Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2000 11:36:11 -0500
From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <bradmcc-AT-cloud9.net>
Subject: Re: Foucault: a technology of '0' (and vivisection, etc.)


"steve.devos" wrote:
> 
> Brad/All
[snip]
> > > "zero points of instability from which change occurs".  I don't understand this.
> > > (I wonder if it is a well-formed sentence in the "language" of "postmodernism"?)
> >
> 
> The starting point for this is the History of Sexuality.
> 
> "The omnipresence of power not because it has the privilige of consolidating everything under the invincible
> unity, but because it is produced from one moment to the next, at every point or rather in every relation
> from one point to another..." P93 (1979).

As Descartes wrote: If God did not at each moment act to keep the world in
existence,
the world would immediately fall out of existence.  As Kant and Husserl argued,
the
perception of an object entails an ever-renewed synthetic act by/in
consciousness.
And, yes, all social institutions would fall out of existence if persons didn't
at each moment act to keep them in existence.  Thus we see the difference
between
transcendental subjectivity as an analytical/descriptive concept versus as a
teleological/
hopeful concept.  One deep question, I propose, is elucidation of the
relationship
between the two versions of the concept, similarly to the "overlap" between
empirical and ideal discourse in Habermas/Gadamer et al. 

[snip]
> The importance of Foucault is not just the good work he carried out on the fields mentioned by Brad but also
> the possibility of using this work as a way of 'thinking' about science/technology. The endless theorising of
> the body/person by eugenics and now by genetic engineers  - both sets of whom phantasize that they will be
> able to produce better and healthier humans (anyone believe that out there?) - suggests many areas of study
> which will lead to many strange and wonderful conflicts during the next decade or so. I look forward to it...
[snip]

My understanding of Foucault's "Power/Knowledge" thesis *in*cluded (e.g.) your
example of genetic engineering.  I think that, normatively, Foucault's
thesis applies to any human interaction that is not peer-discoursive;
descriptively, it applies to all human intentionality, including that
form of an-archy which was adumbrated by the classical Greek
polis and the Medieval/Renaissance craft guilds, and which Karl
Marx described as the replacement of the government of persons
by the administration [i.e., creative intersubjective constitution] of things.

"Yours in discourse..."

\brad mccormick

-- 
   Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)

Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc-AT-cloud9.net
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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