« futurology/quiz | Main | comfort torture »
Still More on The History of Madness
As is always the case when matters such as this arise, the criticism of particular works or, indeed, of entire corpuses of works gets tied up with issues of academic politics. This is clearly the case when the "anti-Theory" (whatever that is, of course) dogmatists at The Valve go on the offensive. For them, questions of criticism are always tied up with their institutional location and, hence, it is not without relevance when one rebuts claims raised by some by pointing out that the polemic is more about the practice of literature in American PhD departments than it is about the texts ostensibly under discussion. Such is clearly in evidence when it is possible to write, "Also, the claim that all these mean people are attacking Foucault's "dissertation" or "near-juvenalia" is disingenuous, because the book's still taught and cited regularly as authoritative, no matter what you call it."
What SEK misses here - the precise point of my original comments - is that an oeuvre is not a static entity. An oeuvre is open to challenge; it changes throughout time. Anyone who has spent any time in a social science or humanities department in the Western world since the end of the Second World War have seen this very principle in action with respect to Marx's writings - the "early" or "young" or "humanist" Marx versus the "late" or "mature" or "scientific" Marx. It is also clearly in evidence when consideration is turned to Freud - Jungians versus Kleinians versus Lacanians. Indeed, one even sees this in relation to lesser figures: Durkheim's works prior to 1900 against The Elementary Forms. What unites these disparate thinkers in this regard - Marx, Freud, Durkheim and, indeed, Foucault himself - is that they are what Foucault calls a "founder of discursivity." That is, the limits of the discourse become a stake in the discourse itself. The meaning of "Marx's discourse" or "Foucault's discourse" is open to questioning: it cannot be fixed and is not static. The "central" texts have changed and will change - in part in response to contemporary issues of interest.
Internal to Foucault's own discourse, it is generally accepted that there are a number of phases (the limiting of these phases can themselves become an issue, of course): the archaeological, the genealogical, and the problematization. This, of course, does not capture all the texts: there are four significant texts that do no get included in this periodization - Foucault's first published piece on Biswanger and existential psychoanalysis called "Dream, Imagination and Existence" (1954), his first book published as Maladie mentale et personnalité (1954), his minor dissertation on Kant's anthropology (1961), and his major dissertation published (in the recent translation) as The History of Madness (1961). Thus, it is only in 1963, with the publication of The Birth of the Clinic, that Foucault begins to use the word "archaeology" in any coherent way and in 1966, with the publication of The Order of Things, that he begins to use the word "discourse" in any coherent way. However, it isn't until 1969, with the publication of The Archaeology of Knowledge, that he attempts to explicitly theorize either concept.
While there is certainly a degree of continuity between The History of Madness and The Birth of the Clinic, namely a concern with the institutional sites of specialized and rarefied knowledges, there is also a large break that isn't fully realized until The Order of Things. The question, therefore, is whether the continuity or the discontinuity prevails. In my view, it is the discontinuity that prevails: first, the theoretical apparatus changes extensively; second, the object of analysis changes; and, third, Foucault himself begins to disavow his early works. (I'd note in passing, that contrary to some comments on The Valve, Foucault repeatedly disavows his previous works at each identifiable stage of his career - see, for instance, the first lecture in 'Society Must be Defended' and the late essays published as "The Subject and Power." Rather than being his biggest fan, Foucault comes across as his own biggest critic.)
Let us, for the time being, bracket the question of his works after 1963 and turn to his early works; that is, the group of works which have come to be dominated by The History of Madness, that are at the center of the current controversy. The question, it seems, is whether or not these works can be characterized as "juvenalia" or otherwise questioned in relation to his other works. The answer from the other side - that some of these works are presently taught in seminars - does not provide a convincing reply: the mere presence on a syllabus does not indicate that the instructor considers the work authoritative. It is entirely possible to imagine someone - saying Scull himself - teaching a course on the historiography of psychiatry in which students would study landmark works in the writing of the history of psychiatry. Per Scull's own review, The History of Madness would of necessity be included in such a syllabus as it was the work that opened up these sorts of questions to later scholars. Thus, it is entirely reasonable to include the book on a syllabus as important, but to teach it as flawed - it asked in important questions, but it failed to answer them. Hence, the mere fact that book is taught is not indicative of its authority in a positive sense: it could be taught because it is wrong; wrong in interesting ways. A form of wrong-ness, I'd suggest, that is more interesting than books that are technically "right."
On the face of it, SEK's objection fails: that it is taught indicates little or nothing about the book itself. The more interesting question, then, is whether it is possible for those who don't care for the book or Foucault and for those who don't for the book, but care for Foucault to agree on this point: The History of Madness was a good dissertation, a good book written in late fifties and early sixties, published in the early sixties, that it propelled his career, but is, ultimately, not a book that will stand the test of time. It seems to me fully possible and reasonable to concede this point: the book was once important, but its importance has since declined. As indicated in my original post on the subject, I don't see The History of Madness as an essential work in Foucault's oeuvre.
The problem, of course, is that while we can agree that the book is insufficient, our respective grounds for this judgment will not coincide: for many opponents of Foucault, it isn't the work that is the problem, but the man. When Scull writes against The History of Madness, he isn't attacking a book, but, rather, is attacking Foucault's oeuvre and, hence, those who work with Foucault's discourse. Consequently, Scull's position is overdetermined by faculty politics. Likewise, those who take up Scull's position - whether they agree with his particular claims - are likewise already imbricated in these politics. And, thus, those who would defend Foucault are caught in an inconvenient position: they must defend what is more likely than not an unsatisfactory work and they must deal with the subtext of faculty politics. Given the existing relations of force within the academy, the defenders are already at a disadvantage.
This is the point at which one claim spills into another: The History of Madness is flawed for its citation practices and, hence, any work of Foucault's that makes use of comparable citation practices is likewise flawed. Thus, if one work can be rejected, so too can the rest. This is, in essence, the point of contact between Scull and SEK.
Let's turn to SEK's point. He quotes a passage from an essay, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," and then claims that The History of Madness is not a genealogical work - it doesn't live up to Foucault's own methodological statements. We have two replies to this: first, you are completely right - The History of Madness is not a genealogical work! and no one claims it is; second, what methodological statements are you talking about? That The History of Madness is not a genealogical work should be granted - let's also throw in The Birth of the Clinic, The Order of Things, and The Archaeology of Knowledge. The problem with this criticism is that it isn't: it isn't a criticism at all. The whole point of the turn to genealogy was that the previous archaeological works were not entirely satisfying. And, of course, from the perspective of the archaeological works, the previous works were likewise unsatisfactory. This criticism is, then, nothing but show - an apparent contradiction is found and the nasty Frenchman is revealed as a dishonest fraud. The problem, of course, is that it doesn't reveal dishonesty on the part of Foucault, but on the part of his critics.
We've already discussed one reason why this is dishonest; viz., the work criticized for not being genealogical does not claim to be genealogical. The second reason is that Foucault provides no methodology at all. Hence, to criticize Foucault for failing to live up to his methodological precepts is likewise dishonest. Contrary to some opinions, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" is not a "methodological" text. It is a short essay on Nietzsche's philosophy of history written quite ironically for a volume dedicated to a Hegelian scholar. That is, the question of the essay is not, "What is Foucauldian geneaology? What is it that I, Foucault, mean by genealogy?" but is, rather, "What does Nietzsche mean by genealogy? How does this relate to his philosophy of history?" Thus, in the first instance, the criticism that The History of Madness does not live up to the standards of Foucauldian genealogy does not pass muster.
But, one might reply that even if "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" does not provide a methodology, can a genealogical methodology be found in Foucault's works? Afterall, he does speak in passing about the relationship between archaeology and genealogy taken as a method. The problem to be resolved is whether or not Foucault practices this "method" and if lays out this method. With respect to the latter, he clearly does not. Alongside Foucault's constant disavowal of his previous works is a constant refusal to, as he calls it, "lay down the law" - that is, to provide "Foucault's theory" of so-and-so or to provide "Foucault's methodology." It seems to me that Foucault's refusal is a necessary position: his genealogy taken seriously requires that he not create a method.
The problem then takes on a new face: what are we to make about his claims to be doing archaeological or geneaological (or, indeed, problematizations) work if he refuses to specify what he means by this? The answer to this, by normal standards, would be to question if his work is recognizable as "sound" - that is, does it conform to disciplinary norms or, again, is it "right"?
Such a question - internal to Foucault's discourse - is incoherent. This is why you will not be able to find a supporter of Foucault's work who will be able to provide a coherent and acceptable answer. To this question, a Foucauldian can only be puzzled. It misses the point. The whole point of, first, archaeology, and then geneaology, was to question to the prevalent modes of writing history. Indeed, it isn't even clear if Foucault's discourse is "historical" (or, indeed, "philosophical" or even "sociological"). Disciplinary arrangements and standards are explicitly questioned and challenged by his work. Hence, it is possible for a Foucauldian to write a book wondering if he was a philosopher or a historian! Further, the charge of the critics is that his work employs poor citation practices, that it misuses sources, and that it isn't true.
The Foucauldian reply is can only be "Why does this matter to you? So what." To the first, there is the problem of extending primarily North American citation practices to other national traditions (it is not uncommon, especially during Foucault's lifetime to actively refrain from citing contemporaries - only the dead are cited - and, so, the criticize Foucault for not citing the Annales is misplaced). To the second, it is pointed out that the nature of sources themselves are questioned (hence, the whole thing of "from below," the "minor knowledges," the forgotten manuscripts that aren't part of the official history, etc). To the third, we have the Nietzschean question: what is the value of truth anyway? Why should a genealogy privilege truth over falsity? Why should truth be valued as such? What is the power claim that is being made in an appeal to truth? That is, critics give the appearance of, on the one hand, criticizing non-genealogical works for not being genealogical and, on the other hand, criticizing genealogical works for being genealogical.
One is, of course, not required to take Foucault seriously. One is, of course, not required to take all of his works seriously even if one takes other of his works seriously. One is, however, required to take him seriously on his own terrain if one seeks to criticize or critique him. This is not to say that criticisms originating external to his own discourse are not valid - they most certainly are - but to do so requires a demonstration that one has already considered Foucault internal to Foucault's own discourse. This, of course, does not apply merely to critics of Foucault, but is a standard that should be taken into account in any critique or criticism. It is clearly illegitimate for a Foucauldian to criticize a Habermasian for not being a Foucauldian.
(Cross-posted to theoria.)
By Craig | April 10, 2007 in Foucault | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/361357/17614976
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Still More on The History of Madness:
Comments
That’s an excellent post….But I still can’t figure out why conservatives have been so inspired by Scull’s review in the first place. I mean, a past critic of Foucault, commissioned by an anti-Foucault conservative newspaper to write a review of the “long version” of a book that he already disliked in abridged form? How is Scull’s review new or noteworthy, given these circumstances?
