From: "Stuart Elden" <Stuart.Elden-AT-clara.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Bad Writing?
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 17:47:35 -0000


Colin

Been away for a few days, hence no reply. But I think Clare has done this
already, making what I would have said largely superfluous. But, to concede
a little, AK is torturous, and F spends more time explaining what he is not
doing, than what he is. That said, I think it's one of his most rewarding
books, and with Birth of the Clinic, one of the most neglected.

Best wishes

Stuart

-----Original Message-----
From: colin holmes <c.holmes-AT-nepean.uws.edu.au>
To: foucault-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
<foucault-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Date: Monday, February 22, 1999 05:49
Subject: Re: Bad Writing?


>Clare, thank you for responding to my query about the little excerpt from
>Foucault!
>
>I can't read French, and translation is always problematic, but yours is
>certainly clearer and more suggestive of a meaning to me than the Sheridan
>Smith translation  - thank you.
>
>I tend to think of discourses as three-dimensional entities, rather like
>global amoeba, claiming vacant or disputed discursive space, and having
>ever-changing surfaces, so 'dissolving' and 'solidity' are terms that I can
>cope with. Even so, like you, I find it difficult to quite grasp Foucault's
>point here, and it seems to contradict what he has said earlier in the
>book. Surely archaeology does try to expose precisely those sorts of
>(otherwise) seamless links and transitions? In parts of 'Archaeology',
>transition points, and points of contact and exchange, are an explicit
>focus of attention. I wonder if there is a qualifying statement in the
>Conclusion.
>
>Since one person dismissed my original query by saying that the sentence
>was "perfectly lucid", are we perhaps missing something? Perhaps Stuart E,
>John R, Tom D and others have a view about the passage, and context, in
>question (?)
>
>Kind regards,
>
>Colin Holmes,
>Western Sydney
>
>
>
>