Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 14:05:00 -0500
From: Reg Lilly <rlilly-AT-scott.skidmore.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: LA discursive self-regulation


Brian,
	Ok, I see I was misreading your post.  I think we're pretty much reading from
the same page here, and I'm particularly sympathetic to your drawing on
Foucault, with one exception.  Yes, we occupy subjection positions, and
especially inasmuch as one can understanding these positions as constituted by
discursive matrices of power relations, then there are certain "pressures from
the discourse itself."  However, I disagree with one conclusion you make and
would fault the all-but-final Foucault with the same, namely, there's nothing
univocal about this pressure.  The early/mid Foucault errs by make the subject,
in almost an Althusserian fashion, a product of a discursive system, and
therefore of making the possibilities of speaking and doing too systematically
prescribed.  In other words, the subject for this Foucault was constituted by
its position in a thoroughgoing way.
	The later Foucault -- interestingly enough in his engagement with Kant -- came
to reflect on the possibility of the subject constituting itself; and though he
never went so far, I think that this line of reflection leads to the possibility
of something like a 'transcendental imagination' which is, in important
respects, a 'trace' of one's freedom to constitute oneself and, mutatis
mutandis, one's position within a discursive practice.
	What this means is, for example, that your remarks to Thad make of Thad a
victim of 'having to respond to a (implied) rotten discursive milieu.  As you
note correctly points out, there were several generically different ways Thad
could have responded, but Thad, who manifestly has a vibrant imagination, could
also have devised a wide variety of post, ranging from the Youngian playfulness
to my often-dusty realism (not to set me in opposition to JY here).  Given that,
I think that the implicit critique of the discursive practice extant on the list
loses some of it's critical force.  Perhaps we should be reminded, as you do
Thad, that we should think about what we mean to accomplish when we post, what
are some of the multifarious way in which we could say what we want to say, and
what are the effects on the future discourse going to be given post 'x'.  I
think most of us instinctively perform this sort of speculation anyway; perhaps
a 'second draft' is all that's needed in most cases.
	Call me a pomo-humanist, but I believe that a list of people who nurture their
imaginations and let the poetic instinct have a bit of play-space, that
discourse, like a little hot jazz, can regulate itself, and do so *through* the
scrapes and dissonances.  Miles once said, there's no such thing as a wrong
note, but he forgot to add that that requires going forward  with the riff must
be done is such a way that the 'wrong note' is 'put in place, perspective.'

Ciao,
Reg


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