That is weird, but far more insulting is the implication that Foucault or his followers were arrogant or oblivious to the complexities and difficulties of his own project. As you mention, Foucault was probably his most forceful and most unrelenting critic, something that is recognized even by many of his (reasonable) intellectual rivals. Take this passage from G.E.R. Lloyd’s 1986 review of volume 2 of the History of Sexuality. Now, Lloyd’s review is generally *negative,* but this doesn’t stop him from noting Foucault’s disarming “capacity for self-criticism.” Indeed, Lloyd thinks that “so far as the methodology of his investigations goes, he had probably been his own most unsparing critic.” Moreover, Lloyd correctly notes that there is virtually no book or subject matter that does not go through a very public display of self-criticism:
“Thus the introduction to The Archaeology of Knowledge devotes several pages to a radical critique of Madness and Civilization, The Birth of the Clinic, and The Order of Things, criticizing the last of these, for example, on the grounds that at the stage at which it was written he had not made fully explicit the methodology on which the study of the subjects it investigated had to be based. Indeed, what passes for a conclusion to The Archaeology of Knowledge takes the form of an imaginary dialogue in which the very possibility of the investigation it attempts is questioned.”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/5180
In other words Scull’s criticism of Foucault’s work is not only out of context, it is also relatively tame when compared with the questions that Foucault posed to himself. Worse, Scull’s critique becomes even tamer when one takes into account the fact that it is 2007, and Scull’s inane observations are still premised on the notion that the youthful, 1960s Foucault represents a potential future “threat” to historians, philosophers, and truth-seekers everywhere.
Posted by: JRGBruno | Apr 11, 2007 12:33:07 AM
Your penultimate paragraph disturbs me. Citational practice is not some mere convention, is not simply icing on a cake. That it has been reduced to mere convention by plagiarists and undergrads is a sign of the times.
You can't excuse a scholar's failure to cite recent scholarship by appealing to some French custom -- any more than you can excuse wife beating by appealing to some patriarchal custom.
Finally, what to make of the whole "why value truth over falsity" claim? Of course, a scholar will often be forced to deal with what is false: historical accounts that distort the truth, bad science, bad philosophy, mysticism, religion, etc. But if you're writing about asylums or prisons and you elide the difference between how an institution represents itself and how it actually operates, then you're simply wrong, not some brave defender of Nietzschean illusion over the will to power of truth-seekers.
Posted by: Luther Blissett | Apr 11, 2007 9:32:34 AM
"You can't excuse a scholar's failure to cite recent scholarship by appealing to some French custom -- any more than you can excuse wife beating by appealing to some patriarchal custom."
What is this caled? This form of argument? It has to be invalid. I saw something like this over at Crooked Timber where they compared giving nuclear power to Iran like giving a knife and fork to Hannibal Lector. It's not really a good analogy.
Luther, wouldn't it depend on the reason for that French custom?
God, do I not I have a dog in this fight.
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Apr 11, 2007 10:05:14 AM
Anthony, you're right, my comparison is too hyperbolic.
But I think it's basically true, so here's a revised version:
"You can't excuse a scholar's failure to cite recent scholarship by appealing to some French custom -- any more than you can excuse any bad behavior by appealing to custom."
Sure, there might have been a good reason for the French custom of limiting citation to accepted, canonical sources. It's not a French custom, in fact -- you'll often find Camile Paglia criticizing 80s lit crit for its failure to cite any sources before 1970. It's a conservative, belle lettristic convention that rests on the mistaken belief that what's old and commonly read has "stood the test of time" and so is an acceptable source.
I'm sure French scientists and doctors of Foucault's day did cite the most contemporary research on their topics. Which brings me to the issue of professional politics addressed above. Foucault's often shoddy research is very much tied to his essentially belle lettristic heritage. What is neither historian nor philosopher nor sociologist? In France, the answer is: essayist. And for all of Foucault's professional machinations, his work is best read -- like Derrida's and Lyotard's and Baudrillard's -- in the tradition of Montaigne. The scholar, whether historian, sociologist, or philosopher, has a duty to the truth; the essayist has only a duty to be interesting.
Posted by: Luther Blissett | Apr 11, 2007 11:09:44 AM
Following up on Luther's point, Nietzsche didn't regard his question, 'why truth over falsity?' as an ever-playable 'get out of critical thinking jail free' card, as it were. You're supposed to think about it: what is the value of truth?
So: what is it? Such that you would be willing to stand by your thinker, right or wrong?
(Anthony. Dude. What are you talking about? This is your thing all over. This is your dog. This is your hunt. Me? I'm outa here. I've said my Nietzschean piece.)
Posted by: jholbo | Apr 11, 2007 11:14:35 AM
Bad behaviour? Really?
God is this debate tired. And now you're making Foucault an enemy of truth, beauty, and goodness. I just don't know how to argue when the stakes are that high.
I will ask, regarding this "The scholar, whether historian, sociologist, or philosopher, has a duty to the truth; the essayist has only a duty to be interesting." How is this the case? It seems to suggest that the truth is not interesting, or that to be truth it must be made to be not interesting. Doesn't ring true or interesting to me.
John,
If you leave now you won't be able to tell me all the things you so want me to learn.
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Apr 11, 2007 12:42:10 PM
Just when I thought I was out ... they pull me back in! Good point, Anthony.
But not about what Luther said. So here is your logic lesson for the night. To say that Smith has a duty to x and Jones has a duty to y is not to imply either that Smith has a duty to not y or Jones has a duty to not x. Get it?
Posted by: jholbo | Apr 11, 2007 1:18:12 PM
Craig writes:
Foucault repeatedly disavows his previous works at each identifiable stage of his career - see, for instance, the first lecture in 'Society Must be Defended' and the late essays published as "The Subject and Power." Rather than being his biggest fan, Foucault comes across as his own biggest critic.
[end excerpt from Craig]
Unless my notes are flawed -- which is possible but I doubt it -- Foucault does not criticize his work on madness so much as he provides an overview that integrates that work into his overall effort. See p. 208 of the Dreyfus and Rabinow text, where (to paraphrase!) Foucault says he is primarily interested, not in 'power' per se, but rather the history of different means by which in our culture human beings are made subjects. And then Foucault goes on to schematize his work in relation to this goal, starting with Order of Things which treated the "objectivizing of the speaking subject." Or as the subject who labors in the analysis of wealth and of economics. Then the subject as "divided" is treated in his work on insanity. Now using the domain of sexuality to investigate how human being turns him or herself into a subject [end Foucault paraphrase]. A similar treatment of his career is found in "On the Genealogy of Ethics" in Foucault Reader, p. 351.
Foucault also refers favorably to Madness and Clinic in the interview "Truth and Power." In both works, he says, he was really working with a concept of power that was, however, insufficiently thematized in both. See Foucault Reader p. 57.
In "Body/Power" in Power/Knowledge, p. 61, Foucault comments that both his study of madness and the prisons contributes to his work on how power works.
In "Polemics, Politics, and Problemizations," from the Foucault Reader, Foucault puts it roughly this way; but see pp. 387-388:
"Madness, delinquency, sexuality--three examples in which three fundamental elements of any experience are implicated: a game of truth; relations of power; forms of relation to oneself and to others. With each of the examples emphasizing one of the three aspects. With field of madness organized as primarily a field of knowledge; of crime as an area of political intervention; with sexuality defined as an ethical position. But each time the other two elements present."
See also "Preface" to The History of Sexuality, Volume II, contained in The Foucault Reader, esp. p. 336, where Madness is again treated as an important element of Foucault's thought as a whole.
There is a very interesting comment by Foucault in Threepenny Review, which can be found, I think, in Foucault Live. Again I am relying on my notes, but I think they are reliable. Foucault says, in response to a question:
"I am not merely a historian, nor a novelist. What I do is a kind of historical fiction. I know, in a sense, that what I say is not true. Take madness: I know very well that what I have done from a historical point of view is single-minded, exaggerated. But the book had an effect on the perception of madness. So the book and my thesis have a truth in the nowadays of reality.
"What I want is to provoke an interference between our reality and the knowledge of our past history. If I succeed, this will have real effects in our present history. My hope is my books will become true after they have been written--not before."
I am not sure, then, that Foucault disavows his earlier work to the extent you suggest.
Scott also says: "The History of Madness is not a genealogical work! and no one claims it is."
Why wouldn't Madness? qualify? The usual complaint about Madness is that in the face-off between the mad and society, Foucault plays around with the idea that the mad have a more original, more authentic, more human access to being. But I really don't think that note plays so loud in the text, and there are plenty of other moments that deal with themes very familiar to a reader of one of Foucualt's later books, like Discipline and Punish.
Posted by: Swifty | Apr 11, 2007 1:39:28 PM
My feeling is that Scott Eric, along with a lot of other people, is tired of hearing about Foucault so much and took Scull's review as an opportunity to say so. I don't think that either Scull or Scott were primarily interested in M&C; it was an opening shot in the battle against all of Foucault (The History of Sexuality was also mentioned) which was part of the war against Theory.
I actually am a Theory-hater of sorts, but I like Foucault. (It's Lacan I hate). But not being under academic discipline, I'm not required to lump the two either way.
When I read Foucault I'm always impressed by the breadth of his research and am willing to give him a pass on thorough mastery of the present state of the field. He always brings new things to the table.
Everyone at the Valve seems to think that people are opportunistically minimizing the importance of M&C in order to ignore criticism. Like Craig, though (probably), before this all happened I'd already concluded that M&C was an apprentice work of mostly historical or biographical interest. (For example, I'd never recommend that anyone read it as an introduction to Foucault). If people want to zing Foucault, they really have to look somewhere else.
Posted by: John Emerson | Apr 11, 2007 1:47:40 PM
Thanks John!
Still, the way you put it doesn't seem to include everything that Luther said.
John,
You forget, the people at The Valve are the final arbiters of scholarship. They are The Deciders League. If you disagree with them you just disagree with everything that is good and right in the world. This is why John likes to follow me around and try and teach me things.
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Apr 11, 2007 1:53:53 PM
John,
I think you do me a disservice. I did write, after all:
Far from being tired ... I think we should have more such conversations, and more frequently.
That's not quite what you'd expect from someone "tired of hearing about Foucault so much." I directly said I'd like to talk about him more. I consider this distinction important.
As for Craig's rambling undergraduate meditation on the Meaning of Truth -- you can smell the reek of bad bud all the way across the internet -- the less said the better. Still, I could point out that he consistently misrepresents 1) what I wrote, 2) my reasons for writing it, and 3) the conclusions I drew.
I could point out the density required to claim that because Foucault said he had no methodology, we must believe him; or that no conclusions about that methodology can be drawn from what he wrote about others; or that evaluations of that methodology can be made, and preferences for one articulation of it over another can be expressed.
