File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_1996/96-07-06.052, message 87


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.



   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005