> Firstly, I don't say what you say I say - I don't disagree with
> the above
ok. misunderstood you then.
> ...Secondly, none of the above
> amounts to
> a hill of beans unless you ground it
don't disagree -- but what on earth makes you think foucault's 'histories' are not 'material' (though I conced 'grounded' can imply other things than that)?
>; give its dynamism a material
> engine,and history a shape.
Whose shape Rob? Such 'shapes' are not neutral, they are interested knowledge systems. Having said so, foucault's writing, like any historiography gives history a shape. You're not really looking for engines or shapes though are you? Isn't your objecttion about the avoidance of a stated ideological premise? That, in the end, Foucault fails for you simply by not *being* a *Marxist* in a way you recognise. If that's not right, I'm sorry -- please tell me what more precisely it is you want from this machine/shape.
> We can only understand ourselves, our
> constraints and
> potentials in terms of history.
And you reckon Foucault disagrees with this???
> For discourse to explain us,
> discoursemust be explained. Economists look at surface phenomena
> and Marx looked
> underneath. Genealogists look at discourse, and Marx looked
> underneath.
But it's not 'underneath'. It's not at all. It's a bloody obvious surface. Capitalism, profit, etc. aren't hidden motivations. It's not that Foucault doesn't look at the meanings of things (words and things together over and over again) but that he doesn't look for what's hidden as somehow deeper and more important. What we do, that's what matter; the effects of that.
>And it was Marx who came up with the quote I used about
> ruling classes and
> ruling ideas.
And he is wrong. How otherwise did he think in any 'different' way?
> Why? So the motions to which Foucault refers (with his
> 'autonomous discursive blocs' and 'technologies of power' lingo) make
> useful sense. That's why.
I don't really get what you mean by this. How does the previous sentence make sense of Foucault?
> What's wrong with the following quote? Is it clearer than anything
> Foucault EVER wrote on the matter? Does it explain more? Is it more
> convincing?
>
> Nothing, much, yes, and bloody oath!
And if I don't agree -- in this great unchanging expanse of your truth with a capital T -- then I am just wrong, deluded, and only going back to Marx will save me? I don't devalue what Marx has to say, to me, about my world, to my students, to my work. But there are real limits as well. And Foucault helps with some of those. I'm not setting him up as an alternate unassailable Marx/God, I don't desire anything so infallible. But when I read this Foucault isn't Marx stuff I am just totally bemused.
> ...Quite right - within a material setting, without grasp of which
> you can't
> go beyond this sort of assertion.
Such assertions matter but, in any case, what makes you think Foucault doesn't recognise the significance of material settings? And what, Rob, of the differences between the material setting of Marx and you+I? Those are just not important material settings, I suppose? Good to have someone in touch with the Truth to sort out what materiality matters and what doesn't.
Ah, I'm an irritable person today.
Catherine