I could respond to the obscene statement of the obvious -- that I missed Craig's original point "that an oeuvre is not a static entity" -- by noting that this very, very obvious point is implicit in my original critique, inasmuch as unflatteringly applying later standards to earlier works suggests that I understand this very, very obvious point (which nonetheless takes Craig five paragraphs to make).
I could point out that the continued existence of The History of Madness on syllabi means that debates about madness are still being framed by it, no matter what Craig's opinion of its place in the Foucauldian canon.
I could point out that employing the heroic rhetoric of the self-marginalized dovetails nicely with the overall whiny tone of this post, right down to the weird choral effect of shifting into the (evidently beleaguered) second-person mid-post; to which point I could add that this is indicative of the very thing I criticized, namely, the inability of the acolyte to treat Foucault's work with the attention it demands.
I could do all of these things, but then Craig would respond again, and I can only be proven right so many times before even I tire of the unintentional hilarity.
Posted by: SEK | Apr 11, 2007 2:40:45 PM
Those meanies at the Valve! They are the "'anti-Theory dogmatists", they are the "Deciders League". Someone should tell Dan Green and Joseph Kugelmass and Miriam B. to back off of Craig and Anthony. How dare they bully you like that.
There is one aspect of Craig's diatribe that does share something with one other particular LS writer -- I've seen the same cozy insularity in Jodi's position:
"One is, however, required to take him seriously on his own terrain if one seeks to criticize or critique him. This is not to say that criticisms originating external to his own discourse are not valid - they most certainly are - but to do so requires a demonstration that one has already considered Foucault internal to Foucault's own discourse. This, of course, does not apply merely to critics of Foucault, but is a standard that should be taken into account in any critique or criticism."
That's why Luther Blissett is being ruled out of bounds, apparently. You can't claim that there are academic universals that apply whether they are internal to a discourse or not. If someone wants to claim academic problems with a work, they need not consider the work internal to its own discourse. There exists a socially universal context which applies to all academic discourses.
John Emerson is well-positioned to disagree with this, of course, since he explicitly takes an anti-academic stance. Craig -- well, who knows.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 11, 2007 6:28:21 PM
Please read the first period in the second-to-last para above as a "--"; i.e. "That's why Luther Blissett is being ruled out of bounds, apparently -- you can't claim that there are academic universals that apply whether they are internal to a discourse or not." In other words, that position is what I read Craig as writing. The rest of the paragraph is my position: that almost everyone in academia agrees on a universal context for the purposes of communication and collaboration.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 11, 2007 6:34:10 PM
I'm willing to put money on this - in most situations where, for whatever bizzare and twisted reason people are talking about blogs, The Valve were to come up the first thing that leaps to people's minds is not "Oh, that website that Dan Green writes for?"
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Apr 11, 2007 6:35:55 PM
The Colin Gordon review of the new translation in the Notre Dame Review offers a much different view than Craig's of the significance of the work in terms of Foucault's subsequent oeuvre. It can be found at ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id/=8904. I prefer Gordon's take.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Apr 11, 2007 7:36:27 PM
"There exists a socially universal context that applies to all academic discourses".
Well, I guess that settles it. No need to read Foucault at all. Now move along, folks. No need to get all excited about this wreckage.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Apr 11, 2007 7:47:52 PM
Anthony: "This is why John likes to follow me around and try and teach me things."
I think you give me too little credit for love of the absurd, Anthony. And yourself too little credit for love of learning. (Secretly, I think you don't mind it so much.)
Posted by: jholbo | Apr 11, 2007 8:52:55 PM
My feeling is that Scott Eric, along with a lot of other people, is tired of hearing about Foucault so much and took Scull's review as an opportunity to say so. I don't think that either Scull or Scott were primarily interested in M&C; it was an opening shot in the battle against all of Foucault (The History of Sexuality was also mentioned) which was part of the war against Theory.
Yup. I mean, seems obvious enough.
I could respond to the obscene statement of the obvious -- that I missed Craig's original point "that an oeuvre is not a static entity" -- by noting that this very, very obvious point is implicit in my original critique, inasmuch as unflatteringly applying later standards to earlier works suggests that I understand this very, very obvious point...
I think this is a terribly poor cop, given the predictable, if predictably flawed depths to which you were plunging this piece of junkfish to begin with (the rather large barbed hook the bloated and pale piece of steroid-sustained bait that allowed you to draw any blood at all from Scull's unoriginal little exercise.
I further think this confirms you have not understood Craig's point, in its strongest sense. After all, the concept of a non-static oeuvre correctly understood rather cuts against the grain of New Historicism generally - that is, if we permit SEK even that charity of self-declared association absent much original proof - in some important ways.
As for the rest, well, just wow...talk about the less said the better.
Posted by: Matt | Apr 11, 2007 9:02:53 PM
I agree with Foucault Blog btw; this is considered post (about which I hope to say more later). Thanks Craig.
Posted by: Matt | Apr 11, 2007 9:06:14 PM
Did someone dump stupid in the water? How has "let's talk more about Foucault" turned into "let's not talk about Foucault"? Are you practicing to be a Republican?
I think this is a terribly poor cop...
Think it all you want, but anyone who reads the post -- which, I should note, Craig didn't link to, making it a little difficult for people to see his misrepresentations for what they are -- will think otherwise, no matter how many rotten-fish metaphors you employ.
I further think this confirms you have not understood Craig's point, in its strongest sense. After all, the concept of a non-static oeuvre correctly understood rather cuts against the grain of New Historicism generally - that is, if we permit SEK even that charity of self-declared association absent much original proof - in some important ways.
Why, thank you for the charity. Much appreciated. Of course, you haven't actually given any, but let's not dwell. Instead, I'd love to hear how "the concept of a non-static oeuvre" is incompatible with new historicism "generally ... in some important ways." You truly lap the field when it comes to hazy insinuations devoid of intellectual content. (This, of course, is not a good thing.)
Still, you circle the wagons around Craig's circled wagons well -- "well" isn't quite the word I'm looking for, what is it now, "unthinkingly"? Not inaccurate, but not quite it. "Uncritically"? Also not inaccurate, also not quite it. Wait, I have it: predictably. That's the one.
Posted by: SEK | Apr 11, 2007 9:34:10 PM
Scott: nevermind.
Posted by: Matt | Apr 11, 2007 9:41:03 PM
John C. Halasz, both Scull and SEK have read Foucault. Craig's answer to a criticism based on academic standards is to write "Such a question - internal to Foucault's discourse - is incoherent." But that misses the point. In an academic context one discourse exists inside the other. You have to read Foucault before writing a critique of his work, sure, but you don't have to consider him internal to his own discourse.
I think that Luther Blissett and John Emerson have it basically right -- whatever the problems (if any) with Foucault academically, that doesn't change the interest in or influence of his work as an essayist -- but that's really what Scott was saying too, although the usual people who want to turn it into Our Gang vs Their Gang desperately want to avoid reading that.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 11, 2007 10:11:08 PM
Shorter Rich: Why can't you just accept that we, I mean, they set the terms of debate? You can have Foucault, but only as an 'essayist', for I know scholars and Foucault is no scholar.
John,
Another clever one-liner. How do you come up with this stuff?
In terms of the debate between SEK and Craig - I ain't touching that. It seems way too personal.
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Apr 11, 2007 10:20:32 PM
Matt, I think you are making a rather simple mistake: you yourself find objections to Theory to be objectionable, tout court. (That is, they irritate you.) But it does not follow that it is an objection to what Scott is doing that what he is doing might be construed as the opening move in a larger objection to Theory. (All that follows from this latter point is that it will irritate you, not that there is anything intellectually wrong with it.)
To put the point another way: it is question-begging to take 'objecting to Theory is wrong' as a premise in an argument to the conclusion that 'objecting to Theory is wrong', from which you will then work back to: so there must be something wrong with this critique of Madness and Civilization, since anything that leads to something wrong must have something wrong with it. Clear?
To put it yet another way, you are conflating your sense of irritation with Scott with possession of an argument to the conclusion that your irritation is justified. But I do not see that you have the latter, as opposed to the former - which I am more than willing to concede to you, in spades, as it were.
The point about the 'non-static ouevre' is obviously not it, since - whether or not Scott has granted it already - he can certainly simply grant that Foucault's ouevre is non-static, and then proceed with critiquing it to whatever degree he deems warranted. What you - and craig - are reaching for, which I don't think is wise, is some justification for, as it were, a hermeneutics of suspicionlessness. That is, there will be a set of figures - or discourses - concerning which it will be deemed illegitimate to have suspicions about any part of the overall ouevre, on the basis of faults anywhere else. This is obviously not the sort of standard you would apply to an ordinary author, even though ordinary authors are as non-static as anyone else; so 'non-static' turns out not to be the crucial factor and the question becomes: what is it about figures like Foucault, Freud, Marx, and their associated discourses, that mandates hermeneutics of suspicionlessness, as it were? I think the answer is: a certain sort of hermeneutics of suspicion is felt to be crucially important, so one does what one can to ensure the possibility. (A certain irony now obtrudes, if I make no mistake.)
[Ah! I love the smell of learning in the morning.]
Posted by: jholbo | Apr 11, 2007 10:25:40 PM
What you - and craig - are reaching for, which I don't think is wise, is some justification for, as it were, a hermeneutics of suspicionlessness. That is, there will be a set of figures - or discourses - concerning which it will be deemed illegitimate to have suspicions about any part of the overall ouevre, on the basis of faults anywhere else.
Huh? Where did you get that from? I'm happy to provide a great deal of critiques and criticisms of both Foucault and Foucauldians - my comments and thoughts on this are well established here at Long Sunday, my own site, and in various comments scattered throughout the blogosphere. The point here is that a rejection of THM isn't the knock-out blow that Scull (and others) claims it to be.
Here are a few criticisms of Foucault: politics is a residual category; the use of "social body" is just strange; sovereignty is under-theorized given its prominence in his work between DP and the end of the seventies; his "analytic of power" pre-supposes an unstated prior theorization of the difference between "analytic" and "theory;" there is no sense of a collective subject, especially in the late ethical works; and I'm increasingly convinced by the "crypto-normativism" charge.
Posted by: Craig | Apr 11, 2007 10:34:12 PM
Fair enough, craig, but neither Scull nor Scott ever said it was a knock-out blow - or implied it either. So what is it that is inducing you to leap so strenuously to the defense against a knock-out blow? You might say that their surly tone hinted at larger things, but by the time you set the antennae on such a hair-trigger, the concern starts to be that you are simply insulating these thinkers from global suspicion, as it were. Anyway, it's perfectly legitimate to write a book review that, in effect, says it is not such a good book as some people once thought, plus these problems might be symptoms of problems elsewhere. That sort of critical judgment is handed down all the time. And all Scott said was 'we should have these sorts of critical discussions of Foucault more often'. Well, what's wrong with that? If his suspicions are born out, fine. If not, that's a result too. The swift and urgent insistence that there must be nothing whatsoever to the Scull or to Scott's suspicions - move along, move along, nothing to see here - looks to me like a hermeneutics of suspicionlessness, although I admit that defining its parameters would take a bit of investigation.
