I am also very appreciative. m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 6:45 PM
Subject: Re: Foucault as Relativist
> Dear JMC: I have been following your comments for weeks now, and
just wanted
> to tell you how much I enjoy your posts. It is impossible for me
not to
> admire the way you ignore detractors, and respond to substantive
arguments,
> while striving to remain focused on immanence.
> Maintain.
> Press On.
> Warmest Regards,
> Robert A. Bergren,
> Lieutenant Colonel, USER, ret.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lundi buchchi" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 4:11 AM
> Subject: Re: Foucault as Relativist
>
>
> > The least that JMC can do is correct his spellings of
> > Guattari. Discussions about relativism - highly
> > misplaced, banal, borrowed and inoroginal - can
> > weight.
> >
> > Luchchi
> > --- JMC <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > > Erica Sheen writes, "You can't unproblematically
> > > describe Foucault as a
> > > relativist. Obviously,
> > > his work supports the view that there's no objective
> > > historical truth; that
> > > historiography is structured by the subjectivity of
> > > the historian. But he *did*
> > > see that subjectivity as itself historically
> > > determined, and
> > > consequently understood that the historian's
> > > responsibility is above all to
> > > identify and describe the changing historical
> > > conditions for subjectivity. An
> > > important difference, surely?"
> > >
> > > ES, I agree that the term "relativist" is
> > > problematic in a number of ways, but I
> > > do not see why, so long as I contextualize
> > > "relativism," that this description
> > > is overly problematic. I also agree that the
> > > objective-subjective terminology
> > > you apply to Foucault works, but you miss my point
> > > about "difference" for this
> > > very term makes the process, as Alan Murphy notes,
> > > relative to the subject.
> > > Though I am not too much interested in a discussion
> > > of objectivity-subjectivity,
> > > given the formulation you use here, I am willing to
> > > pursue it. But let me offer
> > > some other terms.
> > >
> > > Perhaps you could explain why Foucault is not a
> > > relativist or what you mean by
> > > "relativist"? Here is a good definition:
> > > http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/r/relativi.htm
> > >
> > > First though, Alan Murphy, I think, gets the point
> > > when he says, in response to
> > > ES,
> > >
> > > "Yes - but surely your point implies a 'vicious' (or
> > > not) cycle whereby the
> > > historically determined subject is the structurer of
> > > history; structured by that
> > > which she/he attempts to 'identify and describe'?
> > >
> > > Is this not the source of the relativism in question
> > > (how ever problematic it
> > > may be)?"
> > >
> > > AM, I agree that this sense of positioning
> > > (relativism) is the definition at
> > > work in my description. I also agree that this
> > > "'vicious' (or not) cycle" as you
> > > describe it is very much at work in Foucault.
> > > Perhaps to think of this vicious
> > > circle in other terms is to call it a hermeneutic
> > > bind. Perhaps to re-think it
> > > in Nietzschean terms is to think of it as the
> > > eternal return (however
> > > decontextualized).
> > >
> > > But by relative positioning, I am also deferring
> > > Foucault to Deleuze and Gutarri
> > > so that positions are relative in terms of
> > > molarities-molecularities. In
> > > "Body/Power" Foucault articulates the relationship
> > > between power and knowledge
> > > as follows:
> > >
> > > "Far from preventing knowledge, power produces it.
> > > If it has been possible to
> > > constitute a knowledge of the body, this has been by
> > > way of an ensemble of
> > > military and educational disciplines. It was on the
> > > basis of power over the body
> > > that a physiological, organic knowledge of it became
> > > possible.
> > > The fact that power is so deeply rooted and
> > > the difficulty of eluding its
> > > embrace are effects of all these connections. That
> > > is why the notion of
> > > repression which mechanisms of power are generally
> > > reduced to strikes me as very
> > > inadequate and possibly dangerous"
> > > (_Power/Knowledge_ 59)
> > >
> > > Outside _Beyond Good and Evil_ or _Genealogy of
> > > Morals_, one might look at
> > > Nietzsche's comments on European alcoholism or his
> > > comments on diet or other
> > > such items to get some sense of the "connections" at
> > > work here.
> > >
> > > Colin Gordon, the editor of _Power/Knowledge_ says,
> > > "The strategically
> > > coordinated apparatuses of power which Foucault
> > > identifies do not have the
> > > status of a trans-historical law. Those which he
> > > describes, organised during the
> > > nineteenth century around the 'objects' of
> > > criminality and sexuality, are
> > > implicitly situated as local episodes within a more
> > > general history of the
> > > political. They constitute an inherently fragile
> > > structure and their instruments
> > > and techniques are always liable to forms of
> > > re-appropriation, reversibility and
> > > re-utilisation not only in tactical realignments
> > > from 'above' but in
> > > counter-offensives from 'below' ("Afterword," 256).
> > >
> > > In sum, Gordon effectively describes the process in
> > > Foucault in terms that might
> > > just as well apply to the State-Nomadalogy
> > > relationship in Deleuze and Gutarri.
> > >
> > > JMC
> > >
> > > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> > >
> > > Terms for Relativism:
> > >
> > > http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/r/relativi.htm
> > >
> > >
> > http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/curric/soc/postmode/post4.htm
> > >
> > >
> > http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/curric/soc/postmode/post5.htm
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Foucault Links:
> > >
> > > http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/ejournal/foucault.htm
> > >
> > >
> > http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jeffreyhearn/bibfou~1.htm
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
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