Date: Fri, 3 Feb 1995 13:00:43 -0800 From: hbrace-AT-leland.stanford.edu (Harrison Brace) Subject: Re: Foucault and Power I concur with the fatigue expressed about the standard arguments against Foucault's conception of power (it's everywhere, hence nowhere, or that it excludes any possibility of resistance). One of the more interesting critiques (a very friendly one, of course) comes from Judith Butler's last book, _Bodies that Matter_. After arguing that Foucault shows how power acts to materialize bodies on a grid of intelligibility, she criticizes Foucault for not taking into account what she refers to as a "radical zone of unintelligibility." In her own words: Insofar as Foucault traces the process of materialization as an investiture of discourse and power, he focuses on that dimension of power that is productive and formative. But we need to ask what constrains the domain of what is materializable, and whether there are _modalites_ of materialization -- as Aristotle suggests, and Althusser is quite to cite. To what extent is materialization governed by principles of intelligibility that requires and institute a domain of radical _unintellibibility_ that resists materialization altogether or that remains radically dematerialized? Does Foucault's effort to work the nations of discourse and materiality though one another fail to account for not only what is _excluded_ from the economies of discursive intelligibility that he describes, but what _has to be excluded_ for those economies to function as self-sustaining systems? (35) ***************************************************************************** Harrison Brace Stanford, Department of Comparative Literature hbrace-AT-leland.stanford.edu snmail: Department of Comparative Literature Encina Hall Stanford, CA 94305-2031 Sanity is the lot of those who are most obtuse, for lucidity destroys one's equilibrium: it is unhealthy to honestly endure the labors of the mind which incessantly contradict what they have just established. Georges Bataille ***************************************************************************** ------------------
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005