Posted by: jholbo | Apr 11, 2007 10:48:20 PM
To put it another way: you conclude your post by saying "One is, however, required to take him seriously on his own terrain if one seeks to criticize or critique him. This is not to say that criticisms originating external to his own discourse are not valid - they most certainly are - but to do so requires a demonstration that one has already considered Foucault internal to Foucault's own discourse."
But the problem is: you obviously don't believe this yourself, in that you would never apply these epistemically generous conditions to, say, critics of Theory. In that case you are happy to assume they are all dogmatists and creatures of pure departmental politics, even though you also admit that you aren't familiar with the issues. (Can it really be that, as a philosophy professor, my intellectual interests are defined purely by the department politics of the English department? Does that sound right?) What this shows is that there is a hierarchy of discourses in your mind, enjoying different degrees of privilege, to say the least. And I am inclined to investigate the roots of the judgments that generated that hierarchy.
Posted by: jholbo | Apr 11, 2007 10:55:28 PM
Rich Pulchalsky:
To understand a work is not just to understand a list of sentences. It involves grasping, I won't say the "intention" of the work, but rather the stance the work is taking. (For example, though I don't think anyone has ever really undersood it, Wittgenstein's "Tractatus" was widely misunderstood as a contribution to logical positivism, inspite of W.'s explicit protest that the real meaning of the work was the unwritten ethical one; but one can only try to get at the unwritten ethics by taking account of the stance the work is taking through its explicit logical contents). Hence if one is going to evalutate and criticize a work, whether conceptually or empirically, one has to grasp the stance of the work as a whole and align one's criticisms with that "nature" of the work and its achievement, whether fully successful or not, else those criticisms simply miss their mark. I don't know if that exactly what Craig meant by questions not "internal to Foucault's discourse" being "incoherent", but I'll state, on my own account, that, while I don't object to criticisms of sources and empirical matters, such criticisms don't "tell" against the work unless they take account of and are related to the uses that such sources and evidences are put to in the work and the sorts of claims that they would align with. (Hint: Foucault was not writing an exhaustive empirical social history of either madness or psychiatry in early modern Europe, but rather a meta-epistemological critique of contemporary forms of rationality and objectification via a pre-history of current conceptions of psychiatry and madness). At any rate, I quoted that sentence that you typed ironically, precisely because it embodies the sort of claim that Foucault's entire body of work, early and late, was contesting and criticizing, such that it's not a criticism of Foucault's work, but a blunt contradiction of it and a refusal to engage with anything like the sort of claims or questions that he raises. And, er, I didn't imply that Scull and SEK hadn't actually read Foucault: that was an indirect citation of the "voice" of the traffic cop, telling people to stop rubber-necking and move on past the site of the crash.
Luther Blissett's claim that Foucault was merely a belle-lettriste is a vulgar absurdity, meant to dismiss Foucault's work and blunt any force it might have, rather than to actually engage with it and counter its force. But it's true that Foucault could be regarded as an "aestheticist", though at a "deeper" level and in a much more philosophically substantive sense than L.B. would allow. An underlying aspect of his work is a revised conception of mimesis, as no longer merely a "copy" of a prior reality, but as a kind of "force" in reality itself no longer dependent on its prior model, whereby the scenes recounted in his work are tautologically duplicated by it, as at once an anamnesis of suffering and a parodic repetition of the proceedings, from which Foucault derives some of the latent normativity of the critical "force" of his work. (The convicts' march through Paris in D&P would be a signal example of that).
Craig:
A "collective subject" is an incoherent notion. Whatever a collective may be or however it might be conceived, a "subject" is inadequate to grapsing any such reality. If there's any take away from Foucault, it should at least be that, even though I myself don't buy into his libertarianism.
For that matter, a "subject" is a now useless concept from an outmoded, defunct and erroneous tradition of philospohical epistemology. I'd rather that it be discarded, done away with, however much that might interfere with endless chatter about "subject positions", "subjectivation" and the like, in favor of just plain old human beings, (or "Dasein", if you insist on the recondite), whose existence and differentiation is no longer to be "grounded" in their alleged function as grounders of knowledge.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Apr 12, 2007 1:14:45 AM
John C. Halasz: "while I don't object to criticisms of sources and empirical matters, such criticisms don't "tell" against the work unless they take account of and are related to the uses that such sources and evidences are put to in the work and the sorts of claims that they would align with."
One doesn't get to write every possible sort of text within an academic context. History as meta-epistemological critique within this context (the text is a dissertation, after all, as any number of people have insisted on repeating) is left open to this kind of criticism, no matter what it's trying to do.
"Luther Blissett's claim that Foucault was merely a belle-lettriste is a vulgar absurdity"
LB wrote that the proper context for Foucault was the French essayist tradition going back to Montaigne. That's a good deal less absurd and vulgar than Craig's suggestion that French academia of the time had different customs than contemporary U.S. academia and that citations are a form of cultural hegemony.
In short I don't see the problem with being a great essayist instead of an ordinary academic. Most of the influental texts in philosophy were written by non-academics (at least until very recently).
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 12, 2007 9:54:44 AM
Halasz writes: "Foucault was not writing an exhaustive empirical social history of either madness or psychiatry in early modern Europe, but rather a meta-epistemological critique of contemporary forms of rationality and objectification via a pre-history of current conceptions of psychiatry and madness."
So, then, like a historical novelist, Foucault was rhetorically constructing the past in order to criticize the present? And like a historical novelist, it's not the accuracy of the writer's representation of the past that's at stake, but instead what the writer reveals about the present via an exploration of the past?
Posted by: Luther Blissett | Apr 12, 2007 10:23:45 AM
Doesn't Foucault's epistemological critique itself assume a positivism of some kind?
Posted by: Wade | Apr 12, 2007 3:05:14 PM
Rich Puchalsky:
The issue is not whether Foucault's work is or should be open to criticism, but whether the criticisms proffered are particularly apt and effective, or uncomprehending and "beside the point". I suppose there is a matter of "burden of proof" shifting involved here, but doubts and criticisms, just as much as cognitive or other validity claims, are subject to justificatory "reasons". At any rate, responding to Foucault in terms of empiricist modes of inquiry and discourse and canons of evidence that he is precisely contesting,- (and specifically in terms of their "universality"),- is rather inapt, at least insofar as it evades addressing the sorts of conceptual claims that Foucault's work is raising, and therefore how the "evidence" is deployed to make its "points". I myself thought the Scull review was a rather poor piece of work,- (and I thought the Gordon review was rather nice),- because it invoked the very criterion of "wie es eigentlich war" without taking account of how that criterion was being contested and without considering the de-familiarizing purposes of the work that also goes together with the real perplexities of its "object", i.e. "madness". Hence, e.g., Scull complains that Foucault cites no secondary 20th century sources, (leaving aside what such sources would have been available at the time), which is largely beside the point, since since it's the forgotten mentalities of prior discursive constructions that's the object of inquiry. Similarly, complaints about cross-country comparisons of the scope of the "events" proclaimed in the name of "European reason" are a bit "off" in that it's the very notion of "European reason" that's being dissolved in the work. More generally, claims about differing "mentalities" can not simply be read off of an empirically reconstructed history of institutions, practices and events, since the continuity and unity of that history can not simply be assumed.
So the upshot here is that such criticisms fail, precisely because they attempt to counter conceptual claims with empirical ones in question-begging ways, and thereby not only address their criticisms at the "wrong" level, but also run straight into Foucault's peculiar irony, as if that were not precisely really what is at issue. It's after all, at the limit, the notion of any "final truth" concerning any continuous and unified history/society/rational discourse that Foucault's work contests, and if his work is to be countered and argued against, then it's that nest of issues and concerns that needs to be addressed rather than evaded by nitpicking around the edges. Invoking the authoritative context of academic discourse is as ridiculous as the notion that Foucault's work is or should be regarded as academically authoritative.
The evocation of "Pyrrhonian" skepticism is pretty conventional with respect to Foucault's work, but the avowed affiliation of Nietzsche is perhaps more to the point, since it's not so much the suspension, but the conflict of judgments that's at issue, and that within the constantly evoked context of an immense, anonymous and irrecuperable dispersion that renders concerns for the integrity, rational justification, or transcendence of the personality nugatory. But also because that renders Foucault's pretensions to an encyclopedic exhaustiveness at least partly parodic. The form of Foucault's work is not so much the fragmentariness of the essay, as the fracturing of the treatise, with its pretensions to methodological mastery.
Luther Blissett:
All historiagraphy mediates present conceptions and concerns with the heritage and re-examination of the past. And it necessarily imports some sort of conceptual framework into the past, else it can not manage the immense welter of detail, and thereby it also involves a certain interpretive "license" (cf. Gadamer). There are differences in discursive modes and their specific constraints between standard historiography, historical fiction and Foucault's historico-epistemic brand of conceptual inquiry, but also something of the same broad constraints. Standard historiography, in particular, is limited to documentary evidence and the inferences that can be drawn from it, but, by the same token, must pass over the absences and "ghosts" of history. When Foucault declares his works "fictions", it's not just imaginative and rhetorical license that he's laying claim to, nor is it just a matter of the aforementioned criticism of unity/continuity/"final truth": it's also a matter of recognizing the "impossibility" of any synoptic account of history, even as, for conceptual reasons, that is what he has committed to providing. It's a bit of a stretch, but Foucault's synoptic "fictions" could be compared to Weber's "ideal types", at least insofar as something of the same nominalistic/skeptical problems inform both. Still, my general impression is that Foucault tends to handle his retrievals of documentary "evidence" emblematically, such that his "histories" amount to allegories of past suffering and present oblivion. Call him the devil's Dante.
Then there's the matter of whether Foucault is resorting to sheer sophistry and whether he's simply damning the "Enlightenment". Well, I myself find that the "end of philosophy" entails the return of sophistry dubious, but, if one follows through any really good critique of traditional philosophy, (e.g., Wittgenstein's), one comes to recognize how much sophistry is already ingredient in traditional philosophy, let alone positivism. And certainly Foucault's famous declaration of himself as a "happy positivist" is a piece of his peculiar irony, a "nonaffirmative affirmation". So following out the ins and outs of his "sophistries" might best be regarded as a parodic mirroring of the rationalizations of the status quo. And, of course, Foucault did explicitly affiliate himself with the "Enlightenment project" in the present tense. Whether Foucault's work is demystifying or itself mystifying should probably be addressed in terms of the Heideggerian dynamic of the simultaneous unconcealment and concealment of "Being".
