Date: Mon, 03 Jun 96 09:38:18 EST From: "Joe Cronin" <croninj-AT-thomasmore.edu> Subject: Re[2]: Events and historical change Does one have to have a theory to speak of historical change? If one describes historical shifts, as Foucault does, in boith discourse, disciplinary techniques, 'regimes of truth' etc., etc., than one also has to encounter the probolem of how these shifts were brought about. In "Truht and Power" (P/K, 114) Foucautl says: One can agree that structuralsim formed that most systematic effort to evacuate the concept of teh event, not only from ethnology but from a whole series of other sciences and in hte extreme case from history. In that sense, I don't know who could be more of an anti-strucutralist thatn myself...It's not a matter of locating everything one one level, that of the event, but of realising that there are actually a whole order of levels of different types of events differing in amplitude, chronological breadth, and capacity to produce effects. If "events" aren't causes for FOucault, then what the hell are they? There are two choices: Hegel or Marx. If one claims that discourse shifts, then one cann either claim that shifts are internal to discourse (Hegel) - in which case we should all be logicians, or we can claim that "events" cause shifts (Marx), and spell out, EMPIRICALLY, the conditions whcih give rise to these events - in whcih case we have to include "non-discursive" (social, insitutional, etc.) factors. Why be mystical about it? Real events brought about the French Revolution, the Russian revolution, and the Vietnam War. Can't we desribe the factors which led to these (larger) events? Isn't an historical "rupture," to use Althusser's language, a "fusion" of an accumulation of events, whcih form into a ruptural unity? Isn't Foucault's "conception" (however we should say it) of historical change similar? Maybe I should say this another way: isn't there a period in Foucault's writing (esp. the mid-70s) where he is Marxian - where his concerns are consistent with a Marxian coneption of events, of hsitory, and of change? A period where Foucault deploys history in a CRITICAL manner? Isn't there a period where he isn't that interested in a [personal] transformation, a Nietzschean self-transformation, or Balnchot's "limit experience" or any of that existentialist garbage, where Foucault is actually revolutionary? If not, I agree with Baudrillard, FORGET FOUCAULT.
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