File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_1998/foucault.9803, message 26


Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 19:56:55 -0500
From: Ian Robert Douglas <Ian_Robert_Douglas-AT-Brown.edu>
Subject: Re: madness


>     I am new to the list and thought I would jump in on this topic ..
>     Briefly, Heidegger long ago named the unifying feature of the 20th
>century world "Gestell" which means the technological enframing of reality in
>which all things (now including humans in that category) are allowed to
>presence (be seen) in only one way, as stock or standing reserve. So all
>things are resources serving the will to will of western man.
>     Does this explain the rapid rise to prominence of technological
>(biological) psychiatry? You bet it does. 100% It certainly isn't any kind of
>access to truth. Thats why I am bothered by previous postings that sing the
>praises of psychopharmacology. If we put our faith there we will all get
>exactly what is coming to fruition all around us, drugged, docile bodies.
>     Anyone want to dialog about this? I'd love to.


I'd love to also, and in beginning, along with Heidegger might we also
remember Deleuze and Guattari?
   "As Reich remarks, the astonishing thing is not that some people steal
or that others occaisonally go out on strike, but rather that all those
that are starving do not steal as a regular practice, and all those who are
exploited are not continually out on strike: after centuries of
exploitation, why do people still tolerate being humilated and enslaved, to
such a point, indeed, that they actually want humiliation and slavery not
only for others but for themselves? .. no, the masses were not innocent
dupes; at a certain point, under a certain set of conditions, they wanted
fascism .." (Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, _Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia_, p. 29)
   I agree Phil that our century, to future archaeologists, will surely
resemble the universal technic of which Heidegger shuddered and Marinetti
welcomed, but what role I wonder for the masses; all those vehicles of
desire and possible flight?  Will any of us be able to deny complicity?

_______________________________________________________
Ian Robert Douglas,
Visiting Lecturer & Fulbright Fellow,
Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute of International Studies,
Brown University, Box 1831,
130 Hope Street,
Providence, RI  02912

tel: 401 863-2420 (direct line)
fax: 401 863-1270

"Great is Justice;
Justice is not settled by legislation and laws
     it is in the soul .. " - Walt Whitman



   

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