Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 19:42:22 -0500 (EST)
From: CETO <cetinerb-AT-boun.edu.tr>
Subject: Re: ETHICS AND POST STRUCT.


On Fri, 19 Jan 1996, Gregory A. Coolidge wrote:

> > 
> > 
> > >  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. 
> > 
> > Critique isn't pessimism, is it?  I thought it was what Nietzsche 
> > called it, a gay science, the fro:liche Wissenschaft.  As Nietzsche 
> > said about nihilism--we're not introducing pessimism; we're pointing 
> > out the pessimism that metaphysics and ontology have built into their 
> > system.  Foucault's standing invitation to alterity seems very 
> > optimistic.  
> > 
> >  Rick Duerden
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Pessimism or optimism?, its all a matter of one's perspective isn't it.
> Foucault's invitation for alterity (transgression?, resistance?) is only
> optimistic if one is willing to accept, as Nietzsche, Bataille, Blanchot,
> Deleuze and Foucault appear to do, that any dream of wide-scale emancipation
> is purely illusory.  Foucault, like these other authors, believes that power/
> socialization/construction is so overwhelming in modern liberal societies, that the most one can hope for are brief instances of transgression, small
>  victories over discrete forms of domination, and some small glimmer of hope 
> that one's self can be self-created.  If one is willing to accept such a
>  watered-down version of humanism, a humanism that Foucualt  would call quite
>  naive in its dream of human freedom, than Foucault's call for alterity does 
> indeed seem optimistic, if only a highly guarded and skeptical optimism.  
> For those individuals who are unwilling to jettison the hopes of liberal
>  humanism, however naive such hopes might be in actuality, Foucualt's political
> project does indeed seem the height of pessimism.
>  
> 
> 
thanks, that is just what i think.
CETO



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