Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 23:42:55 -0500
Subject: Re: Foucault and Queer-bashing (Was Foucault and Sex)
From: Asher Haig <ahaig-AT-warped-reality.com>


on 1/31/01 10:48 PM, Vunch-AT-aol.com at Vunch-AT-aol.com wrote:

> Foucault was an actively practicing
> homosexual and so I would imagine, vaguely, that for him anything goes.

Excuse me??

Please tell me that you did not intend this to read as it does. Are you
seriously intending to recreate The Homosexual as the deviant subject?

> But, 
> Foucault did claim that resistance entailed the position of being against
> heterosexuality. 

I think more accurate would be to say that he was against heteronormativity.
Do you have a cite?

> Taylor remarks strongly that this position can hardly be
> received as logical or acceptable to most people given the essentialist
> situation that we are confronted with in terms of Being.

Probably true if it's an accurate representation of Foucault.

> Taylor also takes up a Kantian position about Foucault: what if everyone
> believed the same thing?

Then homosexuality would be immoral. Perhaps one of the reasons that the
categorical imperative is a weak standard? Everyone does not believe the
same thing. 

> On this ground, this position of Foucault's would
> rejected.  Anyway, I do not confuse Foucault particular argument about sex
> roles with his theoretical arguments or his research.  he probably said these
> things in an interview in a particularly local situation!!

Everything he says is local and contextual. I am not sure that Foucault the
person can be separated from Foucault the "author" -- but what does that
mean, after all? It certainly does _NOT_ mean that Foucault's practices
sexually implicate the text, but instead that the reason for those practices
probably influences a great deal of his thought.

---

Asher Haig           ahaig-AT-warped-reality.com
Dartmouth 2004