Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 02:23:28 -0500 (EST) From: malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com> Subject: Re: foucault and sokal Sigmund, I don't see how my understanding of Foucault, whatever it is, can make it inappropriate for you to claim an interest in his critique. You bring to Foucault your own understandings and your own questions, and make use of him in any way you find appropriate; so do I. I don't find the concerns you spoke of either "vulgar" or "reactionary", and I probably share many of them; but for me personally Foucault is useful precisely because his thinking cuts into, so to speak, the flab of these concerns -- cuts into what I regard as muscle and reveals it as flab. "Knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting." You say the issue of power is especially urgent to those with less power. I would question this; I would say it is most urgent to those who need to maintain power. Also, I would like to ask you: if power is something one has or doesn't have, and if you regard yourself as privileged and thus -- I assume -- not among those who are totally deprived of it, then why your interest in these questions? Assuming that privilege is a good thing and that it also requires the presence of people who are less privileged, are you and I not all set? What are we seeking? You say you wouldn't insist on the innocence of your perspective with respect to power. Why this word "innocence", which hints at a connection between power and guilt? Do you regard power as tainted with guilt? Is the ideal, then, that we should all be powerless? I cannot try to explain to you how foucault's discussion makes your concerns irrelevant or beside the point, because I don't see how it could do that -- how can anything anybody thinks make _your_ concerns irrelevant? I also cannot say what "criminality" or "science" mean to me -- they can mean so many different things, depending on the circumstances: on whether I happen to be a criminal, a victim of a crime, a juror, a witness, a claimant in an anti-pollution suit, a psychiatrist, a psychiatric patient, a laboratory worker, etc. -m
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