Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 16:53:23 +1200
From: Nesta <na.devine-AT-auckland.ac.nz>
Subject: Re: Foucauldian examinations of The Market (fwd)


I can see the disappointment in not being able to track immediate 
results of an apparently new set of ideas. 

I guess the questions to be asking are along the lines of what would 
count as a demonstration of effect?

I don't think that we should be looking for an immediate political 
causal impact: Foucault says x so various govts or persons immediately 
jump to it and put this into action: that would seem to me to be quite 
contrary to what the purpose of Foucault's analysis is: he disclaims the 
role of advisory intellectual. Nor would he want to take responsibility 
for establishing the accepted truths of a new governmentality. 

On the other hand, if the claim is that Foucalt's writing has had no 
impact whatsoever, then that is a serious challenge to the notion of the 
imbrication of discourse and power, to power/knowledge. Then we would be 
back in the position of accepting a simple relation between power and 
control of the populace - the repressive hypothesis. 

There is too the time element: Aristotle is still present in science, 
Kant in politics - over what sort of timespan shoulld we look for the 
evidence of effect? If Hubert Dreyfus is correct in viewing Foucault as 
the interpreter of Nietzsche, then we are only a hundred years into what 
might be a very long story. 

Nesta