Date: Thu, 20 Oct 94 07:25:37 EDT
From: Malgosia Askanas <ma-AT-dsd.camb.inmet.com>
To: foucault-AT-world.std.com
Subject: Re: Foucault and 'the starving millions'


Tristan wrote:

> The Iran case is, I think, an important element in thinking F.'s
> practical politics, an element which, as I've said before, more than
> a few "radical democrats" and "progressives" who would otherwise love to
> include F. on their intellectual/political resumes are wary of
> engaging because they are profoundly troubled by this evidence that
> he was, at least on one occasion, perfectly willing to carry
> through on a thoroughly Nietzschean political ethic.

This is perhaps a completely irrelevant tangent, but one that interests
me.  What does it mean to talk about "practical politics" and
"carrying through an ethic" when the events in question are happening
in a different and irremediably distant country?  When one uses the
concept "will of the people" with respect to events happening in one's
own country, one tends to use it as a sort of abstract machine which
is in an interesting and often quite sinister dialogue with other
aspects of oneself.  Would Foucault have actively supported the Iranian 
revolution had been an Iranian?  If not -- or if there is no way to impart 
any meaning to that question -- what kind of a practical ethical act
is it, this distant "support"?  

- malgosia