Date: Thu, 13 Apr 1995 14:08:01 -0400 (EDT) From: ANTOINE GOULEM <goua-AT-alcor.concordia.ca> Subject: Re: Foucault and Revolution The question about Foucault and Revolution is another one which leads me to see a conneciton between Kant and Foucault. With respect to Foucault, consider for instance the exchange that is published in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-77_, ed. C. Gordon. In his debate with Maoists on the topic of popular justice, he is asking them to consider the ways inwhich the power dynamic embodied by the holding of a trial is not altered simply by the fact that it's our team in charge. The topography and theatre, as it were of a trial are not only reflections of the power dynamic in our society, they are part of it, they produce it, and reproduce it. The staging of trials is the result of material conditions, which include symbolic interaction. Foucault was not challenging the claim thatthe owners of the factories were oppressing the workers in ways which required a response; nor was he, it seems to me, pointing out the problem with their desire to hold the trial as an existential version of the turn the other cheek view of political action. What I think does follow from Foucault's views is that the appropriate form of response to oppression emerges out of the specific condiitons of oppression. It may be that I'm making him out to be Rosa Luxembourg. Antoine Goulem, goua-AT-alcor.concordia.ca ------------------
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005