CGC Notes
Discussion of Koopman/Matza paper
January 24, 2011
Thomas: What do we mean by concept? Why are analytics more universalizable than concepts? Because concepts are composed of contingent, particular pieces? Or are concepts empirically mobile? Can’t we mobilize the concept of discipline? Aren’t characteristics above and beyond empirical facts?
A: Yes. We can mobilize the concept. But that is not the same as universalism of the concept. We need to distinguish ‘universalizability’ from ‘mobility’.
Emergence as contingent. How do we mobilize contingent forms? Mobilization suggests constancy of core features of the concept. Do we mobilize forward or backward? We should study mobility rather than see ourselves as mobilizers.
Nicolae: Ex. of Victorian biopower and 21st c. biopower.
Vernon: Devil’s advocate about critique of Agamben. Isn’t Foucault really universalizable? Can’t technologies be globalized? Can’t we proliferate the prison anywhere? Isn’t the schema globalizable?
A: Distinction between temporalized globalization and atemporal universalization.
George: Distinction between concepts and categories. The former are concepts that emerge through inquiry. The latter are much like concepts that already exist, and they act as lenses for analysis.
A: Yes. Categories are presupposed by any analytic procedure. You start with a category that enables you to see. Concepts make sense of practices, empiricities, &c..
Concepts are explanans. Concepts are what explains. So we study practices and make sense of them (as explanandum); concepts are that which makes sense and explains. So we do not study concepts (b/c then our study would lack explanatory power), but rather we study practices and make sense of them. Concepts in Foucault are explainers. This is a technical sense of concepts.
There is, however, possibility of productive feedback. Sometimes the concepts we use to explain can later feature in the practices which the concepts make sense of. We should do this in a modest sense. This is what I call articulation in other work (vocalizing practices and connecting them to other practices).
Perhaps this suggests that we should tailor our research interests to those practices which stand in need of conceptual analysis, synthesis, and creation. So we should focus on sites which are in some respects fraught. If this is our focus we do not need to see ourselves as solving philosophical problems. Rather we can see ourselves as philosophically solving problems.
Nicolae: Why not use the piece “Answer to a Question” (DE vol. 1 of 2, 701). Discussion of intradiscursive, extradiscursive, etc..
A: The taxonomy is not Foucaultian. Taxonomy of Foucault, not a Foucaultian taxonomy. So the taxonomy does not depend on Foucault.
Greg: Generalization of concept leads to reification and ahistoricity. With respect to analytics, can’t we be more specific? Isn’t this too broad as a methodological description? Don’t we need to be more specific for the purposes of engaging critical social science. Wouldn’t most social scientists just say “yeah of course”? Critical social scientists want to know the technique by which we identify and investigate conditions of possibility. Techniques for locating mechanisms that explain how these conditions come into being. There is a divide in some areas of critical social science between ideational and institutional. Isn’t this where Foucault is most useful?
A: With respect to mechanisms, can and should we say something above contingent composition of problematizations. Foucault focusing on: 1) problems, as composed by 2) practices, and 3) forming concepts to make sense of (1) and (2).
But ultimately we need to be able to say much more about these techniques. These are difficulties that any critical social scientist must face. Philosophers drawn to critical social science must also face the additional difficulty of being able to specify how their research is also philosophical. What makes a given empirical-critical project also philosophical? We do not need a criterion or a definition here. But we do need to be able to say something, even if only to ourselves, so that we can justify our forms of curiosity to ourselves. (There are also background disciplinary-practical questions related to getting jobs, &c..)
Katherine: If you are going to go about doing this sort of genealogy where you make these distinctions, then how do you know that you have a problem. Don’t you start out with some sense of a problem. Doesn’t genealogy just clarify problems? Does it really make them?
Nicolae: Problematization is both process and product.
A: Yes. You never start from nothing. So problematization is a process and you begin with something, b/c you are always somewhere. But the problematization does transform that with which you begin.
We are neither saying ‘here is how to best be Foucaultian’ nor are we being relativists, but rather we are giving philosophico-methodological reasons for why one approach is better than the other.
CGC Notes: 1/24/11,
ReplyDelete“Putting Foucault to Work: Analytic and Concept in Foucaultian Inquiry”
What is the concept? If the concept of biopower exists in the Victorian era and in the 70s, what remains the same in the concept over time such that it is still the same concept and not a different one? Can we mobilize this concept throughout history based on its relatively stable features?
Colin: In short, yes. The concept can be mobilized and globalized, but it can never be universal. It must always be put to work. There is a philosophical elaboration of the concept. I am trying to show how practitioners use concepts. There are second order concepts and conceptual practices. When I look for mobility of concept I try to create an analysis and synthesis of concepts that may gain some traction.
Should we pose new problems or solve old philosophical ones?
We should tailor research to practices and make conceptual interventions. Rather than tailoring research in places where its stable, we should look for places where it needs work.
What is the significance of categories? Category already exists (power/knowledge). Concept emerges (discipline).
Colin: One is a lens used to explain the other. Which one comes first? They are in a sort of feedback loop.
Yes, generalizing concepts is reductive. Yes, we can mobilize an analytic method.
But social scientists want more detail on the methods: how to identify the techniques of the mechanisms and how these conditions come into being and how they change over time? What are the techniques of determining how these contingent practices emerge?
Colin: Good question. Big question. Lets talk about that later.
Isnt there a scheme or global concept at work? Dont these forms reappear through history?
Colin: Agamben = “hidden matrix of modernity.” Mobilization yes, transcendental philosophy no way. Agamben transcedentalizes the concept.
You start with a category (presupposed) to look at a field site (objects). You create a concept to make sense of the field. You dont universalize the concept.
If you are going to do a genealogy and excavate concepts and relate them to one another, how do you know that there is a “problem”? Do you start with the problem and find its concrete cases or start with the concrete cases and move to the problem?
Colin: ...To be continued.
Why not use Foucault’s own Taxonomy with respect to relation. In dites et ecrits (701). 708.
Colin: I don’t want to use Foucault’s taxonomy, I wanted to come up with my own. If others want to come up with their own thats is fine. There are many ways to carve up Foucault. This is just a way I think might be helpful to others.
Polemic:
The paper succeeds in being neither indifferent nor just a praise of Foucault. It rightly critiques the global usage of concepts but also argues that one can still use some parts of Foucault and not others.
I said "Concepts in Foucault are explainers."
ReplyDeleteThis is probably not helpful.
Better to say that concepts in Foucault are sense-makers. On using history to "make sense" in a technical sense see another genealogist, Bernard Williams, in various places, but including Truth and Truthfulness.