> > CB: Some - like Sahlins in _Waiting for Foucault_ - seem to think he
> > reduces social relations to a power/violence instinct; like every
> > individual has an instinctive will-to-power.
> >
>That's a pretty strange reading of Foucault. For Foucault, appeals to
>
>instinct are discourse to be analyzed, not the cause of social
>relations. He's a careful enough historian not to make that gross
>category error.
>
>Miles
>
>^^^
>CB: Doesn't seem such a strange reading when you consider the Foucault
>statements Ted sent to the list a little while back on violence as
>instinctive; and all the micro-power readings of Foucault, power, power
>everywhere.
Are you talking about this passage? "Instinctive violence" here does not refer to individuals but to knowledge as a social process. So I think Miles is right about strange reading.
>Knowledge does not slowly detach
>itself from its empirical roots, the initial needs from which it
>arose, to become pure speculation subject only to the demands of
>reason; its development is not tied to the constitution and
>affirmation of a free subject; rather, it creates a progressive
>enslavement to its instinctive violence." pp. 162-3
><<http://www.thefoucauldian.co.uk/ngh.pdf>http://www.thefoucauldian.co.uk/ngh.pdf>