Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 10:33:08 -0500
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: more on nasty cyber-nazis


Stephen D'Arcy wrote:

>First, it is not clear to me that it is "the assembled Foucaultians"
>that are having a problem here; surely it is the assembled
>spokespeople for the Anti-postmodernism Industry that are having a
>problem, as they wait in vain for a set of instructions for
>anti-fascist action to issue from Foucault's book on the history of
>punishment in modern France.

This is not what I asked. I asked how a reading of Foucault influences or
deepens one's analysis of fascism; how does this get transformed into "a
set of instructions"? Every one of these stubborn misreadings convinces me
I'm onto something - some, dare I say, constitutive exclusion or evasion.

>Second, one of the well-known methods of government used by the German
>state in the Nazi era was to have children monitor their parents and
>inform the authorities about any anti-Nazi (etc.) activities they
>might be engaged in.  Are you really prepared to suggest that Hobbes
>better prepares us to analyze the power dynamics of this situation
>than does Foucault?  If you believe that, please try and present an
>argument of some kind, because I can tell you that very few people (on
>or off this list) will find that plausible, assuming they have read
>and understood both Hobbes and Foucault.

Where'd Hobbes come from? Who said anything about him?


>Telling us that the bourgeoisie is responsible for fascism is helpful,
>arguably, as a starting point.  But it doesn't tell us anything about
>how fascism works.  Imagine Marx saying that exploitation is what the
>bourgeoisie does to secure profits, and then repudiating the task of
>meticulously analyzing its complex dynamics, and the subtle, often
>hidden, forms of coercion and regulation that make it function as a
>system!  Marx would have regarded that as shirking his intellectual
>AND political responsiblity.

Of course. Don't confuse a two-paragraph on-the-fly internet posting with a
real historical/social/political analysis of the origins and practices of
fascism.

>That is also what he would have thought about Marxists who today
>regard it is their task to "smash" other theoretical perspectives
>without trying to learn from them.  Marxists who are too busy trying
>to smash "postmodernism" to learn from Foucault are like the 19th
>century socialists who were too busy trying to smash political economy
>(Smith and Ricardo) to take on the difficult task of critically
>appropriating the insights which that theoretical tradition had
>produced.  Thankfully, Marx was willing to make the effort.

I've noticed a tendency among postmodernists, who of course shun the
collective label, to react to criticsm, or in this case questioning, with a
rather overblown emotional outburst. If Foucault can ask what it was in
Marx's texts that led to the gulag, why can't I ask what a Foucaultian
reading of Naziism might look like? It's not as if I asked what was in
Nietzsche's texts that led to the concentration camp, is it?

Doug