File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_1995/f_Apr.95, message 35


Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 10:29:31 +0300 (IDT)
From: Gabriel Ash <ggabriel-AT-zoot.tau.ac.il>
Subject: Re: Foucault and Normativity


> On Tue, 11 Apr 1995 CROSBYJL-AT-ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu wrote:
> 
> > 
> > It is very interesting to me how Foucault's discriptions of diciplinary
> > practices and 'regulatory fuctions' are interpreted as attacks on them, 
> > and calls for their elimination.  To my knowledge, this is not
> > Foucault's goal.  An understanding of the ways in which we opperate 
> > within power relations and institutions does not call for the 
> > elimination of those relations and institutions, but allows us to 
> > locate sites from which we can resist.  Foucault is not an anarchist.  

Well, yes, if Anarchism is a sort of concerted party activity aimed at 
dismentling society. But such anarchism is a bit self-defeating. I would 
think that the refuse to 'call for the elimination' of whatsoverer is an 
extremely anarchic gesture, since any meaningful political action has to 
do with some sort of such elimination, whether it is the elimination of 
perverts or the elimination of prejudices. There is a problem there. What 
we get from F. is not a political counter-action, but a counter-political 
action, which nevertheless is political to the end. I am not sure I have 
it clear about the merits of such a stance.

On Tue, 11 Apr 1995, Kristin Switala wrote:
> 	The question, then, is what types of operations could be possible 
> (or are possible) within various power grids (institutions -- including 
> the Internet).  Do you think Foucault says much about this?  I do not, 
> but I could be incorrect.  This is where I find the French feminists, 
> particularly Irigaray, so appropriate.  I think that she offers 
> suggestions of ways women can operate within institutional power 
> structures.  However, she has been accused of being too "pragmatic" (and 
> some even criticize Foucault as being pragmatic, which I think is 
> problematic) in her suggestions for possible political actions.  Is 
> taking political action equivalent to being pragmatic?

	It seems to me that political action can be pragmatic only from 
the center. As such, pragmaticism seems apolitical and thechnocrat, 
without this to impede it from carrying out efficient political (and 
basically, stabilizing and conservatory) actions. 
	But there may be a problem with being a pragmatic non-conformist 
or to carry out any sort of political truly oppositional action 
pragmaticaly. First of all, because the most practical thing to do is 
always to comply with the center. A center would soon callapse once it 
looses this reasonability. A counter-action has been traditionally seen 
as requiring some sort of positive illusion, at least in the 
possibility of meaningful opposition, and a motive for bypassing the 
pragmatic, which was often a religious or religiouslike ideal.
	Accusing F. of being pragmatic is therefore accusing him of being 
conservative, who removes the posibility of change by discarding the 
meaningfullness of the political ideal. F. is trying, I think, to 
de-center the political arena itself, in a way this undermines both 
pragmatic politics and traditional revolutionary activities.  what is 
left is not clear. Yet I think that the 'care for the self' can be taken 
in an extremely unpragmatic sense. 

---------------------------

Gabriel Ash
Tel-Aviv
ggabriel-AT-zoot.tau.ac.il

---------------------------


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