Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 08:11:07 -0400
Subject: Re[2]: Lysenko Business 


Foucault early in his career (1950s) supported the Soviet behaviorist model of
the behavioral science.  Going back to Pavlov, the "official" communist social
science was based in a radical-externalist conception of human motivation and
behavior. Those seeking natural or genetic explanations of behavior came to be
viewed as reactionary, bourgeois  scientists.  "Lysenkoism" became as much of a
bureaucratic policy as it did an approach tio social science.  Once it was
discovered that genes could be manipulated through cross-breeding and crude
genetic engineering -- and once the benefits of genetic manipulation were
discovered, several political battles surfaced in the SU.  As some of you were
saying, in TaP Foucault is examining the manner in which truth-claims are wedded
to political schemes.
One could argue that, though Foucautl rejected Lysenkoism, he nevertheless held
thoughout his career a quasi-behaviorust conception of behavior.  Anyway, if you
read his early book Mental Illness and Psychology - though he later edited out
some of his offical communist lines - the beginnings of his externalist approach
are there.