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 ------------------
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005