[lbo-talk] internally riven

wrobert at uci.edu wrobert at uci.edu
Mon Apr 13 12:00:27 PDT 2009


I think that we can divide Foucault into two at this point.

1. Chris Doss strawman "Foucault"

Power is

--unitary

--transcendental

--transhistorical

--has an uncanny double in the horror film and Hobbes

--probably has something to do with 'fag' stuff like S&M

2. Actual Foucault

Power is

--immanent to social relations

--historical and particular

--multiple and full of contradictions and resistances

--contingent

Foucault never produces a book called power for a reason. He produces analysis of institutions, forms of knowledge production, practices. Within those practices/institutions/knowledge formations, there is an analysis of the circulation of power and resistances within them. These are defined by mutation, crisis, and transformation, ratherthan by stability, though. There are a few moments when he produces hesitant (very hesitant) hypotheses on what might be the dominant structures of modern power relations. But those are always theories of the shift to the time of the factory, the time of the modern prison, and those are always in crisis, perhaps even driven by crisis.

I think that its worth noting that terms like 'master narrative' never come into Foucault's vocabulary, nor does he show much interest in Saussure. Instead, if you want to think of a precedent to Foucault's project it would be in Canguilhan's notion of the normal and the pathological, a narrative that does not fit in easily with the structuralism/phenomenology divide.

robert wood


> You're not getting it Miles. My objection is not to the notion that there
> are social structures that operate independently of any individual (duh).
> My objection is to the notion that there is ONE structure, with nothing
> outside it, that determines everything, with no input from anything
> outside the structure. Such as, Communists and Christians riding freedom
> busses. Your immediate recation was to assert that the freedom bus riding
> was really, despite the beliefs of the people on the busses, all about
> reinscribing relations of power inside the structure. That they might have
> been acting outside the structure does not seem to be conceivable to you.
>
>
>> At 05:03 PM 4/12/2009, Miles Jackson
>> > >
>> > This is an apt illustration of the disciplinary silos
>> in academe.  The notion that there are social
>> structures that operate independently of any individual is a
>> fundamental idea covered in any Soc 101 class.  In this
>> respect, Foucault's work is almost banal sociology.  It
>> fascinates me that a fundamental principle in one academic
>> discipline is construed by someone trained in another
>> discipline as outrageous solipsism.
>> >
>> > Miles
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
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