<< 1)That the issues he address are both older and more problematic than the
terms in which he lays them out, and
Of course I know that. If I'm going to lay out a few main themes in a few lines, it's not going to reveal precursors and historical antecedents, much less the problems with all these generally charactrerized positions. My point was just that there are indeed some main themes in common to most pomo, that it isn't an arbitrary grouping to talk in one breath of Derrida, Foucault, etc. Angela seemed to deny this.
> 2)Some Non-Pomo's have given better articulation of those problems than
Pomo's...
I'd say that is generally true in most instances and with most of the themes. The better pomoistas, however, are particularly good on their chosen territory, the politics of recognition in the intersection of race and gender. I am thinking her of Young, Fraser, and Minow. Foucault,w ho is rather off the main line in his striog suit, is unparalleled in the analysis of institutional power, the best we have had along those lines since Weber. His more narrowly philosophical statements are less interesting.
> Some pomo's want to dump the very categories he describes them in;
ie the desire to go "beyond" realism/antirealism, subject/object,
essence/invariance/differentiation/contingency....hence the politics of
talking past one another...
Yeah, yeah. But how successful are these attempts? Thus Rorty wants to get beyond talking about realism and truth, and does this by saying there is no point in talking about an extralinguistic reality, the possibility of a radically alternative conceptual scheme, or a notion of truth other than consensus. Has he escaped the realism.anti-realism dichoitomy? I rather think not. He's just recycled several old antirealist themes. I just cite this as an example.
Besides, the themes that I cite really do run through most pomoist work. Once again, I emphasize that that is not a criticism. The themes are worthy ones, as is the attempt to get beyond them by reconceptualizing problems. My objection is rather the generally obscure and ill-argued way that most pomo, including some by the big shots, handles these themes.
Thus Foucault has wonderful, profound, and important things to say about the technologies of power, the nature of surveillience in institutions, the operation of "the examination," etc. He even has interesting and provocative things to say about the way statements and ideas come to be accepted as true in an institutional context. Then, like a lot of social constructivists, he quickly concludes that truth reduces to these sociological facts he has described. That's glib and neither interesting or careful.
--jks
>>