Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 20:50:31 -0500 (EST) From: Ian Robert Douglas <Ian_Robert_Douglas-AT-Brown.edu> Subject: Re: Criticism Matthew wrote, >It is probably the case that Foucault thought he could not have a genuine >conversation with someone who had written a book the title of which >called on the public to forget about him--an exchange with Baudrillard, >like the exchange with Derrida, might well have amounted only to a battle >of wills. who am I to say of course, but for once I sense something more mischievous, even sinister (I say that with a smile) in how Foucault handled this; knowing the text in question (Oublier Foucault), and also the stakes at the particular time it was written (approx. 1976). I wonder--and this is only a personal speculation--whether Foucault's supposed 'anger' was not a way of diffusing what seems to me the most powerful counter-position to his own genealogies of the time (especially _Surveiller et punir_, and _La Volonte du savoir_; where power is 'productive'). The notion of 'seduction' that Baudrillard is formulating at the time of _Oublier Foucault_ (which to clarify, in the French is the verb in the infinitive form: more 'forgetting', or perhaps even the process of forgetting Foucault. Simply 'forget' would have been Oubliez), is a radical--perhaps the most radical--challenge to Foucault's own conception of biopower specifically, and power/knowledge in general. Could it be that Foucault's reaction, his blowing up, was staged; as to respond in kind would have pushed his discourse to such levels that it would have collapsed? Perhaps--even though as Claire says, Foucault was a wonderful interlocutor in his own right--he purposely avoided this particular 'battle of wills', as you say Matthew, because to have engaged it might have run the risk of shattering his project entirely. It's speculation, and not meant in anyway at all as a 'charge' against Foucault. Idle speculation in anycase, but a mark all the same--on a personal level--of my respect for Jean Baudrillard, who I think has been greatly underrated in Foucauldian circles. He says himself that he still suffers from the reaction orchestrated in part by Foucault (remember that on Baudrillard's account after declining to write a formal reply which would have been published alongside Baudrillard's essay in _Critique_, the journal of which Foucault was editor, Foucault had seemingly said 'do what you like with it'). It would be nice if Baudrillard was cut some slack, as his essay seems to me very much in the faith (a perilous word)--if not the style--of Foucault's own orientation to both critique and the text. a short quotation to substantiate my point: "For myself, I prefer to utilise the writers I like. The only valid tribute to thought such as Nietzsche's is precisely to use it, to deform it, to make it groan and protest. And if commentators then say that I am being faithful or unfaithful to Nietzsche, that is of absolutely no interest." - Michel Foucault, from 'Prison Talk' _____________________________________________________ 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 "Fire includes heat and light: it is the ardour that emanates from the heart, the lightning that flashes from the intellect, which performs miracles in this world." - Napoleon http://www.powerfoundation.org
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