Posted by: john c. halasz | Apr 12, 2007 5:10:34 PM
>>>[History], consequently, requires patience and a knowledge of details, and it depends on a vast accumulation of source material...In short, [history] demands relentless erudition.>>>
Can this really be meant to describe Nietzsche's method??
Posted by: CBR | Apr 12, 2007 7:09:49 PM
John C. Halasz: "responding to Foucault in terms of empiricist modes of inquiry and discourse and canons of evidence that he is precisely contesting,- (and specifically in terms of their "universality"),- is rather inapt, at least insofar as it evades addressing the sorts of conceptual claims that Foucault's work is raising" [...] "So the upshot here is that such criticisms fail, precisely because they attempt to counter conceptual claims with empirical ones in question-begging ways, and thereby not only address their criticisms at the "wrong" level, but also run straight into Foucault's peculiar irony, as if that were not precisely really what is at issue."
That is a very good example of the self-insulative quality that I was referring to -- if you insist that Foucault must be criticized within his own discourse, then of course the empirical critic must be excluded. The assertion of a particular framework makes the framework hold as if by magic, since anything large enough to break it can't be placed inside it. In order to criticize Foucault, in this view, you must accept his fundamental assumptions, which in turn means that criticism must occur within a limited range.
Of course there are critiques that still work within that limited range, but not everyone wants to be restricted in that way. Sometimes the best response to a peculiar irony is a peculiar humorlessness.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 12, 2007 9:48:45 PM
John Halasz you remark offhandedly that you doubt anyone has ever understood Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I think that's incoherent. You must have understood a work to be able to make a claim about another having understood a work. If you recite something to me in Finnish then recite something of comparable length in English and say it's a translation of the Finnish, I will have no grounds based on the content of the Finnish utterance for saying "that's no translation! you haven't understood!" to you since I don't speak Finnish. Declaration of misunderstanding of some work requires that the declarer claim understanding of the work in question.
I have no idea what you mean when you say that "to understand a work is not just to understand a list of sentences. It involves grasping (...) the stance the work is taking." What is this "stance"? Does every work have one? How many does each work have? One? More than one? How does one identify a stance? (An example would be helpful.)
You write "if one is going to evalutate and criticize a work, whether conceptually or empirically, one has to grasp the stance of the work as a whole and align one's criticisms with that "nature" of the work and its achievement."
What works does this apply to? All works? Works of some type but not others? How does one tell when one (or another) has grasped-and-aligned-with the stance of a work as a whole? Scull, SEK, Craig, you, Rich, John Holbo, Anthony, and anyone else could say to anyone who disagrees "ah, but you've failed to grasp-and-align-with the stance of my work as a whole, ergo your criticisms of me are not serious!" Which amounts to little more than a statement the propositional content of which is "I'm not going to talk with you." Which is fine, but I fail to see why one would need to disguise "I'm not going to talk with you" as "you don't understand."
Posted by: Nate | Apr 13, 2007 2:33:48 AM
Craig, you wrote of what you call "the Nietzschean question" or rather trio of questions "what is the value of truth anyway? Why should a genealogy privilege truth over falsity? Why should truth be valued as such?"
I've not read much Nietzsche - the "truth and lie" essay and a bit of the uses and abuses of history thing - so please bear with me. As I recall the truth and lie essay, Nietzsche wasn't asking "why value truth" but rather was treating "true" as roughly synonymous with "valued" or "useful." (Like when one says "you're a true friend, really you are", one isn't making a claim about what is true and what is real, one is expressing a feeling or the set of feelings connected to affectionate friendship and perhaps trying to evoke a feeling in someone else - the verbal equivalent of an affectionate touch.) Have I misread/misremembered the Nietzsche?
That aside, I think your Nietzsche point undermines your points about Foucault's citations and (mis)use of sources. If you ask "why bother with truth?" then it calls into question your assertions French citation practices and about the point of Foucault's project, because you might be opting for useful fictions here instead of truth.
Also, if truth is usefulness then there's little grounds for arguing against someone who says "I find it useful to retain a version of truth that is more than just what is useful." One could say "you only think you find it useful!" but that would appeal to a version of truth as other than utility and thereby concede the point. Or one could say "well, I don't" and then there's nothing really to say. In that case, though, there doesn't seem to be much grounds for recommending Foucault to those who don't find him useful - either he's useful to someone or he's not - and so there's not really much of a defense to be mounted. Scull's just said "I don't find Foucault useful and here's why" and "I don't understand why or how others could find him useful." What's wrong with that?
take care,
Nate
Posted by: Nate | Apr 13, 2007 3:02:25 AM
Nate: You ask whether Foucauldians might accuse everyone who disagrees with them of "not understanding" Foucault's work. Not so. Believe it or not, it is possible to understand Foucault and disagree with him too. You might want to take a look at Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Richard Rorty for a sampling of three very different philosophers who present powerful, insightful, and (most importantly) well-read critiques of F's philosophy. Incidentally, these authors might also help you out with your other questions, such as: "What is a stance? How many does each work have?...How does one tell when one...has grasped a stance of a work as a whole?" (If you want my view on this, then I'd say that the best way to figure out someone else's stance is by asking them--"What is your stance?" Or looking at a thesis statement, interview, etc....Then you may critique it as much as you like.)
Luther says: "like a historical novelist, Foucault was rhetorically constructing the past in order to criticize the present?" This is said in response to the previous comment that Foucault did not intend to write an "exhaustive" history of disciplines such as psychiatry and medicine. So, to clarify, Foucault was not "rhetorically constructing" anything...nor has he been accused of it. "Madness" is far and away his most controversial book in terms of empirical evidence, but even there, the accusation is framed, in Scull's words, as "a shaky empirical foundation." So at the very *worst* we are talking about "shaky," not "fabricated" or “constructed” (and in one book, not all).
Of course, it is to be expected that a thinker as innovative and as influential as Foucault would incite the passions of friend and foe alike, but perhaps we should ease on the hyperbole a little bit…
Posted by: JRGBruno | Apr 13, 2007 7:38:09 AM
JRGBruno, you should recognize that your "Foucault was not "rhetorically constructing" anything...nor has he been accused of it" does not sit well with John C. Halasz' characterization of what Foucault was trying to do, or with Craig's. There's no particular reason why it should, of course. But saying that these particular critics of Foucault obviously don't get it is because (paraphrasing) he's "only at worst shaky, in one book" or he's writing something from an archeological period later rejected in favor of a geneological approach (flavored with the exotic citation practises of the poorly studied French academic culture) or because he's writing a pretense towards encyclopedic exhaustiveness that is at least partly parodic -- well, it's an embarassment of riches. Maybe you should argue with each other to figure out why a straightforward academic concern with truth is obviously wrong when applied to Foucault. I thought the "subtle parody of conceptual claims of universality" offered the best prospect of non-refuteability, myself.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 13, 2007 10:56:57 AM
hi Bruno,
I don't know Taylor, but I've at least glanced at Habermas's criticism of Foucault, and read Rorty's pretty thoroughly once upon a time. I don't think that it's a particularly Foucaultian maneuver to accuse disagreers of being misunderstanders. (That's an argumentative move that can be made regardless of one's theoretical position.) That is one move that seems to be being made in this particular argument in this thread, though. (Or do you not think so?) Also, would you characterize Taylor, Habermas, and Rorty as criticizing Foucault on Foucault's own terrain? And if so is that a criticism that you think T, H, and R would accept? I could see Rorty saying something like "I'm criticizing Foucault on his own grounds" but not Habermas.
As for stance(s), I was asking John Halasz to clarify his terms because I don't understand them. I don't have a theory of or a commitment to the term "stance(s)."
cheers,
Nate
Posted by: Nate | Apr 13, 2007 11:48:36 AM
Nate:
When I said that no one really understand the "Tractatus", I forgot to add "as a whole". What's not to understand? Well, propositions "picture" states-of-affairs by virtue of having the "same logical form", but states-of-affairs are complex or composite, so that the propositions that correspond or refer to them must also be complex, and thus have to be broken down into simple propositions with truth-functions, such that there must be corresponding atomic simples. But what are those atomic simples? W. can't say. And then propositions correspond or refer to states-of-affairs, but objects themselves are "transcendental". Do you understand that? Does that "clarify" the matter for you? Me neither.
And then, of course, there's the self-denying ordinance at the end, where he kicks away the ladder and declares the propositional content of the work "nonsense". That's partly explicable, but still pretty breath-taking. And then the whole "point" of the work is its unwritten ethical meaning, but the only thing that the work says about the ethical is to identify it with the "mystical". Still, one can begin to grasp that, in that purely factual or conceptual statements do not yield ethical norms, and W. is attempting to delimit the domain of ethical norms by defining it through what it is not, the logical domain of facts and concepts. The again, from a certain modernistic, if rather positivistic standpoint, to state the facts and nothing but the facts, to say only what one can say and no more than what one can say, amounts to a form of authenticity: call it Joe Friday existentialism.
But how does W. mean to convey this ethics of silence and cunning, if he says nothing about it? The answer can only be: indirectly, through the "stance" of the work. Even if that ethical meaning is still vague, one can begin to grasp its "point" by comparing the work to Spinoza's "Ethics", in which the propositional abumbration of a metaphysical system serves to make an ethical point.
(I'd say the same thing about Hegel, by the way: that no one has ever really been able to understand his work as a whole. Which is not to say that parts of his work are not comprehensible, and that, once one grasps and provisionally grants his premises, much of Hegel not only makes sense, but is often quite shrewd. But following Gadamer, I would say that "understanding" always involves application, and Hegel's system collapsed rather abruptly in the early 1840's through its sheer, overweaning inapplicability).
But I'm not exactly a "Foucaultian". Rather I was just applying the principle of hermeneutic "charity" to his work, even if he himself eschews such a thing. Which is, of course, a version of the stricture against strawman arguments. How does one grasp the "stance" of a work? Well, through what hermeneutics calls the "foreconception". I thought the comparison with the "Tractatus" apt, because it too is a sui generis kind of work, which operates partly through indirection. But a weaker version of the same claim would apply to all works. Standard works of empirical social historiography import a perspective into their subject matter, which should be grasped and evaluated in relation to other works in the field. And disciplines themselves imply a certain "stance", which provide criteria for relevance of evidence and criticisms. For example, a British engineering professor recently claimed that Darwinian evolution is invalid because it violates the laws of thermodynamics, which is very narrowly construed "true", but more generally construed ridiculous and irrevelvant to biological research. (Yea, he is a creationist nut). So the upshot here is that when dealing with a complex, sui generis, cross-disciplinary body of work such as Foucault's, I think that care needs to be taken in determining the "stance" of the work and the criteria and levels and issues by which the work is evaluated and conceptual or evidentiary criticisms applied as relevant, apt, or effective, or not so much. Pace Rich, I'm not doing any special pleading for Foucault, nor claiming some sort of immunity for him. The point applies generally, though not generally in such an exacerbated form.
