On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 MRDelucia at aol.com wrote:
> Charles Brown wrote:
>
> "Mike, Thanks for bringing this up. One reaction I have is I like the
> pre-Foucault theories of class struggle and national/racial liberation
> better than Foucault's."
>
> By the pre-Foucault theory of cass struggle, I assume (please correct me
> if otherwise) that you mean the various forms of Marxism... I also like
> Marx's theory -generally speaking- than Foucault's, but I do think the
> way Foucault treats the way power functions in society should be
> addressed for several reasons: (1) to show those post-modernists some
> good old fashion modernism and (2) to generate a Marxist queer theory
> rather than a post-modern queer theory which I described in my first
> post in the topic... I wouldn't mind sharing some of Foucault with y'all
> to see if his ideas and Marx's can be somehow wedded together? or simply
> dismissed?
>
Foucault said many times that he's a Marxist. He just thought incessant, quasi-religious worship of Marx was tiresome. (He felt no compulsion to put obligatory footnotes to Marx in his work to demonstrate to the true believers that he was truly one of them.) In my view, there's not really much difference in the analysis of ideology in Discipline and Punish (say) and the German Ideology.
Miles