File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_1995/f_Apr.95, message 66


Date: Fri, 14 Apr 1995 10:22:40 -0700 (MST)
From: AMKIRBY-AT-CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: Foucault and Normativity



	Joanna Crosby is being disingenuous when she writes--

	"I would ask that if someone doesn't understand something
	said on this list that they request for (sic) an explanation
	without recourse to the American tendency to dismiss 
	intellectuals or blaming the person who posted for what
	is not understood"

	Much of the turbulence on this list at present concerns
	the question of who gets to decide the tropes, NOT the
	level of difficulty of the discourse.  I note with keen
	interest, for example, that no-one has responded to
	John Hollister's very interesting message concerning
	his experiences as a gay male. Why?--because the 
	arbiters of taste are busy trying to erect some very
	artificial barriers in order to exclude certain types
	of discussion. Hence the rather bizarre assertion that
	Foucault would have written about sexuality in exactly
	the way he did even if he had not been gay, and consequently
	we do not need to examine his personality.

	I find the attempt to turn this back to some phenomenon
	that is being termed "gumpism" to be quite amusing,
	albeit originally confusing, as I have not seen the movie.
	For my part, I make no requests that this become part
	of the "Dumb and Dumber" movement. Instead, I would
	simply request that the philosophers rein themselves
	in a little. While they may endorse each other on
	this list, I would remind them that they have plenty of
	colleagues who bring their own intellectual razors to
	bear on all modern discourse--I have heard a professional
	philosopher on my campus describe all contemporary
	European philosophy as "boozy thinking"!  In short, it
	is the philosophers on this list who are most likely 
	to be doing any "blaming" that is getting done.....
andrew kirby

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