>But the idea that F has a poor or no account of class is different
>from the idea that his discussion of prison reform is outmoded
>because it attacks a humanitarianism that is passe in this
>retributive age.
Had Foucault not set out to create a Weberian theory of modernity, rejecting Marxism, he (with his towering intellect) would have been able to chart the vicissitudes of prison reforms (rehabilitation under social democracy, retribution under neoliberalism) better. After all, such reforms are determined in the last instance by changing requirements of capital accumulation while mediated by concrete social formations (which explains the vast gap in the rate of incarceration, etc. between the USA and the other rich nations), but Foucault couldn't bring himself to employing what he would have thought of as Marxist "reductionism" & "determinism" (not even Althusserian versions of them).
Foucault's theory, in short, is too abstract & idealist. Here, Foucault the philosopher drags down Foucault the sociologist of knowledge.
>I am not prepared to ditch class analysis, as you well know. My
>point was not that we should adopt Foucault of D&P in the place of
>historical materialism, but that we should use Foucauldian-style
>institutional analyses to fill in the gap in historical materialist
>explanation between the abstract truth that class relations
>determine ideas in some way, and the particular determinations that
>emerge in concrete contexts.
I'm in favor of the above, but doing so demands that we leave out Foucault's theoretical premises & conclusions, while learning from him "in medias res" as it were.
Yoshie