Subject: Re: Fritz Heidegger, carnival, Catholicism,&Self-discipline
From: Stuart Elden <stuart.elden-AT-clara.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 20:39:52 +0000


Gary, and others

Sorry to butt in here, but I thought this was interesting. My original 
mail went straight to Gary, but I guess this might spark some 
discussion.

> The main point is that TOPOS as place is "at home in
> "familiar" surroundings as opposed to abstract,
> mathematical space that has become our 'cultural'
> paradeigm from Descartes and Galileo. 

Not sure it's cultural; though i note the scare quotes. My sense is 
that the difference is one of thinking; that is, of course, a way of 
understanding being.

> My primary
> source then relates this directly to Michael
> Foucault's use of space in two different and
> thoroughly opposing senses: "supplice" as meaning the
> personal space of religious ritual, carnival, the
> market place, obscenity, sex, and public executions
> versus "dispositif" in the sense of military
> discipline and moral self-observation as the 'subject'
> that Foucault says is a modern invention.

The use of 'supplice' in this broad sense is interesting, but would 
probably require some quite serious thinking through. Supplice is not 
really personal space, but a particular kind of public spectacle, i.e. 

the scaffold, or a public display of torture, etc. It certainly has 
links with festivals of cruelty, in a Nietzschean sense. Also see Henri 

Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life vol I on the festival.

The dispostif in Foucault's sense is not just the military discipline, 

but what makes military discipline possible. THat is, a combination of 

knowledges and practices that conceive of things in a complicated and 
interrelated way.

This in turn
> immediately relates in my mind to Mikhail Bakhtin's
> RABELAIS AND HIS WORLD where he discusses, and seems
> to believe in quite literally, "the carnival bonfire
> which renews the world".

I've heard this link before, but it's definately worth pursuing. 
Stallybrass & White, The Politics and Poetics of Trangression (not 
quite the right title i guess) is possibly useful here on Bakhtin. 
Lefebvre wrote a book on Rabelais too, but it's not in English, and 
currently out of print in French. But I hear from Lefebvre's biographer 
(Remi 
Hess) that it is due to be reissued.

Hope to hear from you soon

Best wishes

Stuart


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