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.)
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 | April 11, 2007 at 09:48 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 | April 11, 2007 at 09:55 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 | April 12, 2007 at 12:14 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 | April 12, 2007 at 08:54 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 | April 12, 2007 at 09:23 AM
Doesn't Foucault's epistemological critique itself assume a positivism of some kind?
Posted by: Wade | April 12, 2007 at 02:05 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 | April 12, 2007 at 04:10 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 | April 12, 2007 at 06:09 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 | April 12, 2007 at 08:48 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 | April 13, 2007 at 01:33 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 | April 13, 2007 at 02:02 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 | April 13, 2007 at 06:38 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 | April 13, 2007 at 09:56 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 | April 13, 2007 at 10:48 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 | April 13, 2007 at 01:15 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 | April 13, 2007 at 02:15 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 | April 13, 2007 at 02:29 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 | April 13, 2007 at 02:58 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 | April 13, 2007 at 03:03 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 | April 13, 2007 at 05:51 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 | April 14, 2007 at 03:45 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 | April 14, 2007 at 02:56 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 | April 14, 2007 at 03:36 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 | April 14, 2007 at 04:03 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 | April 14, 2007 at 06:10 PM