Rob Schaap on Foucault

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>  > Justin says:
>>
>>  >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).
>=======
>How dare any social theorist think they could ever surpass Marx.
>
>
>>
>>  Foucault's theory, in short, is too abstract & idealist.  Here,
>>  Foucault the philosopher drags down Foucault the sociologist of
>>  knowledge.
>=============
>"A spider constructs operations which resemble those of a weaver, and
>a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of
>honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the
>best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before
>he constructs it in wax. At the end of every labour process, a result
>emerges which had already been conceived by the worker at the
>beginning, hence already existed ideally." [C vol. I, 284]
>
>"what Marx opposes is not simply simply 'idealism': it is the validity
>of the very distinction between the material and the ideal." [Marsden,
>23]
>
>  > >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
>=========
>No. It demands no such inference. The rapidity with which you cast M&F
>in zero-sum terms is frightening. And the ire with which Marxists
>attacked F reminds me of Northern Ireland. A total waste of time and
>'energy'. Such is the folly of attempting to achieve finality and
>unsurpassability in the study of societies.
>
>Ian

It seems to me to be an insult to Irish nationalists & socialists to 
compare criticisms of Foucault here to "Northern Ireland."

Besides, I'm making an argument that one may learn from Foucault 
without accepting his theoretical premises & conclusions.  What is 
your argument against my take?  That one cannot learn from Foucault 
without accepting his works wholesale?

Yoshie