Rich Puchalsky wants apparently to claim that general empiricism or standard academic disourse is unquestionably or superiorly normative and open, whereas Foucault or Foucaultians suffer from defects of unfalsifiablity. But I'm saying, not so fast: that's precisely part of what's at issue and is not so readily decided. And that's why I labored a bit to draw out some of the issues involved in the complexion of Foucault's work: not to "defend" Foucault, but to indicate where the issues should be joined, over against crude, dismissive criticisms that are just uncomprehending and irrevelvant. Or so I say. Accusing Foucault of fraudulence because he might have missed a fact or two, or because he's a tricky fellow is, er, way too facile. And dismissing him as just another aesthete, 'cause, ya know, he's FRENCH, is either utterly crude or complacent. (It's rather like complaining that the problem with Picasso's blue period is too much blue, but the real problem is that Foucault is not an aesthete, but rather an "immoralist" and a thorough-going one at that).
It's that criticism about "crypto-normativism" that needs some unpacking.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Apr 13, 2007 2:15:20 PM
"Rich Puchalsky wants apparently to claim that general empiricism or standard academic disourse is unquestionably or superiorly normative and open, whereas Foucault or Foucaultians suffer from defects of unfalsifiablity."
Well, no -- I'm claiming that *your particular account* of Foucault suffers from defects of unfalsifiability (as does Craig's, in a slightly different fashion). And, as I wrote in my comment above, you're generalizing to "Foucault and Foucaultians" against the statements of other people who write about Foucault. If someone says that Scull's critique is bad because it focusses on a juvenile work whose problems do not show up in Foucault's more mature works, there is nothing unacademic or unfalsifiable about that claim.
You write "when dealing with a complex, sui generis, cross-disciplinary body of work such as Foucault's, I think that care needs to be taken in determining the "stance" of the work and the criteria and levels and issues by which the work is evaluated". But you should be able to see why this agreeable-appearing statement is really a fog bank. You approach it through paragraphs in which you state that no one has really been able to understand the Tractatus as a whole and that no one has been able to understand Hegel's work as a whole. If you define a work as a Gordian knot, you can't complain when people reach for their scabbards. Most people, being mortal, prefer to encounter works in ways that can be understood within a human lifetime -- or else reject them as, if nothing else, not very useful.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 13, 2007 3:15:05 PM
Rich, I think you are suffering from an obstinate refusal to question your own premises. There seems to be a desire on your part to read the claim that Foucault (or, indeed, as has been pointed out, anyone else) on his own terrain (i.e., "immanently" or "internally") prior to reading him on another terrain (i.e., "transcendentally" or "externally"). The point isn't that Foucault (or, indeed, anyone else) can only be questioned in his own discourse, but that the "internal" critique is necessarily prior to the "external" critique. Put another way, Scull hasn't done his homework - or, at least, hasn't demonstrated an attempt to do so in his review of The History of Madness. With respect to Foucault, a number of people who have done their homework and who have gone on to provide "external" critiques have been provided: viz., Habermas, Taylor and Rorty. There is no implication in the claim that the "internal" is necessary for the "external" that any critique at all is impossible. This is clearly not the case.
Posted by: Craig | Apr 13, 2007 3:29:09 PM
I think that you simply haven't read this thread, Craig, or have been reading badly. The premise that someone must be read on his own terrain before being read on an external terrain is one of the premises of yours that I've been criticizing; I think that I've been clear about what my premises are. In this case, everyone seems to agree that Scull has in fact read Foucault's text in the ordinary sense of that word -- as a "list of sentences", to quote Halasz' characterization. But he "hasn't done his homework" (to use your characterization) because he hasn't done internal critique prior to external.
But there is no reason why he has to. Some people may choose to, sure. But sometimes you can only make the critique that you want to make by refusing to play the particular game that the writer of the text wants you to play, even in passing.
It's like the uncomprehending criticisms of Dawkins for not understanding theology in his recent atheist book. Sure, you can cue up all the condescension that you'd like about lists of sentences and not doing homework. But Dawkins' entire stance means that he shouldn't bother to take theology seriously, even in passing.
In the case of Foucault, people (most? some?) seem to have rejected the idea that Foucault's writing is generically not academic and that therefore, applying academic standards to it is a sort of category error. In that case, you really shouldn't complain when someone makes a point of saying that no matter what Foucault is doing, he still has to follow academic standards, and he hasn't.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 13, 2007 3:58:23 PM
Put blunty, Rich, you haven't presented a criticism; you've made dogmatic assertions such that it appears to be your view that one doesn't even have to read the work of one's opponents before rejecting it. Indeed, your comments amount to little more than a celebration of ignorance and laziness. At least Holbo was willing to attach a label to what on the surface appears to be the exact same position!
Posted by: Craig | Apr 13, 2007 4:03:10 PM
As I suspected, Craig, you're not even bothering to read. Everyone has agreed that the critics of Foucault being discussed have actually read the work; no one defending rejecting without reading -- except you, as a form of practise.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 13, 2007 6:51:30 PM
Just to be clear, craig: I was discussing the 'it's ok to dismiss without reading' view and - with at least some evidence: to wit, your post - attributing it to you. You have dismissed the critics of Theory but, by your own admission, have not read them. No one else around here is actually on the record that such a 'celebration of laziness and ignorance', as you put it, could be a good thing. To be fair, it is quite possible that people are being secretly lazy and ignorant. That is, sadly, all too possible in this fallen world. But you, again, are on the record as being in favor of this, in effect. This is why you have come under a certain amount of critic pressure in comments.
You can say you are being Nietzschean about it: why value truth? But, again, Nietzsche didn't mean that as a rhetorical question. It's a real question. Why value truth (or not, as the case may be?)
And the critics of Theory thing is only an example. I realize it isn't the focus of the post. (This is a blog and you can be excused some sharp-elbowed opinionation, in passing, however epistemically unwarranted.) The focus of the post is Foucault. There is an ambiguity in your defensive posture. On the one hand, you are suggesting that the problem with these critics is that they are wrong. On the other hand, you are suggesting that the problem with these critics is that it doesn't matter whether they are wrong or right. They are, in a higher sense, wrong either way. Now if the latter is your position, then a great deal of - shall we say? - critical quibbling about right and wrong falls away. But we still want access to that higher sense. Why is it that the critics are wrong, even if they are, in some pedestrian sense, right? What value are you affirming, by taking this stand?
Posted by: jholbo | Apr 14, 2007 4:45:58 AM
I think what is meant by critiquing someone with an internal understanding is the following (meant only as an example, no arguing about the content please): Let's say I want to write an article about Heidegger called "Heidegger's Later Philosophy." But a central feature of Heidegger's later thinking is to distinguish itself from "philosophy." I can still write my piece: I can take exception with Heidegger's notion of what "philosophy" is, or I can return him to the tradition he thinks of himself as succeeding by showing what he's doing is philosophy after all, or some combination of both. But if I do neither--if I simply write about H's ;ater philosophy without addressing the question on his terms--then I am attempting to refute a major feature of his thinking without having to argue for it, in other words I am doing something fuzzy and lazy.
(My strategy could be, of course, to implicitly show why what late H is doing is "philosophy," which would be a borderline case and needing scrutiny.)
In any event, what I am proposing (i.e., what I think Craig is insisting on) is indeed some sort of normative standard, not endemic to any thinker...I see no getting around having such standards to some extent...so maybe that's a self-contradictory aspect to Craig's argument...
Posted by: CBR | Apr 14, 2007 3:56:31 PM
John Holbo,
I have no idea what your writing exercise has to do with me or my positions. If it made you feel better, great for you.
Also: I'm not interested in talking with you.
CBR I think says is well (as did Craig, in his last paragraph, and response to your odd little lecture).
Posted by: Matt | Apr 14, 2007 4:36:12 PM
John - or should I say "john"? - I'll remind you that I've repeatedly attempted to understand your position by repeatedly asking you to clarify your most basic terms. A request, I'd point out, that you've repeatedly refused. I'm happy to admit it: I am unable to treat your position with any charity as you have made it impossible. Your criticism would be much stronger if you weren't prone to such two-faced behavior.
But, John (err.. john?), you are certainly correct: I am asserting normative interpretative criteria. Maybe not for blogs - afterall, reason has never pretended to prevail online - but most certainly for ostensibly "serious" critiques. And, indeed, it is an assertion.
Posted by: Craig | Apr 14, 2007 5:03:49 PM
I love the contradictions here, as well as the blatant attempt to tar John by editing a comment. "Craig" signed the April 11th comment "craig" -- says so right here in my cache -- and John responded to it with courtesy: if someone wants to be called "craig" or "Scott Eric Kaufman" or "SEK," it's only polite to call them that. Now "jholbo" is guilty of insulting Craig via typography. I'm sure the masses will sympathize.
As for the larger philosophical incoherence: if his work questions and challenges "[d]isciplinary arrangements and standards," then the call that it be considered under a specific set of disciplinary arrangements and standards is a wee problematic. Granted, I have no problem with this position, as I'm more than happy to use Foucault without accepting the necessity of doing so under the aegis of a self-contradictory logic; and this is, to return to my original point -- the one Craig missed, then missed again, then again -- the difference between someone who studies a figure and someone slavishly and uncritically devoted to one. You've transformed what should be scholarship into an act of appreciation: I can choose which period of Foucault's work I want to defend and list my reasons why; you can only jump up and down demanding that I appreciate them for their differences without ultimately judging one superior to another. It is the height of fanboyism to demand the appreciation of minor works, and academia would be a better place were there more thinkers and less fanboys.
(Of course, Craig will again fail to acknowledge that I have, quite charitably, found much of use in Foucault's work, and that nothing I wrote was an attempt to dismiss the man himself, merely his lesser work. I.e. while this debate may not be tired, Craig's presence certain makes it seem so.)
Posted by: SEK | Apr 14, 2007 7:10:37 PM
SEK, the hell are you talking about? Don't bother answering: insofar as my posts to Long Sunday are concerned, you are persona non grata.
Posted by: Craig | Apr 14, 2007 7:19:11 PM
2 comments
Rich Puchalsky: You are right to suggest that there is much disagreement among scholars who follow Foucault. This is the case with any significant thinker (e.g., can you find me 10 important contemporary thinkers who agree on Socrates?). So saying that we should "have a discussion amongst ourselves is not really an insult., but rather a compliment to Foucault (...and by the way, we often do discuss 'amongst ourselves'). As for me, I readily accept Foucault’s description of genealogy as "writing the past as fiction." But "writing the past as fiction" is not the same as 'making fiction of the past.' It is on this point that there is disagreement, which you correctly identify.
