Date: Tue, 12 Mar 96 09:11:55 EST From: "Joe Cronin" <croninj-AT-thomasmore.edu> Subject: Re[2]: >Habermas is Habermas, 'nough said. Response to JLN et al: The problem with the Gilligan-style feminist "rationality" is twofold: first of all, she is not describing a rationality, but its "female" counterpart, compassion, sentiment, etc. Here she is caught in the same old jargon as the neo-Kantians. What I would like someone to comment on is FOucault's notion that: 1. a rationality is immanent to a discourse (HS, ENGLISH edition(sorry), p. 94-95: 1. "Power is not something that is acquired, seized, or shared" 2. "Relations of power are not in a position of exteriority.." 3. "there is no binary and all-encompassing opposition between rulers and ruled at teh root of power relations..." 4. "Power realtions are both intentional and nonsubjective." Alongside these Spinozistic (can I say that?) considerations of th immanence of rationalities in power relations, I'd like to throw in one more theme: "I think, in fact, that reason is self-created, which is why I have tried to analyse forms of rationality: different foundations, different creations, different modifications in which rationalities engender one another, oppose and pursue one another." (Politics, Philosophy, Culture 28-29) I think that F's conception of ratioanlities and power relations poses a severe challenge to the critical theorists, and that the heart of teh challenge concenrs the two principles mentioned: the (self)cretivity of ratioanlities, and the principle of immanence. For the "critters," reason has an exteriority - it lies apart from power relations, just as the Descartes found it necessary for the subject to stand apart from its object. Joe Cronin TMC croninj-AT-thomasmore.edu ------------------
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