Dear JMC,
Very interesting quotes. However what precisely does this mean? And what
politics flow from it?
> It's not a matter of emancipating truth from every system of power
> (which
>would be a chimera, for truth is already power) but of detaching the power of
>truth from the forms of hegemony, social economic and cultural, within
>which it
>operates at the present time.
> The political question, to sum up, is not error, illusion, alienated
>consciousness or ideology; it is truth itself. Hence the importance of
>Nietzsche." (133)
If the above equates truth with power and it certainly seems to, then how
does one discriminate within power between power as agency and power as
exploitation and oppression? Or to put this in Bhaskarian terms what is the
effect of refusing to make a distinction between Power 1 (agency) and Power
2 (domination & exploitation)?
If one says that this distinction is irrelevant then what does this mean
politically? How does one avoid quietism, if all is power and truth is
totally bound up with power?
As for truth, what does the "political question ... is truth itself"
actually mean in political terms? Is this a rejection of the old belief
that to tell the truth about a state affairs, say the effect of USA
sanctions against Iraq, is in itself a emancipatory act? Is Foucault, when
he embraces Nietzsche, suggesting that to tell the truth about USA
barbarism is simply the exercise of one's will to power?
Moreover what is the effect of refusing an ontological definition of
truth? If truth is forever an epistemological matter then how does one
avoid relativism?
regards
Gary
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