File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_1996/f_Jan1.96, message 42


From: Samuel Lawrence Binkley <sbinkley-AT-pipeline.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 1996 13:21:40 -0500
Subject: ETHICS AND POST STRUCT.


 
 
I'm dropping into this discussion without having followed its (long?)
development, so forgive me if I make redundant points etc.  But I would
like to respond to the last post: 
 
 
On Thu, Jan 18, 1996 9:05:37 AM  at Erik D Lindberg wrote: 
 
>I think that poststructuralism may go down in the annals of the history  
>of philosophy NOT as a break with humanism, but as the somewhat
pessimistic,  
>certainly ironic, very cautious and in some ways conservative (not in the 

>Republican/Democrat sort of way) period in which the lustre of idealism  
>was removed from certain enlightenment or Romantic claims about the  
>rights or dignity of "man."   
 
 
Erik: This sounds very much like those readings of post-structuralism which
permit  poststructualists only enough anti-foundationalism for them to fall
flat on their faces.  That is to say: if post structuralists are to be
considered for how they will ulitimately be written in the History of
Philosophy (I add the caps which I think belong in your post), then
certainly they will appear as only a marginal disruptive moment in an
otherwise linear development.  If post structuralists are forced to choose
between "pessimism" vs "optimism", where their real focus is on closure vs 
uncertainty, (or what ever you like), then, yes, pessimism more accurately
describes the post strucuralist.  But if post structuralism teaches us
anything, it is both the inevitability of being forced into the kind of
periodization you attempt here, and the inevitability of such attempts
meeting with inadequacy.  There is no such thing as a post structuralist
paradigm/rupture etc.  These are the terms of the History of Philosophy:
once one adopts this terminology one is already in the game of this
narrative: once post structuralism has been reduced to paradigmatic
signifigance, it's character is dissipated.   
 
To ask the question: how will post structuraism be written in the History
of Philosophy is to give post structuralists just enough rope to hang
themselves.  which inevitably they will do.  The point is to disrupt the
reductionist monopoly the History of Philosophy exerts over the production
of texts, discourses and ideas.   
 
sam

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