill the gaps' in a dialectical schema whilst setting aside the notion of singularities through which things like 'one's relation to oneself' (or 'technologies of self') are developed, subordinating them finally to the dialectic of "historical contingency and historical necessity". Hegelian reconciliation rules; and you'll supplement its 'lacks' [heh] -- even in discussions about 'desire and scarcity' and as a means to avoid this couplet -- with antihegelian philosophies for whom the very notion of 'historical necessity' is already a contingent one.
As I said, it's your problem.
Angela