From: "Stuart Elden" <Stuart.Elden-AT-clara.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Althusser, Foucault and Historical Ontology
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:03:15 +0100


Joe

Thanks for the mail

>I suppose my last comments on Nietzsche and Heidegger were inflammatory,
>but I'm
>just trying to overturn the standard labelling of Foucualt as a
neo-Nietzschean;


Why? I can accept that looking at Bachelard, Canguilhem, Althusser, etc. is
useful in understanding Foucault, but why try to diminish the important role
Nietzsche (and Heidegger) plays?

>I do agree that F's "ethical" writings (from the late 70s-early 80s) show a
>Nietzschean concern with the self as project and so on.

Foucault's interest in Nietzsche is far more than this. For one, the
original preface to Folie et deraison describes his project as under the sun
of the great Nietzschean research as I recall. And this is the Nietzsche of
the Birth of Tragedy.

>I too have taught
>courses on Nietzsche, and I am convinced that he is principally interested
in an
>ethics of individuality and "casting off" social forms including reason,
>language, and 'herd morality';

This probably isn't the place for a discussion of Nietzsche but he is surely
far more than this.

I agree that he is critical and political too -
>but I tend to agree with some of the critical rationalists (i.e. Habermas,
Dews,
>Hobsbawm, etc.) as being on the right track in thinking that a Nietzschean
>politics center on the problematization of the individual, and thus has
become a
>conservative ideological form.   Foucault does not place a barrier or
opposition
>between the individual and society -- both are molded from the same SOCIAL
>fabric in most of F's books (discourse, discursive practices, truth
regimes,
>etc.)


It's a question of method or approach i think that Foucault appropriates
principally - a question of how you ask questions. I don't really disagree
with what you say here, i just think it misses the point. It is Nietzsche's
questioning of the political, rather than his politics that is important in
this context.

>For what it's worth, Althusser's essay "Marxism and Humanism" was written
in
>1952 I believe.  As Foucault's repetiteur for the agregation at the ENS,
one
>can't help but think that Althusser discussed his ideas concenring how to
read
>Marx well before that.

Thanks for the date - I think this is interesting and important.

>I agree that name calling and citing "influences" is an endless, fruitless
>endeavor -- but we jhave to look at such to develop a language in order to
think
>through F's work.


I'm glad we agree on this - it is very definately an attempt to better
understand Foucault and the possibilities his work opens up.

>Perhaps we could just start with a basic question: If indeed interpretation
(of
>anything) is endless, why is one interpretation more valuable than another?
Why
>even bother (assuming we're actually interested in the work we do, and not
just
>making careers)?


That's a big question Joe, and it obviously outstrips the particular
interest we have here. I think that no one truth implicitly suggests there
are truths. But I'm not sure how we go about justifying this - perspectivism
rather than relativism... etc. I suppose we could say the worth of an
interpretation is its use... i.e. how useful is it to us to say that
Althusser or Heidegger or ... is central to understanding Foucault. That
might get us somewhere - it seems to what both of us are aiming for - but
I'm unhappy with that as a final statement of worth. Too obviously US
pragmatism i guess. I don't have much to say on this - though I think about
it a lot. Anyone else?

Best wishes

Stuart