Rob Schaap on Foucault

Catherine Driscoll catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au
Mon Jun 11 07:33:52 PDT 2001


Damn -- I just wrote the longest reply to this post. And the computer crashed. Truly I can't do it again. So a brief version.


> Not fair, Catherine.

Yes. I apologise. I'm having a bad long weekend. Queen's birthday, hah!


> So I despise Nietzche, and I don't like his influence. So I
> prefer Marx
> and his. Where'd you get the idea that's all I read? I think
> Schumpeter,Veblen and Keynes fill in lots of useful gaps. Bits of
> Weber are worth
> nicking, too, and Justin probably has it right; that means bits of
> F. are,
> too (something I never denied, btw).
>
> And why get so cross with me when I've tried hard to answer
> everything you
> wrote as best I could? And why is Marx's explanation of epoch and
> transition a contradiction? Doesn't it highlight the importance of
> explaining discourse itself? That making knowledge the apparent
> agent gets
> us nowhere if we're trying to explain where we are?
>
> I just don't understand what an autonomous historical bloc is if
> it started
> in the 18th century.
> I just don't see where progress lies if
> 'man's' face
> is effaced by the tide.

I'll just pick these last few points to do again (!). 'Man' is a problem -- subjectivity as defined by those discourses he has been tracking through the order of things like economy and anatomy, but also as something that comes before them -- that Enlightenment truth of Man you seem (sometimes) to want. I simply do not get why for a Marxist *now* there are not evident problems with this.


> I just don't see where 'there is no
> truth' can
> help.

Because there is none. Why lie about it?


> I think this stuff important, and I think Marx did, too.
> So I'm
> with Marx on these important criteria. 'What we do' has to matter
> for a
> reason, that's all.

Yes. But what how what we do is named/understood, and what matters for what reasons, are not true for all times and all places and it's really important to think about how those names/understandings/significances/reasons work in specific (material) situations. (Call me craxy but I think Marx would have been, more or less, for Foucault.)


> Anyway, I'll leave it there - no-one seems much interested in arguing
> beyond the odd general contradiction and accusation of illiteracy,
> anyway...

That's not what I'm doing. I think you are choosing not to read things that don't fit for you. Not the same as saying you can't. And i just heard a news bulletin about McVeigh's execution and I wonder why bother arguing about Marx. 'Enlightened' humanity is pretty hideous.

Catherine



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