Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 01:13:29 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: Capitalist power is not possessed.


Mat replies to me:
>> Sure. That sounds about right. But Foucault still can't (or doesn't want
>> to) explain what gives rise to the 'network of agents' through which power
>> gets exercised.
>>
>> or my previous posts.) However, the point is that Foucault doesn't (or
>> doesn't want to) explain the generation of what JanMohamed calls 'surplus
>> power' and how and why 'surplus power' crystalizes in the manner it has--in
>> the hands of the ruling class + the governing elite.
>
>Well, there are a lot of things that Foucault doesn't explain.  You seem
>to be implying that Foucault *should* have explained these things, that
>not having done so is a *failure* on his part--a failure for which he is
>ethically and politically accountable, maybe, even.  I don't know, maybe
>you mean to point out that Foucault doesn't explain these things in order
>to counter some view holding that Foucault explains everything worth
>explaining about politics, or even about power--but I don't know who holds
>that kind of view.  I don't think Foucault held that view.
>
>I don't mean to pick on you, Yoshie, because, again, I'm not entirely sure
>what's motivating your comments here.

What's motivating me is my idea that Marxists should read Foucault and
Foucauldians should read Marx and that not doing so is detrimental to both.
I'm interested in a Marxism that is post-Foucauldian, so to speak. (Don't
ask me what it would look like--I haven't fully thought out this project.)
And I don't treat Marx (and other Marxist writers) simply as critical
theorists or philosophers either, with no implications for political
actions, so in this sense I'm different from many academics.

I agree with you on the silliness of competitive academic culture (one of
the reasons why academy uses more contingent workers than elsewhere in
society, I think--we are more like isolated atoms clashing against one
another without thinking how we might change the conditions that prize
competition over cooperation).

Yoshie