From: "" <mthrond-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: sexual ethics
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 15:52:36 PST


Have you looked at Christopher Lasch's Culture of Narcissism?  Even if 
it isn't authoritative (either from a Marxist or Freudian standpoint), 
strictly historical, or Foucauldian (although Lasch, I hear, was for a 
time quite interested in F.) it's a funny and pithy slash through the 
"self-help" mentality.  But if you read it, also catch Richard 
Hofstadter's chapter in The American Political Tradition on the 
Self-Help Ideology of Abraham Lincoln.  Liberation, you say?  I assume 
you are familiar with N.O. Brown and Marcuse--neither of whom, in my 
book, employed the term as loosely as one must to call those overpriced 
rags "liberating."  Happy hunting!




>From owner-foucault-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Thu Feb 18 09:44:18 1999
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>Message-ID: <025501be5b61$0a6fb180$2846883e-AT-z5o4h1>
>From: "Rebecca Luckhurst" <rebecca-AT-rluckhurst.freeserve.co.uk>
>To: <foucault-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
>Subject: sexual ethics
>Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 16:53:10 -0000
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>
>Okay, okay!  I'll post something!
>
>I wonder if anyone out there can recommend some reading for me.  I'm >based in the UK reading for a PhD, and I'm looking at Foucault's work 
on >sexual ethics.  I shall be using it to look at present day 'self-help' 
>texts (eg Men are From Mars etc)  I want to see what kind of ethics >these books promote, and what kind of subject they are aiming to >produce.  I want to try to avoid a simplistic dismissal of them as 
being >either purely subjugating discourses or symptomatic of the 'Californian 
>cult of the self' about which Foucault was so sniffy.  I also want to >avoid an uncritical celebration of their liberatory potential, as >proposed by some other scholars - I shall mention no names!!
>
>It seems to me that these texts must tell us something our culture >because they are so popular and sell in such huge numbers - and here in 
>the UK they have, in many instances, entered into common parlance (I >expect it's the same elsewhere).
>
>
>Can anyone suggest either:
>    a.. any specific sections of Foucault's work I should look at >(besides the History of Sex trilogy), or
>    b.. any particularly interesting/popular self-help books 
(especially >those about relationships), or
>    c.. the work of any other theorists/scholars which might be >relevant?
>
>I would really appreciate any suggerstions, advice or comments.
>Thanks for helping.
>
>Rebecca.
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: anand-bhatt <anand.bhatt-AT-vsnl.com>
>To: 'foucault-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu' ><foucault-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
>Date: 18 February 1999 09:50
>Subject: RE: ???
>
>
>>The list is in sleepy time they tell me and it will liven up once >somebody posts something. So post something.
>>
>


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