Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 12:14:25 +1200
Subject: Re: Althusser's student



I might add a few comments re Foucault's relationship to Althusser.  It
seems to me that the options are not simply "yes he was" or "no he wasn't"
a student of Althusser's.  Either of these positions could be argued--the
first supported by Foucault's explicit self-nomination as a student of
Althussers (p. 14 of the first edition of FOUCAULT LIVE), and the other on
the basis that Foucault was hardly a faithful student, he 'broke' with his
teacher in relation to certain specific issues.

We might attempt to move away from this yes/no question about the relation.
 Couldn't we try, in a manner that was "meticulous and patiently
documentary" to identify the relations between the discursive fields opened
by Althusser and Foucault?  Here, I think, we might find questions that are
more interesting than whether Foucault is or isn't a student of Althusser.
We might be interested, for example, in seeing how the very posing and
answering of this question (is he? isn't he?) might operate.

One of my interests is in the organisation of productive labour, and from
this interest, the discursive domain of those studying formal work
organisation.  In that domain, the question of the relation between
Foucault and Althusser has been posed and answered in ways that some of you
might consider peculiar.  To put it simply, and without authenticating
footnotes, I could venture to suggest that in 'organisation studies', the
operation of the question of the relation of Foucault to Althusser is posed
in such a way as to mark the differences, of the type "he isn't, is he?
Foucault, a student of Althusser?", with the quick answer "No, that won't
do!  If there was ANY relation, (let alone a complex one!), then we would
have to think the relation of Foucault to Marx, or, worse still, to a
certain Marx, the Marx of Althusser, who fails to coincide with the
caricature of Marx that we regularly deride..."  

The point of my little tirade is that Foucault is clear when he instructs
us--and unfortuntately, I have to quote this--"I would say: open
Althusser's books" (in FOUCAULT LIVE, p. 14).  If we only mark the
continuities, or only the discontinuities between (these) two discursive
domains, then we are providing a picture that is--if you allow me to use an
old slogan-- one-sided.  This is what I take Paul Bové to be saying when he
recommends "showing caution about entering into this discussion on the
unexamined nominative, 'Althusser's student.' ".

Thoughts?


Campbell Jones
University of Otago