Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 14:16:07 +1000
Subject: Re: Alternative?


At 18:13 15*9*99 EDT, you wrote:

>Right now, I have a question. What is Foucault's alternative to the status 
>quo? I haven't come across anything related to this yet. Somehow, I'm 
>guessing that the answer will be something like "discourse".
>
>Any ideas?
>
>
An alternative to the status quo?
Short answer, he doesn't have one. Disappointing, isn't it.

It does not seem to me that Foucault sought to replace the status quo with
something else, some other arrangement, or some other way of doing things or
being human, not at least, in the sense of something stable or singular.
This was not his job. Critical philosophy does not have this task, but only
the critique of the status quo and keeping alive the possibilities of change
in plural, local, unstable, fragmentary ways. Foucault's strategies for
doing this are numerous and themselves change over the course of his
theoretical development, adapting to altering circumstances and emerging
conditions. Although Foucault himself does not say this, his strategies are
ultimately disappointing in that they can't supply the alternative once and
for all, in all places and times, a disappointment that perhaps we should
learn to cope with and in some limited sense affirm in the infinity of the
critical task. Perhaps in this there is a teaching about attempts to realise
alternatives, of the disaster they potentially harbour the more they are
designed and implemented with conviction and certainty, even if they are the
expressed will of a democratic discussion (or semblance thereof). 

However, considering the ubiquity of the term "discourse" in his work, it
may have served him as some kind of quasi-stable reference point through
which he sought to enact various critical strategies. This would be
interesting to look into.

cheers

sebastian