[lbo-talk] Marx without quotation marks

[Miles Jackson]

Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Apr 1, 2009, at 4:36 PM, Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>> According to F, the modern penal system is an emergent property of 
>> social/discursive formations;  it is not a product of individual 
>> planning and motives.   (Man, you walked into that one!)
>
> Yeah yeah yeah. I've read Foucault, a fair amount in fact. And I 
> admire a lot of it a lot. But really, you can use this sort of 
> formulation to say pretty much whatever the fuck you want. You never 
> have to prove anything - you just say "the episteme made me do it." 
> You never have to contend with the facts that SA brought up, like the 
> trajectory of crime rates - or the fact that other societies didn't 
> have the same crime or incarceration booms as the U.S. Why?
>
> Tell it to the judge, man.
Foucault's not interested in explaining crime rate trends or 
cross-national differences in crime rates, so this is an odd criticism 
of his work.  Foucault would be the first to admit that he's not a 
social scientist, and he's not that adept at generating testable 
hypotheses.  Think of his work as a tool to be used in specific 
political contexts (--and let me extend the metaphor: it's silly to 
complain that a screwdriver doesn't drive nails very well.)

Miles