File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_1997/foucault.9705, message 123


Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 09:14:20 +0100
From: ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk (COLIN WIGHT)
Subject: Re: more on nasty cyber-nazis


Miles, 

Thanks for taking the time to reply.


>
>Yes, this whole topic can invite ontological questions--if you're a 
>philosopher of ontology! 

No, that is precisely my point Foucault can't help positing an ontology.
What work it does, how it functions and what are it's limits are all vital
questions. Equally, the social world contains social objects and beliefs and
about those objects and beliefs about those beliefs, and the relationship
between social objects and the beliefs about those objects is crucial in
understanding how discourses function, as anybody in Britain during the
80's, who thought about unemployment will attest to: that is, (i)
unemployment is the result of fecklessness; or, (ii) unemployment is the
result of structural conditions. Which discourse is the better description
cannot be understood independent of the discourse ontology (unemployment)?
To tell me only that there was a discourse of unemployment being the result
of fecklessness, is simply to tell me what I already know. If you want to
tell me how such a discourse functions one can't help but to refer to the
ontological object (unemployment). The belief that you need not concern
yourself with ontology is itself ontological and that Foucualtians tend to
deal with an ontology of discourses does indeed lead to the charge of
discursive idealism.



Whe (If you have a hammer, everything looks like
>a nail, I'd say.)  Look, my deity argument works with AIDS too.  In order
>for the statement "AIDS is caused by HIV" to function as a truth 
>statement in any society, there have to be discursive practices and
>related nondiscursive practices in place: medical research, popular and
>academic reports, etc.  

Yes.

Perhaps the effects of HIV are independent of
>our research, but the truth that HIV causes AIDS can only socially
>function as a truth if it is embedded in discursive and related non-
>discursive activity. 

Absolutely incorrect. The truth of the HIV virus causing AIDS, is
independent of our discourse of such a link, as Foucault found out to his
cost. You seem to be regularly confusing epistemological statements (our
belief that HIV causes AIDS) with ontology (whether HIV does indeed cause
AIDS). This distinction is vital because we could be wrong about this link;
that is HIV may not cause AIDS, irrespective of our discourses that it does.
I don't see how you maintain fallibilty without ontology. After all, if our
discourses aren't about something then what is there to be wrong about?

 A Foucauldian analysis uncovers this social
>activity.

Well maybe, but so does Marx, Mannheim, Machivelli.....

>
>There is only a "serious aporia" here if you demand that social analysis
>should uncover the ontological strata beneath social practices and
>language.  That is simply not necessary, as sociologists of religion
>have quite clearly demonstrated.

But religion deals in things that only have an effect if they are believed.
Medical things "care", amongst others, little whether they are believed or
not. Religous entities, and not wanting to upset anyone, are wholly social
constructed, diseases may not be.


>
>If anywhere, the aporia is in the conventional materialist account:
>as if the production of scientific truth does not require human activity
>and discourse! 

Sorry, can you run that by me again? What in a materialist account demands
such an absurdity? This is a straw figure socially constructed to take easy
pot shots at.

I am dismayed whenever a researcher claims that social
>interaction and discourse have little role to play in their theory or
>findings, for the research is only made socially meaningful and
>important via discourse and social activity. 

Again, please try and specify who is guilty of this henious crime. Equally
absurd, however, is the opposite error of dealing only with the discourses.
My argument is that both are required. Yes knowledge is a social product,
but equally, knowledge is of things, which enables us to at least hang onto
the notion that some knowledge may be better than others.

 --A little thought
>experiment: imagine no professional conventions, no journals, no
>e-mail, no research meetings, no grant proposals.  Could the
>scientific community produce truths?

This is not my position but a figment of your imagination projected, I
suggest, in order to validate your latent idealism. ;-)

>
>I think this whole issue really comes down to what interests each of us.

here I think we have to seriously disagree. Moreover, I don't even think
your reading of Foucualt is consistent with Foucualt. After all, Foucault
was an empiricist and didn't deal in things that didn't apply. Even
discourses of madness have to exist (ontology) prior to you talking about them.


>I am fascinated by the fact that people at different times and in
>different societies have claimed truth status for an amazing variety
>of different and often conflicting statements.  What roles do
>language and other forms of social interaction play here?

But it seems to me that this is only looking at half of the question. You
see Foucault is making truth claims and a truth claim is a claim about an
object.

Anyway, sorry if I get overly polemical at times. But the neglect of
ontology is one of my pet hates, especially since I consider that even the
ontology deniers still do ontology, but only badly.

Thanks,


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Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA

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