Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 11:07:00 -0500 (EST)
From: John Ransom <ransom-AT-dickinson.edu>
Subject: Re: foucault, power and authenticity


On Fri, 7 Feb 1997 brehkopf-AT-nexus.yorku.ca wrote:

> 
> 
> At the risk of regenerating the entire discussion about the "uses" of
> Foucault (or more specifically Foucault's *work*, for the sake of the
> person who chided us all for our blase' imprecision)....
> 
> Perhaps it is *ironic* that there resulted such a large industry of
> theorising and a smaller industry applying his methods. I'm not sure
> it's paradoxical, though, and I'm almost certain that such a response is
> neither surprising nor unwarranted.
> 
> Foucault proposes a fairly new "theory" (of power, the subject,
> whatever), one that goes very very deep. Now, what should people do in 
> response? Should they accept his work, without hesitation or after
> cursory and superficial examination? Or should they - and should
> Foucault encourage them to - submit that work to thorough and rigorous 
> examination? 
> 
> Foucault was calling for nothing less than a paradigm shift, and to me a
> large part of his work suggests that such paradigm shifts are not simply
> the result of mere choices to believe X rather than Y. I take it that
> for Foucault, X (or Y...) wasn't just an idea to Foucault, to be taken
> off or put on like a shirt, but rather that X was
> in some way descriptive of one's subjectivity for him. I don't recall
> Foucault ever implying or suggesting explicitly that "we" are any more
> capable of rising out of / above / beyond our way of thinking so easily 
> than was any other generation caught in these disciplines he describes.
> 
> So, far from it being paradoxical that the bulk of scholarship that has
> resulted from Foucault's work is theory rather than application, it
> would be paradoxical if "we" all did what Foucault said was largely not
> in our...ummmm....*power* to do. 
> 
> I don't know if this makes sense, so feel free to point out where I've
> gone wrong in my argument, such as it is. (And yeah, I know, I too have
> claimed to "use" Foucault in an applied context...I never claimed *I* am
> not paradoxical!)
> 
> Peace,
> 
> Blaine Rehkopf
> Philosophy
> York University
> CANADA 
>  
> -- 
> 

If I could second Professor Rehkopf's point about the importance of theory
with regard to Foucault: His particular importance, it seems to me, is as
a theorist of opposition in a post-Wall world. There is a great deal of
confusion, angst, and uncertainty concerning the demise of the
"Revolution" as a viable oppositional paradigm. Foucault, I think, was
trying to present a new picture of the political world and a new
justification for oppositional thought and practice appropriate to that
world. If I may be allowed to mention it, I pursue this theme in my book,
just released by Duke University Press, titled _Foucault's Discipline :
The Politics of Subjectivity_.

John Ransom
Political Science
Dickinson College, Carlisle PA
ransom-AT-dickinson.edu