Date: Mon, 07 Sep 1998 11:47:04 -0600 From: Wynship Hillier <whi-AT-wenet.net> Subject: Re: Foucauldian examinations of The Market Good Greif. I've been allied with the promulgators of the Grand Unified Theory of Everything. Before I was allied with an evangelistic religious movement. I'll deal with the first misunderstanding first: Why does dialogue necessarily imply dialectic? It rather implies the absence of the dialectic. Take a look at Blanchot's _The Infinite Conversation_ to see how he works this out. I'm arguing *against* the sort of conformism in the name of thoroughgoing logical consistency currently found in the sciences. I'm arguing *for* a plurality of scientific practices and paradigms. As for people hanging their heads in shame (malgosia's sarcasm), my point is just the opposite of this sort of moralism. An intense moralism is ubiquitous in mainstream science -- just the sort of moralism that Foucault is lighting up in _Madness and Civilization_. Moralism is the most effective means of ensuring a unity of perspective, necessary for building the monad. Nothing could be more repellant to me. The point is not that people would "change their ways" but that they would cease to feel the need to "change their ways", which science as a moralism constantly foists upon scientists and non-scientists alike. And, I am beginning to suspect, this partitioning of scientific and non-scientific discourse is itself a disciplinary measure, and that these are the probibitions most in need of transgression. Lastly, the analogies you point out are between one science and another. Can genealogy do nothing besides document the fact that power operates in unsuspected ways? I mean, really, so what if it does? What sort of practice would result? Why is there so much theorising, and so little practice informed by that theory, these days? Hannah Arendt addresses this, but not to my satisfaction. Wynship Nesta wrote: > Now, I am cautiously trying to avoid accusations of churlishness etc, > but I want to know why there is an assumption that a mid-life change of > career will bring about dialogue - or not, in the case of people who > have apparently abandoned their former interests - 'burn'out' was the > word, I think. Because it seems to me that the notion of 'dialogue' > across the gap has a kind of dialectical underpinning, or perhaps the > concept of the unity of knowledge - a very mediaeval view that in the > end, all knowledge being the creation of one Being, it must have an > internal logic. I would think that Foucault discussing the formation of > disciplines rather suggests that they are constructs located in a time, > place and culture, and therefore not open , necessarily to this kind of > universality. It may be that there simply is no way that you can > reconcile being a Presbyterian theologist with being a physicist. > Perhaps. This might be an instance of Lyotard's 'differend'... > > Certainly if the connection is by way of analogy, I think it is very > dubious, and yet it is common. The biologists' notion of evolution has > been applied to economics, with in my opinion disastrous results, the > notion of the individual has yet to be unravelled from Hobbes > watchspring or whatever it was - analogy creates infinite work for > genealogists. > > Nesta
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