Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 00:49:30 -0500 (EST) From: John Ransom <ransom-AT-dickinson.edu> Subject: foucault on power On Thu, 14 Mar 1996, Richard Turner Clark wrote: >I am a fourth year student with a question about Foucault. I am >trying to come to a conclusion as to why Foucault was so >interested in ower. Can anybody out there help me out? I am >just beginning to see how magical his works are but am having >trouble with the origins of his interest surrounding this topic. > Thank you, Rich Clark Mr. Clark, I think one of the motivations behind Foucault's use of this word as a theme was his desire to find some other rubric or paradigm through which to elaborate oppositional possibilities. Quite simply, I think Foucault saw a lot of problems with the practical effects and even simple persuasive power of traditional left ways of schematizing social dynamics. Instead of talking about the bourgeoisie or the state, Foucault says he wants to talk about "power." In a way, this is kind of a joke. One of F's problems with the terms "bourgeoisie" and "state" was that these hypostastized--may as well say it, reified!--terms were such inadequate, poorly designed, and only occasionally insightful intellectual tools. So what does Foucault do? He hyper-hypostastizes the whole thing by out-abstracting everyone with the move to "power." This hyper-abstraction was designed to keep the label itself at arms distance, as needing clarification *before* habitual assumptions could categorize and file. Foucault's intent, I feel, was to move the discussion away from the significance of the label--"power" being too general to permit meaningful analysis--and towards the actual mechanics and strategies of intersecting spheres of power. But in fact this move failed. I wonder if Foucault knew there was a fairly big literature on "power" in the United States? Did F know about Steve Lukes' book? About Dahl? I wonder. For a very long time, in fact, the label "power" and its companion "power/knowledge" distracted people from actually reading F. --John Ransom ransom-AT-dickinson.edu ------------------
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005