From: "tony auguste" <ahma-AT-btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: Baudrillard's seduction
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 02:37:14 -0000


To paraphrase a phrase:
Those that can, do.
Those that can't, criticise.
Those that can't criticise, criticise criticism.

----------
> From: Ian Robert Douglas <Ian_Robert_Douglas-AT-Brown.edu>
> To: foucault-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: Re: Baudrillard's seduction
> Date: 26 October 1998 20:57
> 
> Matthew,
>    your thoughts reminded me of another sentiment expressed by Deleuze,
> from 'A Portrait of Foucault', in _Negotiations_.  He writes, "The
> objections people make, even the questions they pose, always come from a
> safe ashore, and they're like lumps of mud flung at you to knock you down
> and stop you getting anywhere rather than any help: objections always
come
> from lazy, mediocre people, as Foucault knew better than anyone."  It's
> been remarked that toward the end of the 1970's Foucault was expressing
his
> weariness with his duties at the College de France.  No doubt he was also
> tired, at times, of constantly having to explain himself.  An instance
> comes to mind--I forget where I read it--where Foucault tells of a
filmaker
> dropping by in Paris, to visit.  They shared some wine and some food, and
> talked no more than 20 minutes in 8 hours.  I wonder whether it was more
> out of respect for the enigma of the world that Foucault would remain
> silent to his critics.  The more ludricrous ones clearly angered him; and
> his response could be vicious.  Steiner is a definate example (from
1971),
> but there's also Foucault's response to Lawrence Stone's essay in the
_New
> York Review of Books_ (in 1983).
>    But it doesn't seem to me that Baudrillard is lazy.  He would seem in
a
> different category to some of the hack critics who were barely worth
> responding to.  I would even say that Baudrillard, in certain ways, is
more
> worthy of a response than Derrida.  For sure Derrida's hardly lazy
either,
> but the force of his critique doesn't seem to me nearly as
'productive'--a
> word we must use with care--as Baudrillard's.
> 
> _____________________________________________________
> Ian Robert Douglas,
> Associate Lecturer & Fulbright Fellow,
> Watson Institute of International Studies,
> Brown University, Box 1831,
> 130 Hope Street,
> Providence, RI  02912
> 
> tel: 401 863-2420
> fax: 401 863-2192
> 
>  "Is there something 'dangerous' in Foucault's thought
>  that also explains the passion it continues to arouse?"
>  - "Dangerous, yes, because there's a violence in Foucault.
>  An intense violence, mastered, controlled, and turned
>  into courage."   -   Gilles Deleuze
> 
>