Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 22:43:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Pragmatism



This is too many balls in the air for me. My last word on Foucault for now.

On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Rob Schaap wrote:
> 
> I'd assumed F's relativism is a function of his antihumanism.  Not so?

I don't think so. The so-called antihumanism is pretty mild stuff with no
epistemological or ontological implications, just the observation that the
kind of people who are the subjects of modern bureaucracies are a
different kind of people, more "disclipined and surveilled" and less
anonymous than premodern sorts of people.

The relativism comes from a different source, a quasi-Nieztschean theory
of truth as power, essentially, as the ability to control what's accepted
as true. If I understand the "argument" for it, it's that appeal to any
premises to establsih any argument must appeal to premises that someone
accepts, but these are all interested consequences of social systems that
control what's an acceptable premise and an acceptable argument. So truth
is power, so it's all relative to the system of control. Antihumanism has
nothing to do with it.

> >F's great merit here is in pointing out (a) that power operates at a
> >microlevel below that of state coercion or class power, in the operation
> >of institutions,
> 
> So?  Power is in this sense an inevitability wherever there are humans.
> We're not concerned with the inevitable, are we?

Why not? F is. 

  The fact is that a
> particular power relationship exists because there is differential
> ownership of the means of production in society.

F is mistaken to think this isn't especially important.

  The theory that concerns
> us is to do with whether people's experience of power (defined as that
> which enables and constrains at both the level of the individual and the
> group) might be altered. 

Well, even with regard to F-ian micropower regulations, we might use his
theory to attack the idae that a lot of our institutional practices do
what they purport to do, e.g., with examinations, sort people by merit to
give them their deserts and maximize social welfare. We can observe taht
these practices have to do with institutional convenience in managing
large populations. This might offer an opening for trying to create
practices that are more honest and more likely to perform the purported
functions of the ones that F attacks. 

Also, as ideologiekritik, it's useful to have F's notion of power around
to attack the idea that we have a system designed to ensure taht the race
goes to the swift, the battle to the strong, and bread to men of
understanding. This is important, for example, in defending affirmative
action,w hich is attacked as unfair because antimeritocratic.

 Such an alteration, to the extent it is
> consciously authored, requires a view of what is good for people.  For
> socialists, it requires that the people themselves see it as good.  For
> Foucault, this latter can be nought plus a function of the microphysics of
> power. 

Well, as I say I don't buy into the whole of the F-ian story.

> >and (b) in reconceptualizing the practices of institutions that present
> >>themselves as neutral or directed at other ends as functions of power.
> 
> Did students of Marx need to be told this?

Maybe they needed to benefit by F's detailed analysis of a variety of
institutions. 

 Not much there I couldn't
> (and didn't) get from associating bits from some of Weber, the
> Frankfurters, Gramsci, Tonnies, Illich and Freire (we hadn't heard of
> Foucault when I went to uni in the mid-70s).  Or have I missed something?

OK, maybe you didn't need F's synthesis. Marx himself claimed no great
originality except on a few points. 

  Just because the play of power is definitively
> inevitable in human relations does not mean this power constitutes us
> exhaustively. 

I say, there's a lot of value in F. You respond by bringing up the bad
bits. That's no way to proceed.

--jks




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