Nate: Thanks for the comment. I generally agree with your criticism of this thread...just wanted to point out that not all Foucauldians would make the same claim (but you are right to be outraged when such claims are made!). I think you are right to suggest that Rorty is "internal" to Foucault's discourse. To me, Habermas is also able to become somewhat "internal" to Foucault in the sense that he is willing to concede the plausibility of Foucault's epistemology before commencing his critique (for example, he is willing to concede the *possibility* of having no objective, universal basis for political consensus, *before* attempting to reject it as a proposition). Foucault himself expressed (qualified) admiration for Habermas. Anyway, thanks for the opportunity to clarify this.... there are other points worth addressing but I'm tired so I'll leave it here.
Posted by: JRGBruno | Apr 15, 2007 1:25:24 AM
JRGBruno, I certainly accept that any serious thinker will have people interpreting his or her writings in different ways. (Thus my sentence, after pointing out the disagreement of your account with others: "There's no particular reason why it should, of course.") But some people here have contended that it is obviously wrong, or at least obviously not helpful, to criticize Foucault as Scull has. My point is that if it really is that obvious, then people who study Foucault should be able to agree on why it is obvious, whatever their more subtle disagreements. Any argument that says that it is obviously wrong because Foucault is doing X, where not almost all "internal critique" studiers of Foucault agree that he is doing X, has to fail in terms of obviousness if nothing else.
But even more to the point, some people make the poitn about Foucault into a general principle. For instance, Craig writes "This is not to say that criticisms originating external to his own discourse are not valid - they most certainly are - but to do so requires a demonstration that one has already considered Foucault internal to Foucault's own discourse. This, of course, does not apply merely to critics of Foucault, but is a standard that should be taken into account in any critique or criticism." I would say that making this into a standard that should be taken into account in any critique would make academic work impossible. It's one of those principles that sounds good if you imagine yourself to be the person working always within a particular sub-genre of discourse in the humanities, not so good otherwise.
Craig is not a good interlocutor for these matters (or any others), because he doesn't read. Jodi is a more honest and careful defender of this point of view; there was a long thread here recently about it.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 15, 2007 11:05:26 AM
Rich,
In what way does your dismissal of this standard relate to my articulation of it, and my contention that anything else is "fuzzy and lazy"? Do you disagree that what I am saying is what Craig is saying? Or do you disagree with what I'm saying?
Posted by: CBR | Apr 15, 2007 2:21:20 PM
I thought that your comment was confused, CBR. Both Craig and I are proposing normative standards. Craig says that criticisms external to a discourse require a demonstration that you have considered the text internal to its own discourse. I say that one can make a criticism external to a discourse without such a demonstration, as long as the discourse in question is held to be part of a wider discourse tradition which one is not external to.
So, getting to your example of "Heidegger's later philosophy" -- there's a lot going on there at once. But if one writes about Heidegger's later philosophy without considering his claim that it wasn't philosophy, one is not necessarily "doing something fuzzy and lazy". To take only one possible example, one could be making a sort of performative proof -- "I write about Heidegger within the traditions of philosophy; therefore he did not succeed in removing his thinking from philosophy." As I wrote to Halasz, sometimes the best reply to a peculiar irony is a peculiar humorlessness -- a refusal to get the joke. The people who insist that this is straightforward humorlessness, that the joke was not gotten because it was never understood, end up looking pretty clueless.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 15, 2007 4:19:32 PM
"The people who insist that this is straightforward humorlessness, that the joke was not gotten because it was never understood, end up looking pretty clueless."
Quite the comment! It does go to show that on blogs, at the end of the day, it really is about how people end up looking.
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Apr 15, 2007 4:41:36 PM
Far be it from me to insist that these people are actually clueless, Anthony. Maybe they are being subtly self-parodying, or merely having a bad day.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 15, 2007 5:28:41 PM
To clarify: SEK's comments on any post of mine to Long Sunday will be deleted without being read. This is in tune with already existing policy that posters decide which comments are to be published.
Insofar as my posts are concerned, the ToS and SEK are not welcome. This is but an extension of my already existing policy to not comment at The Valve and Acephalous.
To further clarify, no comment made by SEK prior to his new status will be deleted or modified. (As a matter of course, comments are only modified at the request of the commentator - i.e., to fix HTML coding problems, ambiguities, etc.) Contrary to insinuations made by SEK above, no comments were changed or modified. It is such insinuations that lead to his new status as persona non grata.
Should SEK wish to discuss this new policy, he is invited to do so via email. This is the last I will discuss this matter in public.
Now, please return to the strange argument between Rich and everyone else - the example most recently given by Rich clearly indicating the necessity of the point that a discourse be considered internal prior to being considered external.
Posted by: Craig | Apr 15, 2007 6:33:04 PM
Rich,
Perhaps it is you who are confused? I suggest this because I already proposed your "only one possible example" of an implicit or performative proof, and it's already included (as indicated by your own account of it) in those options that fall under "having already considered a discourse on its own terms." If you return to my post, this is what I called a "borderline case"--in other words, it could fall on the side of humorlessness or irony, depending on how we read it--again, I am using your terms which are by no means inconsistent with mine. The only place we differ seems to be as to whether this is "only one possible example," since I think that my options are exhaustive--if you don't consider someone's work on its own terms, in one of the ways described in my post, you are doing something fuzzy and lazy. Since you have NOT provided a counterexample in your post, I'll assume it was your own confusion that led you to suggest that I was confused--at least, until you explain to me how it is otherwise.
Posted by: CBR | Apr 15, 2007 7:25:48 PM
Unless you mean the whole disagreement hangs on Craig's use of the word "demonstrate," in which case I would imagine that something someone writes could "demonstrate" having considered something without openly avowing it. Again, though, this is a borderline case because the burden would be on the one claiming that something not mentioning something is nevertheless implicitly engaged with it. In some cases, of course, this may be obvious.
Posted by: CBR | Apr 15, 2007 7:42:16 PM
CBR, the word "demonstrate" is important. In my example, the writer has not demonstrated that they have considered the work internally, so their writing is pretty much indistinguisheable from someone who actually hasn't considered it in that way. But if the only difference between a "lazy, fuzzy" text and a knowing, performative text is the intent of the author, surely you're making a very odd distinction. If Pierre Menand had written Scull's critique of Foucault without reading Foucault...
But if you don't like that example with its focus on demonstration, I can go with another one. Let's say that pseudo-Scull writes: "I haven't taken the time to figure out what Foucault is trying to do, but I show here, here, and here that his history is falsified and / or that he hasn't cited people that he should have cited." People could react to that in a number of ways, some of which John C. Halasz has tried out. But most of those ways seem to involve a claim that Foucault is doing something unacademic. If you flatly want to defend the status of Foucault's work as academic, then you flatly must allow pseudo-Scull's critique on its own terms. Academic status goes along with academic preconditions. You can't denounce pseudo-Scull as being lazy and writing something fuzzy any more than you can denounce any limited project that does not go farther than it says that it goes.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 15, 2007 9:44:17 PM
I haven't read Scull yet, I confess, so I'm not accusing him, or his double, or Pierre Menard, or anyone else. I also would never say that the value of a piece of criticism depends on my somehow divining the supposed intent of the outative author. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I stand by my post about what it means to understand something on its own terms before you can really critique it. Now what I hear you saying is something like the following: all Scull did was check a few footnotes and found they were bunk. Why can't he do that without being a Foucault scholar or something? I suppose he can, but that doesn't sound like what we were haggling about.
I'm not exactly sure what your position is here, at this point...and again, my points were very general, not having read Scull yet.
Posted by: CBR | Apr 16, 2007 12:05:09 AM
Rich Puchalsky:
If you're simply arguing from freedom of speech or "academic freedom", I don't have any problem with that. But if you arguing that factual truth and plain meaning always and everywhere are or should be self-sufficient criteria for criticism, you just question-begging, as if everything were to be served up to you on a silver platter without any interpretive effort or puzzlement. Mind the issue here has not been about any "right" to criticize: it's been about the aptness or validity of criticism, and, in particular, whether Scull's review was particularly apt or valid, or rather an intemperate hatchet job. In other words, it's a matter of quality, or "seriousness".
But I'll admit you "jumped the shark" for me, when you cited the Dawkins book as a model of valid "external" criticism. Judging by reviews, (Eagleton, Orr, etc.), Dawkins wrote a bad, unconsidered book that merely amounts to a polemical expression of his own prejudices, since it scarcely bothered to know or understand anything of the complexion of its object of criticism, (theology and religious traditions), nor to take much account of the long history of thoughtful criticisms of religion, both religious and non- or anti-religious. Instead, Dawkins proposes to argumentively "prove" that God does not "exist", without any apparent reflection of the meaning of either the terms or the phenomena being considered, and inspite of the long tradition resulting in a consensus that the "existence" of God can neither be proved, nor disproved by purely logical, argumentative means, by means of applying probability theory, i.e. statistics, when 1) statistics is always dependent on prior categories, in terms of which statistical information is derived, which themselves can not be statistically derived, and 2) probability theory itself has well-known interpretive perplexities. Er, hardly a promising approach, which might at least account for its novelty. But Dawkins' book is at least an example of extra-academic and trans-disciplinary "criticism". However, it's an example of very poor quality "criticism", of how not to go about it. Reducing religion across the board to mere "fairy tales" and then attempting to prove that is the case is hardly engaging with the issue. Efforts at "serious" criticism require efforts at understanding, which, in turn, require reflecting on one's own presuppositions and prejudices, as well as, those of others.
You've repeatedly quoted me, but I'm not sure that you've at all understood anything I've said. If you don't understand at all what I meant by Foucault's "peculiar irony", then my suspicion is that you've not really read or engaged much with Foucault. (The point is not merely that Foucault is being ironical in what he says; the point is that there is a distinctive ironical mode by which the force of his criticism operates). For example, Foucault says somewhere, probably in an interview,- (I'm not sure where because I read the citation is a furious diatribe against the evil Foucault as a destroyer of the unsullied purity of Enlightenment "values")-, that his writings are intended to make people stupid. Now that's a pretty blunt, in-your-face provocation. Do you understand what it means? How would you interpret it? Even if "literally", do you realize that that does not narrow down to one possibility, eh?
