Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 07:56:51 +1100 (EST)
From: Paul Rutherford <pxr608-AT-anu.edu.au>
To: foucault-AT-world.std.com
Subject: Re: Foucault and the Proletariat (fwd)


On Wed, 7 Dec 1994, Spoon wrote:

> From: Riley, Dylan (G) SOCIO <riley-AT-soc.sscnet.ucla.edu>
> 
> If you seek to understand Foucault's politics, Perry Anderson's two books, In 
> The Tracks of Historical Materialism and Considerations on Western Marxism 
> are extremely useful.  Foucault's politics, or rather lack thereof, are the 
> result of the defeat of the Western European proletariat, and the political 
> malaise which followed the debacle of May '68.  In this sense Paris, 
> following the inelectuable law of uneven development, shifted from a position 
> as the vanguard of progressive intellectual culture, to  being the vanguard 
> of the reaction.  Foucault's political position is therefore objectively 
> reactionary, as it is the result of a reactionary conjunture determined in 
> the last instance by the shape of the political class struggle, and the 
> topography of a changing mode of production.  Of course this does not speak 
> to the value of his work which is unquestionable.  But Foucault's writings 
> must be 'read' in a productive (Althusserian) sense.  This means that his 
> writings must be transformed through intellectual labor in order to make them 
> useful in the struggle against capitalism, which is in the last instance the 
> only 'progressive' political struggle.
> 
Oh God!  "inelectuable law", "objectively progressive" "the struggle 
against capitalism ... the only 'progressive' political struggle."

Old Marxists never die, they just keep knocking on your door like the 
Jehovah's Witnesses!

It seems to me that Dylan, you seem to have missed the point that post 
1968 Marxism was in fact dead, it only took time for its almost complete 
failure as a 'progressive' politics to become bleeding obvious.  Indeed, 
that parrot is bleeding demised!

Perry Anderson is a good example of how to completely misunderstand 
almost everything Foucault had to say.

Each to her/his own I suppose, but flogging the 'Old Mole' is even more 
futile than some of the other trivia seen on this list in recent times.

If this is flamming, sorry to offend. I'm signing off the list. 



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