Wednesday, March 7, 2007
All Roads Lead to Methodology
-Chris
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Someone missed out on their morning coffee
Do relations of power always include relations of domination, or can they be separable, as suggested by Arendt? (378)
The basic question really seems to be, is power always bad, and is domination always exploitative? Foucault answers that Arendt is wrong, that you can't separate the two. But he seems to pick and choose how he considers this relationship. Go back a few pages the second question asked that Foucault does not, in my mind, adequately address:
How to deal with Heidegger and the Nazis? (374)
Although Heidegger is a shining example, the question really asks: if domination is bad for your general health, how do we deal with the works of people who willingly (and sometimes happily) ascribed to and support those systems of domination that Foucault is so bothered (and fascinated) by? Or, in Tweekese: How to deal with TJ and the slaves?
Foucault answer, to me, is a cop out: "The key to the personal poetic attitude of a philosopher is not to be sought in his ideas, as if it could be deduced from them, but rather in his philosophy-as-life, in his philosophical life, his ethos." (274) But isn't that the problem with Heidegger? How, and where, do we separate the author from the academic text? How do we deal with text we don't want the author to have written? We can separate the two? Really? His "philosophical life, his ethos" doesn't resonate in his work? They are in some ways separable? Power and domination are inseparable, but those who use power, or ascribe to a system that uses power to really violently dominate people, are separable from their participation that system?
At the same time, including "but, but, he was a Nazi" prior, or post, whenever you deal with Heidegger seems to be an odd solution too.
I've lost coherency by this point, but this is an issue I intend to raise later on this morning. In some ways it's a questions of how to deal with the sources produced within relationships of power, and then how to deal with the authors and their relationship to the power system.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
This is actually my response to last week's reading that I never got around to posting...
Genealogy of Ethics:
Thursday, February 22, 2007
What is Foucault's definition of the modern self?
The most compelling and fascinating portion of the interview--and for which I wish he had provided a specific example--was his discussion of the anxiety people wrote about in diaries when they discovered this modern 'self' as individual and how it may not have been easy to write about. I take it for granted today that I can say or compose something that describes how I feel or experience something in some sort of supposedly unique way--something that is interior to myself and not dependent on another's eye or on God. And yet, at the same time, in my daily life I feel I am controlled or molded by certain ideals of 'normalcy' based on certain morals and ethics of our society. Should this disturb/alert me or does the fact that I have recognized this simply confirm me as a 'normal' modern self, if I even know what that is?
Finally, to avoid thoroughly confusing myself and everyone else, I'll end with questions. What is the relationship of ethics to desire/pleasure? What is the relationship of sex to desire/pleasure? How does this change over time and what is the relationship today? I'm not as clear on the differences here, so maybe we can map those out more explicitly.
~Amanda
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Society - Ethics
-Chris
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Foucault's Genealogy of History
The German words are a bit confusing and I also am having difficult with the idea of descent (Herkunft). If I had to guess as to what he's getting at, I would say that he finds descent ultimately rooted in and a major part of varying articulations of the body (at different times and places)--articulations that can somehow be identified at different points when they change. Those changes are related to various emergences (Entstehung). We should discuss what he means by the descent as being part of the "dissociation of identity" (94) and recognizing "all of those discontinuities that cross us" (95). I'm not quite sure I understand what he means by this.
Finally, if we have time, I'd like to discuss the importance of knowledge in "effective" history; both as power/domination, as the basis for creating a meaningful world, and in relation to the line I'm most unclear about: "the critique of the injustices of the past by a truth held by men in the present becomes the destruction of the man who maintains knowledge by the injustice proper to the will to knowledge" (97). What does he mean by "the injustice proper to the will to knowledge"?
~Amanda
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Attempted Definitions
Herkunft: a kind of broken family tree of an idea and its “inscription on the body.” (84) This is a difficult concept to grasp; perhaps the moment at which an identifiable religious or cultural tradition coalesces would be an example?
Entstehung: when an idea crystallized in the midst of struggle (“Emergence is thus the entry of forces; it is the eruption, the leap from the wings to center stage…” [84]) Much easier to grasp - Foucault's whole idea of the disciplinary society coming together around the time of the French Revolution is an example.
Also, a nicely concise summary of his idea of the function of law: “humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination.” (85)
Obviously, the most fruitful discussion for us is going to be his idea of the proper (or, at least, useful) role of the historian. What strikes me re-reading that part is that what he describes, the restless historian eschewing metanarratives and being suspicious of lofty concepts, is precisely what we see in a lot of contemporary history. These kind of ideas have taken root among practicing historians. Given when Foucault died, I doubt he really got to see that come to fruition; I wonder what he would have to say at this point.
-Chris