Dear Ken
Cindy said...
...Ken and I share the same computer, but our relationship with each other is more
complex than an ordinary pseudonym or Avatar.......
Perhaps I'm really Transgressing Boundaries here - but your patient, reflective
disentanglement of 'self' from the encumbrances of historical contingency - e.g. from
the power of academic reputation - seems to be very Foucauldian.
"What can the ethics of an intellectual be...if not...to render oneself permanently
capable of self-detaching [se déprendre de soi-même]...To be at the same time an
academic and an intellectual is to try to engage a type of knowledge and analysis
that is taught and received in a university in a way so as to modify not only the the
thought of others but one's own as well. This work of modifying one's own thought
and that of others seems to me to be the intellectual's reason for being....After all,
what would the value of the passion for knowledge be if it resulted only in a certain
amount of knowledgeableness and not, in one way or another, and to the extent
possible, in the knower straying afield from himself?" (Foucault, M., cited in
Rabinow, P. (Ed.). (2000). Michel Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth. London:
Penguin Books. p.xxxix.)
Cheers,
Amanda Bill
used to be a designer,
now a PhD student,
Department of Sociology
University of Auckland
phone +64 4 3877057
mobile 027 491 4134
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