[lbo-talk] Bush and Foucault

[wrobert at uci.edu]

^^
>
> CB: OK , but, you know, my impression is he sort of questions the
> enlightenment from the right, not the left. He seems to champion
> aristocrats
> down through the ages. I don't mean to insult anybody, but everytime I
> read
> him, I say to myself "this guy is a real snob; why do lefties like him ?"
> Honestly, I'm not trying to be a smart ass. Ever since high school (well I
> wasn't thinking "left/right" then ) it always seemed to me he was kind of
> a
> snob.  Of course, snobs can be smart; but, hey, lots of people are smart.
> I'm smart :>). I tend to treat smartness as a given. The question is which
> side is your smartness serving.
>
> Perhaps you could point out how his questioning is from the left.
>
Perhaps the best way to approach Nietzsche is the way that Marx approached
the work of Balzac.  He argued that Balzac's conservatism actually allowed
him a better perspective to look at the hypocrisies of the new age. 
Similarly, Nietzsche has a savage critique of the triumphalism of the
German nation from a very strange standpoint.  At the same time, I think
that N's critique of the state and of nationalism means that he can't be
completely dismissed as reactionary.  I think that the primary critique
that Foucault takes from N is this critique of progress.
>


> ^^^^^
> CB: I don't know if you care to give some specfic examples.  I don't
> really
> find it necessary to go too far from the Marxist framework to analyze the
> prison system under capitalism. In fact, I think leaving the Marxist
> framework on the state and class struggle, private property, would
> undermine
> an analysis of discipline and punishment, power, under capitalism (
> However,
> I guess Foucault doesn't entirely leave the Marxist framework). Sexuality
> might call for more new thinking, though even there...

I don't think that Foucault would deny the framework you discussed.  His
argument would be that these structures are not best understood as being
framed as repressive.  As I pointed out, Foucault's analysis of discipline
and the prison thinks through Marx's problematic.  I think that the
questions that are posed by the Feminist and the GLBT movements had to
develop a set of analytical tools for problems that did not fully fall
under the rubric of the Marxian problematic.  This is also true for
African-American thinkers who have expanded the Marxist framework (I am
thinking of DuBois' pioneering work) and at times criticizing it (here I
am thinking of some of the black nationalists) By the way, on the question
of sexuality, I don't think that you can ignore Marx's critique of
political economy to understand its dynamics, its just that those tools
are far from adequate to understanding it.


> I guess the impression one gets is that Foucauldians seem to think they
> have
> some new fundamental ideas on power. Hey, maybe we could lay out some more
> here beyond the one's Snitgrrrlll put in her post.
>
> ^^^^^
> It's an interview.
>
> ^^^^
> CB; I better dig up my copy.
>
> ^^^^^
>
>>
>> ^^^^
>> CB; How is his concept of sexuality materialist in Marx's senses ?  Real
>> question.
>
> It's a material practice used to constitute and legitimate a certain class
> domination.  (sex is the bourgeoisie what blood is to the aristocracy)
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: If you care to, I'd like to here your elaboration of this.  When you
> say
> "blood" do you mean kinship or literal blood.
This is a reference to kinship.  But Foucault uses the term blood to
indicate that the aristocracy thought of it as something that went beyond
something arbitrary.

         robert wood