Similarly, you cite my explicative remarks about the aesthetic dimension of Foucault's works and the parodic dimension by which Foucault's works are intended to function critically, as if you thought that I thought that would exculpate him from any possible criticism. Now it's a common complaint that what the English-speaking world calls loosely pomo, or "post-structuralism" disables the possibility of rational criticism. I'm actually half-way sympathetic to such complaints: my opinion is split on the matter, but it begs the question of what the rational basis of "rational criticism" would be. But if one is going to engage with Foucault's work in such terms, one has to identify how Foucault's brand of criticism operates, how it itself deploys rational means, and just where and at what level of the work such issues are to be joined. It simply does no good to misrecognize what the work is "doing" and how it is "doing" that, as a prelude to crude dismissal of the work. Hence Foucault is explicitly concerned with systems of representations and how they function and "games of truth and falsehood", rather than attempting to establish some version of empirical, historical "truth". Why the concern with representations rather than the represented? Well, for one, he's a post-epistemological thinker and the "game" of certifying the "identity" of representation with the represented has been given up as bootless. But also, he's focusing on how the separation of true from false as operating in discourses functions to exclude/suppress who, what, where from such "authoritative" discourses. And that's why what I called his "peculiar irony" needs to be grasped. Because he's looking at the "surfaces" of discourse to discern the "surfaces" that those discourses conceal. But are discourses really so incommensurable that they necessarily mutually undermine each other, and are the "subjects"/agents that bear such discourses so split within and between themselves that no communication is possible between the "parts" of discourse and its institutionalized apparatuses of power? But that's not a question that can be addressed by ignoring the whole set-up and dismissing it in terms of a merely perfunctory, formalistic argument dismissive of "relativism". The ironical "play" of mutually undermining institutionalized discourses and their suppressions and the disjunctive topoi that such discourses "address", (not to mention the construction of the "specific intellectual" as the recipient of the practical implications of such "theory", which Foucault does not pretend to control), need to be recognized before any effective criticism can be mounted. At any rate, I don't think that the presumption of the pre-eminence pf empirical standards of "truth" and crude falsificationalism does much good here, since that is precisely what is at issue.
You might ask was there really a movement for the general, indisciminate enclosure of assorted deviant individuals in the 17th century? Well, it might be readily pointed out that the 17th century was itself a disparate and disjunctive field of discourses and practices, and the emergent absolutist states had neither the resources, nor means to effect such a general confinement. But equally, the state and authoritative discourses attached to it might well have aspirationally conceived of such a "thing" and changes in "normative" conceptions and representations of the "matter" might well have occurred, for which evidences can be found. Comparing empirical evidence for the actual scope of such tendencies with a representative sampling of discourses of representation is historico-empirically relevant, but it doesn't elide the issues of the transformations of conceptions and representations raised, nor does it settle the issue of the "history of the present", which, far from its unitary self-representations, might be just as disparate and disjunctive a field as the 17th century. Which is why a purely historico-empirical criticism of Foucault's work, while not "wrong", is of limited value. And why it can be suspected of being deployed to evade the "real" issues. Even leaving aside that Foucault's work itself largely contributed to the opening up of such historiographical questions.
"We"'ve been accused here of adopting a "heads-I-win/tails-you-lose" approach to criticism of Faucault's work and of ignoring the pre-eminence of a self-referential paradox with regard to "truth". Actually, I don't think anything of the sort has been at issue here. The standards of viable criticisms enunciated have actually been quite general, and simply amount to a refusal of privileged "prejudices", even if the latter are well-nigh inevitable. I have the sense that you, Rich, while complaining that no one is reading your posts with proper care, have failed to bother to understand my comments. Is that a tu toque or an ad hominem? But then you argue that life is finite, so why bother to puzzle out anything that's not really understandable "as a whole". I'll just remark that Gadamer specifically motivates the "necessity" for interpretation in terms of the conjuncture between the finitude of human existence and "effective history", i.e. its "determination" through inherited historical traditions. I'll leave you to answer the rest of you own question.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Apr 16, 2007 12:39:30 AM
John C. Halasz, there's a whole lot of misconceptions in what you wrote. I'll try numbering them to make more distinguisheable:
1. "if you arguing that factual truth and plain meaning always and everywhere are or should be self-sufficient criteria for criticism"
No. I've been arguing (I thought pretty clearly) that academic discourse has certain general rules, one of which is that factual truth is a sufficient criterion for criticism.
2. "Judging by reviews, (Eagleton, Orr, etc.), Dawkins wrote a bad, unconsidered book [...]"
There have been many accusations and counter-accusations of condemning without reading in this thread. Should I assume from the above that you support the practise in general, or just this instance?
Dawkins wrote a polemic which does not pretend to be anything but a polemic. If you find all polemics to be automatically "bad, unconsidered", that's your judgement. But you can't understand what I wrote without understanding why Dawkins' pretended ignorance of basic theology is an act of context assertion.
3. "Efforts at "serious" criticism require efforts at understanding, which, in turn, require reflecting on one's own presuppositions and prejudices, as well as, those of others."
No, they don't, not in all cases. Obviously it's hard to argue against a bromide like the need for understanding and reflection. But aren't you being more Habermasian than Foucouldian here? Would Foucault really agree? Why do you think that he said that he wrote for users, not readers?
3. "the point is that there is a distinctive ironical mode by which the force of his criticism operates"
And there is a distinctive non-ironical mode by which irony of this type can be argued against. All this has been gone over quite a bit in this thread. In other words, saying ("humorlessly") that you prefer writing intended to make people smart, not stupid, is one kind of answer.
4. "At any rate, I don't think that the presumption of the pre-eminence of empirical standards of "truth" and crude falsificationalism does much good here, since that is precisely what is at issue."
But it's only your defense of elite knowledge that makes this an issue! Some people said, quite reasonably, that Foucault should be read within a non-academic context, which would make purely academic objections a sort of category error. You said that this would amount to a dismissal of Foucault. But of course it wouldn't; a large majority of philosophers were not academics.
The pre-eminence of standards of truth and falsificationalism is a necessity for academic work. (Note: I'm treating these as social agreements, not objective universals.) If Foucault really did intend to change this in the way that you describe, he didn't succeed.
5. "The standards of viable criticisms enunciated have actually been quite general, and simply amount to a refusal of privileged "prejudices", even if the latter are well-nigh inevitable."
No. I could equally well say that the standards of viable criticism given are quite specifically those of a privileged sub-culture, one unwilling to consider its own prejudices. You don't get to slide out of your own critique with that "even if" phrase.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 16, 2007 11:28:06 AM
Rich Puchalsky:
One last go around, I'll leave you to have the last word, since that seems to be your desire. In the first place, I'm not any sort of academic and I'm not defending academic "culture" or "subculture" and its sacrosanct "standards". Nor am I desirous of defending "elite" understandings against more general popular understandings, (and neither is Foucault). Suffice it to say that the "universe" of facts or "facts" is infinite and selections for relevance must always be made. Also, that academic disciplines, scientific or otherwise, are always constituted upon models by which facts are selected and gathered, (even if issues about models might be disputed within disciplines), such that there is no general criterion of facts subtending all academic endeavors alike, in quite the way that you seem to wish to claim, nor is "falsification" an entirely simple and empirical matter, ever. (This all goes back to Kant's "synthetic a priori" and to his basic contention that understanding the limits of claims to knowledge are crucial to understanding their basis of validity, mutatis mutandis).
I'm more than familiar enough with the Dawkins/Dennett cult, so as to be able to judge that I have no particular desire to read his latest diatribe. In general, one chooses what to read or not based on pre-judgments of what one thinks one might learn from or be informed by, even if one might later revise such judgments or find oneself disappointed. All the same, Dawkin's little book is precisely an example of inapt and inept criticism, even if it is an act of "context assertion", a prise de parti, er, like I said, a cult. The issue is not politeness, but veracity, i.e. the accuracy of his criticism. And it's based on a severely reductionist interpretation of evolutionary biology, (with which many biologist strongly disagree), which leads on to "imperialist" overextensions of the proper scope of the model. The plain fact of the matter is that religion is a socio-cultural, anthropological phenomenon, and is not to be explained away by appealing to biological mechanisms, even if some religious tenets or ways of holding to those tenets clash with evolutionary biology.
I clearly cited Gadamerian criteria to underwrite my view, which is not quite the same as Habermas. As to whether Foucault would exactly agree with such hermeneutics, I think not. However, I think Foucault, Derrida and others like them are clearly drawing upon such hermeneutic understanding for the understanding of their claims, even if they are claiming that there are decided limitations to such hermeneutics, which they aim to cast beyond. Further, Foucault's work is centrally concerned with opening up, criticizing and transforming social and epistemic prejudices, both demotic ones and those of elite institutionalized formal-rational discourses, with drawing into question how social "knowledges" are "picked up and gathered together". And as for the practical intent of Foucault's work, even if it's somewhat indeterminate, yes, inspite of the pretensions of Anglo-American academic followers to "Theory", a politico-ethical practical intent was always at the root of his work and he didn't distinguish between "readers" and "users". What he specifically said was that he intended his works to explode like bombs.
But I still don't think that you've bothered to grasp what I've said about "peculiar irony" and a "parodic/tautological" mode of criticsm as operative in Foucault's work. This is not a matter of "humor" or the lack or refusal thereof, but a matter of accurately grasping the "substance" of the work and understanding how it operates (and intends?). The irony operates not just on the reader, but between different discourses and discourse positions, and amounts to a distinctive account of the operation of discourses that is anti-dialectical and an alternative to dialectical accounts. (And for one thing, Foucault is criticizing ideology critique, in favor of an understanding of techniques and apparatuses of power). Further, I pointed to an underlying conception of "mimesis" as the force or process of socialization and affiliation, underlying discourses, practices and the formation of "subject" positions, which goes to the tautological reproduction of the very domains that he is criticizing in the work, as parodically engaging with the blindnesses that such processes induce. If one is going to question thae "rationality" of Foucault's mode of criticism, then one is going to have to deal with the "rational" means by which it is set to work.
Foucault was a tricky fellow, as anyone who has grappled with his works should know,- (i.e. it's never been exactly news),- but that does not mean that he can be reduced to playing a game of three-card monte. Do you really think that he bothered to write his books just to dupe the reader, rather than show the reader how s/he might be duped? Perhaps Foucault is not at all the one with intellectually elitist pretensions to "Enlightenment".
If someone were to critize a book on basket-weaving on the grounds that it offers no good culinary recipes, the criticism would be so inapt and inept as to draw into question whether the "critic" even understands what "criticism" means. I can't put it any simpler than that.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Apr 16, 2007 7:04:51 PM
Ok, let me summarize: "Dawkin's little book is precisely an example of inapt and inept criticism", which you know although you haven't read it; you also feel competent to lecture him on evolutionary biology. The rest alternates annoying boilerplate, such as the bit about falsification, with weird strawmen, such as Foucault playing three-card monte. Finally, you write that Scull must not even understand what "criticism" means.
In other words, fluff from beginning to end. If I had ever written anything about the "rationality" of Foucault's mode of criticism, which I hadn't, then that might be worth addressing. But I suspect that you really don't know much about Foucault, or you wouldn't be so eager to mystify his work.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Apr 16, 2007 8:41:05 PM
Post a comment
Please note: comments are published at the discretion of the post's author and will not appear immediately. Do not submit comments more than once.