Debates

LeoCasey at aol.com LeoCasey at aol.com
Fri Oct 13 11:02:46 PDT 2000


Peter:

I think that your stance is interesting and thoughtful, but it becomes tangled up in the contradictions of a rigorously Foucaultian politics, unable to conceive of any basis for resistance which is not internal to the relationship of power itself. Yet you are not pleased with where the logic of that politics leads, so you end up jettisoning it at the last moment without acknowledging it.

The contradiction is clearest, I think, in this passage: << If we want a society based where 'the free development of each is the precondition for the free development of all' (still to me about the best way to express my desire for a utopia), then I doubt that the falsely-disinterested language of justice is the best way to get there. >>

But what is this classic Marxian formula, if not very clearly a principle of distributive justice? If you want to forego the language of justice, you can't very well appeal to this formula -- or to the common good -- as if it is somehow outside of that language. Rather, you must grapple with how it is possible to construct at least provisional concepts of "justice," which escape some of the strictures you see in the common use of the language.

Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --



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