CGC's final meeting of Fall term began, as per usual, with questions...
* What is the value or gain of the focus on discontinuity? Why is discontinuity important? Why does Foucault want a history "without constants" (p. 380)? Why does it matter? Foucault throughout this piece writes in favor of breaking up continuities. Why?
* If we read this work as a critique of history as a colonial science (narrative of progress, etc.), can we read Foucault's project as a decolonial project?
* Foucault writes of the body (p. 375) and health and physiology and of genealogy as a "curative science" (p. 382).
* For MF, genealogy seeks "not the anticipatory power of meaning, but the hazardous play of dominations" (p. 376).
* MF writes of interpretation and violence (p. 378), and this raises the question of the status of the idea of interpretation in MF's genealogy.
* Related to the last two, is the emphasis on dominations, conflicts, and subjugations a way of seeking an analytics of power that would not be entirely restricted to an analytics of discourse?
* What is MF's relation to FN here?
Discussion then ensued...
Foucault develops a contrast between "sens l'histoire" (history as an object of sense; distanced) and "sens historique" (sense as historically arising, variable, etc.).
Foucault's conception of history seems anti-essentialist throughout (cf. p. 371 on metaphysics and essence). But what is the justification for this? Is this because essentialism is 'known to be false'? Or is its motivation ethical and political? If the latter, is Foucault "anti-essentialist" or is he just "non-essentialist"? If he is "non-essentialist" how is this politically relevant? Is the view that once power gets its grip on (and through the support of) constants, invariants, and universals it 'metaphysicalizes' itself and makes itself dogmatic?
Even if Foucault is not a decolonizing thinker explicitly, he develops a historical sense that works against the colonialist impulse.
No comments:
Post a Comment