From: "D. Diane Davis" <d-davis-AT-uiowa.edu>
Subject: RE: Foucault and Lyotard?
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 04:52:51 -0500


Foucault's "Language to Infinity" in _Language, Counter-memory, Practice_ ,
and his "Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx" in Ormiston and Schrift's _Transforming
the Hermeneutic Context_ are both pretty wwwwild and, I'd argue, address the
"mystery and power of language" in as intense a way as Lyotard does. Avital
Ronell's got a piece called "The Worst Neighborhoods of the Real:
Philosophy - Telephone - Contamination"(in _Finitude's Score_) that focuses
on Foucault's contaminated and contaminating language. In this piece, she
points specifically to the ways in which foucault struggled to attend to
language's madness, to its dis/ease, to its refusal to be "cleaned up."
Great piece.

best, ddd

______________________

     D. Diane Davis
     Rhetoric Department
     University of Iowa
     Iowa City, IA 52242
     319.335.0184

     d-davis-AT-uiowa.edu
     http://www.uiowa.edu/~ddrhet/



-----Original Message-----
From:	owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu] On Behalf Of Lois Shawver
Sent:	Wednesday, July 07, 1999 9:31 PM
To:	lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject:	Re: Foucault and Lyotard?

Hugh,

you said:

<But [Foucault] doesn't address the mystery and power of language in the
same way Lyotard does, nor, to my knowledge does anyone else.>

I think if you're talking of Foucault and the mystery of language you
need to refer the Archeology of Knowledge and/or The Order of Things.
This is less revisionist social history and more a study of the way
discourses develop and anchor themselves in binary thought.  People who
like Lyotard a lot I think would be particularly attracted to these two
books.

Also, don't forget Wittgenstein when thinking of the "mystery of
language."  I believe Wittgenstein inspired Lyotard's postmodern
condition.

..Lois Shawver