Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 19:17:51 -0500 (EST) From: Daniel Purdy <dp31-AT-columbia.edu> Subject: RE: disappeared As a newcomer to this list I am fascinated and distressed at the manner in which Foucault and ocassionally Nietzsche are invoked as the authors of doctrines which we their modest readers need to properly apply now that the masters are no longer with us. At times the list sounds like confused and anxious apostles waiting for a sign on how they ought to think--something Andrew L Weber might set to music. Pinochet can be punished because an international judicial system has begun to operate in a domain that had previously been reserved to the foreign ministries of major states. That a Spanish magistrate can call a retired tyrannt before his court shows that the rule of law as it applies to ordinary citizens is slowly calling the previously immune class of rulers to account for themselves. The long-standing distinction between rulers and citizens is being erased as the penal code expands upward to include sovereigns. One could go further and argue along with both our masters that Pinochet's indictment reflects the devcelopment of a penal code that no longer accepts brutal punishment. Nietzsche anticipates Foucault when he writes inthe second essay of the Genealogy of Morals about the possibility that state grows increasingly less inclined to physically punish lawbreakers because they no longer represent a serious threat. The state is able to become humane because it enjoys a surfeit of power. Similarly Pinochet is open to indictment because the "international community" is no longer preoccupied with the Cold War. Pinochet was able to get away with torture because he was anti-communist. Now that the West enjoys a surfeit of power, it can brush aside its embarassing brutalities. Pinochet is being hung out to dry because he no longer has any protectors, or at least so it seems. We don't have to use Foucault and Nietzsche as way of shielding our ignorance of Chilean history or as a means of pretending to be above it. Daniel Purdy
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