Engaging with Foucault

[Chris Burford <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I respect Karl for his apology to Lisa, and Lisa for confronting
him directly on the matter, rather than flaming him. That clearly helped.

One of the problems I think is that Karl has presented us with
a quarrel rather that with the substance of the argument. While expressing
sympathy for his anger and frustration, I did ask him to clarify what his
goals were in participating in the Foucault l'st, and I do not recall
reading an answer.

If I remember a private conversation correctly, the Foucault l'st is one of the
biggest of Spoons, bigger in number of subscribers than marxism, although the
volume of traffic is significantly less.

There was a time when post-modernists and readers of Foucault had a voice on
marxism. That voice has rather been squeezed out, which IMO makes this l'st a
poorer environment ecologically, although it has become richer
through other participation. Nevertheless the large Foucault l'st is a close
neighbour. A post away. Karl has helped to remind us of its existence.

But what attitude should marxists take? Why or how would they want to converse
with admireres of Foucault?

Whatever crises this l'st is going through I hope Spoons read the signs that
Karl received little support on this l'st for the apparent manner of his
intervention even if some may be surprised at the mailbombing. I think Karl
also deserves some explanation of the lack of support.

It is not clear to me that
there is anything marxist about entering another community and adopting a
confrontational pose from the start, in the name of democracy.
That sounds more like an assertion of a concept of bourgeois democratic
rights than an engagement with other people who, however mistaken, are not in
the camp of the enemy, by definition.

If admirers of Foucault are in some sense deeply wrong, a marxist analysis would
also surely wish to understand what conditions in the economic and social base
give rise to such ideas. Simply to attempt to denounce them sounds IMO idealist.
Furthermore if Karl wishes to go back to the Communist Manifesto there is
an explicit refusal there to try to impose sectarian principles on the 
democratic
movement. And if subscribers to the Foucault l'st are not at least mainly
democrats, what is a self declared marxist doing entering it?

I have tried to download the Foucault archives to understand the *context* of
what happened. One feature seems to me the low volume, so that a gap in
replying to Karl's first post might have loomed larger to someone
coming straight off the marxism l'st. Another is the non-confrontational
convention, the desire to avoid polar arguments, which is exactly what
Karl was seeking.

Another is the more frequent contribution of women.
Another is that there was a lengthy discussion of rape, from many points of
view, which I suspect although cannot of course prove, sensitized
subscribers to seeing Karl's assault on the l'st as particularly unacceptable.
The volume of mailbombing that apparently emerged so suddenly suggest strong
group feeling.

Once you have decided on objectives there are ways and ways. There are the 
politics
of consensual interpenetration and there are  the politics of penetration.
I fear Karl has probably already dismissed what I have to say as crap, but
it is interesting that his first confrontation/intervention was to a post
by one Diane, who was commenting somewhat obliquely on a post by a certain
Colin.

Rather exceptionally I going to take the liberty of quoting from a subscriber
to another l'st, not in any critical spirit, but to demonstrate a different
type of engagement.


>>>Colin:
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 09:29:01 +0100
Subject: Re: Power and Foucault (was Rape)

We've actually been here before (Maybe someone should start up a Butler
list) and to some, (I have my hand up here) Butler's appropriation of F is a
redutio ad absurdum. Moreover, and despite the many assertions to the
contrary, this makes Butler, and Foucault by association, a linguistic
idealist. Now don't get me wrong, I too would graciously accept the status
of a God. I mean who wouldn't want to be the source of creation. But, how
true (fashionable scare quotes left out intentionally (again fashionable...,
(this could go on all day!!)) is it. Can I, as Marx put it, stop myself from
drowing by divesting myself of the thought of gravity? Er, probably not, and
nor can Butler get rid of the "originary presence" via the same technique.
Pushed this far Foucault's all too important arguments become facile and
easy to disregard.
<<<

So while supporting some of the shared assumptions about Foucault,
Colin succeeds in partly diverting the thread title to a more
political one about power, and gets in the four letter M word in the
course of an amiable critique of an apparent follower of Foucault.

Diane replies, and Colin signs off amiably, in his last post,
before Karl steps in to take up the cudgel.

>>
I'm off on holiday tomorrow so i can't get in too deep on this one. Your
reading of Butler is, just about, the same as mine. Problem is that in
acknowledging that there is a materiality to the body, but then saying that
we can never get at it, she's got herself snared up in the same dilemma that
Kant go into: There is a real world but we can say nothing about it. Hence
all that we can say about is what we talk about. This is a very positivist
ontology, BTW. Now, we can, and do say lots about the materiality of the
body. More important, while Butler and most of the sociological tradition
(there is a good reason for this, division of labour etc, disciplinary
borders etc. BTW isn't Butler guilty of enforcing these?) are content to say
that the materiality of our bodies plays no role, others perfectly happy to
say that we can say LOTS about it are getting ready to use that knowledge;
want to get rid of homosexuality, no problem, we can eradicate the gay gene;
criminal tendencies Sir! no problem, erdicate criminal genes. So while we in
sociology etc, fiddle Rome burns.

To acknowledge that it is EXTREMELY difficult epistemologically to get at
the materiality of the body is a different question to what that materiality
consists of. Butler has a seemingly, socially constructed, or inbuilt
tendency to conflate her epistemology and her ontology. Still she's in good
company becuase so does most of the western philosphical tradition. If there
is a materiality, then might it not be an honest intellectual enterprise to
explore it. To say we can't get at it is to give up the intellectual
enterprise before we have begun. Besides, how does Butler _know- we can't
say anything about it?
I totally accept that we can only know things through certain descriptions,
but this is not to say that the world exists only in those descriptions, or
that only those descriptions play a role. I also BTW reject the thing
initself as you are positing it; it assumes a static thing, once and for all
time. To me reality is stratified, structured, differentiated and changing.

haven't time to check this. Probably loads of mistakes. Sorry!

Thank, (but unconvinced!!!)

<<

Colin goes off on holiday, and Karl goes into exile.
Coling has an option of returning to a listening audience. Karl does not.

>From one point of view no doubt Karl feels he is the more principled
Marxist. Certainly a braver one. But Colin has a degree of bravery too.
I do not imply that Colin's arguments are 100% right or that there is
only one way to do its. Still less in taking the liberty of quoting
without his permission, I hope no one feels they have to subject him to
a flame war. In that case I will have to apologise all over the internet.
I just want to illustrate there may be more than one way of engaging with
Foucaultists. To handle such a conflict creatively, which I think
really requires illustration. Apologies Colin!

So I would like to ask Karl  to broaden out the *politics* of the
issue. Why is it important to engage with post-modernism? What are its roots?
What are its perpetuating factors? Is it totally opposed to Marxism?
How can marxist engage with it?

This is more interesting than whether Spoons moderators have blown the
whistle too early or too late on a punch up.

OK Karl, if you think I am too waffly: please just say why you think Foucault
is such a hot issue from your point of view, and what you want to
do about it. Or maybe others can also say their views on the influence of
Foucault.


Chris Burford
London.


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