Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 00:25:27 +0100
Subject: HAB: Foucault vs. Habermas /Gary
From: "Stefan Szczelkun" <stefan-AT-szczelkun.greatxscape.net>


Gary,

[G] "an ideal speech situation is a principle of *openness* to what's
been excluded. It's ABOUT  inclusion. "

I like that formulation.

Generally I agree with most of your points. I was trying to give the
Foucauldian position a fair crack of the whip. I was for years of
counter cultural living stimulated by Foucaults writings. Whereas
I've only discovered Habermas about four or five years ago and have
had the time to read and digest a few of the main texts and the
critical responses to them in the process of doing a Phd.

[S] "Foucault does allow us to think more clearly about the
 prediscursive formation of the democratic subject and her freedom to
think, than we can with TCA".

[G] "Clearly not, since Habermas' analysis of lifeworld relations in
 TCA provides an incomparable sense of prediscursive relations as
 COMMUNICATIVE relations of genuineness, normativity, and
 factuality---subjectivity, intersubjectivity and
 objectivity---personality, culture and society. There's no plausible
 comparison in Foucault's work."

I agree but the reader has to do quite a bit of work prior to the
text to get the richness of this. Also a lot is in TCA 2 which many
people seem not to find the time to get around to reading
unfortunately.

 [G] "Well, difficult issues are boring when they don't address one's
 interests".

Hopefully an answer to this is covered rather long windedly in my new
posting on aesthetic judgement.

[G] "Foucault just wasn't interested in the lifeworld of the
vast majority of humanity. When he came here to Berkeley every year
 for a semester (during the final several years of his life), he was
 aloof, cynical, exhibitionistic and so eager to get to the leather
 bars across the San Francisco Bay. Habermas, on the other hand, was
 gracious and generous with his time, while he was writing TCA".

This is interesting and not, if I remember right, covered enough by
the Macey book on Foucaults life. But I do think this is cultural
diversity incarnate and all to easy to moralise about in retrospect.
(I'm agreeing with one of the other postings I think)

Thanks for the thoughtful and detailed feedback
Best Wishes
Stefan



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