Jim F.
On Tue, 12 Jun 2001 05:29:30 -0400 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
writes:
> Justin says:
>
> >>>There is nothing in Discipline and Punish, for example, once we
> >>>leave out the French philosophy, w hich isn't that much of it,
> that
> >>>Marxists and historical materialists should not hestitate to
> adopt
> >>>if it had adequate empirical support.
> >>>
> >>>--jks
> >>
> >>What political direction, if any, does _Discipline and Punish_
> >>suggest, though? Foucault ably makes an implicit argument that
> the
> >>result of Benthamite reforms (emphasis on the rehabilitation of
> the
> >>soul, etc.) may be an even more effective instrument of social
> >>control than spectacular torture of the body conducted in the name
> of
> >>pre-modern sovereigns, though the advocacy of Benthamite reforms
> was
> >>cloaked in the mantle of humanitarianism. In the USA, however,
> the
> >>trend in criminal justice, for the last couple of decades, has
> been
> >>toward the reversals of the very reforms that were objects of
> >>Foucault's critique: return of capital punishment; execution of
> the
> >>mentally ill or retarded; trials of juvenile offenders as adults;
> >>reintroduction of chain gangs; and so on (though prison
> overcrowding
> >>has also led to a counter-trend that calls for addiction treatment
> &
> >>the like rather than incarceration) -- in short, preference for
> >>punishment rather than rehabilitation (symbolized by the execution
> of
> >>Karla Fay Tucker).
> >>
> >>Yoshie
> >
> >What's your point, Yoshie, that we should support humanitarianism
> in
> >prison reform against current barbarism, and that F's theory about
>
> >how discourses of repression reflect institutional imperatives is
> >defective because--because what? Because it offers aid and comfort
>
> >to barbarism? Because ir criticises humanitarian reforms? Because
> >it's not true?
>
> Earlier in the thread, you said that "F the SoK [Foucault the
> ogist of Knowledge] is Weberian of a high order," & Jim
> Farmelant mentioned that "In his last years, Foucault began to take
>
> an interest in liberal thought, and he wrote on such people as
> Hayek." While Foucault's description of instances of panopticism,
> bio politics, governmentality, etc. is compelling in the sense that
>
> he captures a political logic of the modern welfare state
> (full-blown
> especially in the era of high social democracy -- _the era that has
>
> already passed_), Foucault suggests that what he found offensive is
>
> _inherent_ either in modernity (a la Weber) or in anything more than
>
> the minimal state (a la Hayek). So, Foucault's theory has a
> pessimistic cast especially in his Weberian strain, for he
> practically argues that modernity represents no progress whatsoever
>
> over the pre-modern state of affairs & that there is no way out of
> the iron cage that he describes, only an ever-present dialectic of
> power & resistance to it. That -- substitution of modernity for
> class relations as the cause of un-freedom -- is a theoretical
> error.
>
> Yoshie
>
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