We began with a brief meta-discussion of what we hope to accomplish this quarter. Our aim: to gain a sense of what a genealogy is, especially what a genealogy of neoliberalism/liberalism would be. So what we are looking for in the pieces we are reading this quarter is twofold: a) how to do a genealogy, b) what is involved in liberalism/neoliberalism. With respect to questions of method (i.e., (a)), we will set ourselves the following tasks for each meeting. I. Formulate the implicit or explicit methodology of the piece, II. Critique that methodology in the sense of stating its limits, its advantages, and its disadvantages, III. Comparative work vis-à-vis Foucault and others that we’ve read.
We then raised, as per usual, a set of questions about our assigned text: Stephen Collier’s “Topologies of Power” (TC&S, 2009).
1. Did Foucault really make the methodological piece that the piece asserts? Was Foucault really an epochal thinker in DP and other work from 1975 and 1976 (“was couched in surprisingly epochal and totalizing claims about the characteristic forms of power in modernity”)? The topological analysis sounds excellent, but does it really need to stand in contrast to DP? Why compare topological genealogy to earlier genealogy in Foucault rather than compare topological genealogy to a genealogy other than Foucault’s? What is at stake in further internally differentiating genealogy in Foucault rather than for instance differentiating different historical modes employed by different thinkers? Why are the internal differentiations in Foucault the privileged plane of analysis? Is Collier really critical of Foucault or is he rather critical of “much contemporary work” (97), e.g. governmentality-ism stuff, that globalizes the objects of its rather precise analyses in totalizing fashions?
2. Why a topological analysis? What is a topological analysis? Collier calls Foucault’s 1979 method “a topology of power” and forwards this as a synonym for “system of correlation”. What happens to temporality in Foucault if spatiality emerges so strongly into the fore? Is there still room for temporality and for dynamics? Is a study of “how heterogeneous elements are taken up and recombined” (89) a study that is implicitly dynamic? Is topology as a branch of mathematics implicitly temporal? Topology can be seen as the study of how spatial properties are preserved under conditions of modification (e.g., “and with their transformations” (80)).
3. Why use “topology” as a metaphor? Why develop an understanding of Foucault by way of a branch of mathematics? What is topology speaking to? What is at stake in the use of a metaphor as a descriptor for a method?
4. Why focus so much on genealogy as an analysis of thought? “Instead it is a form of thinking,” (100) Collier says of neoliberalism on Foucault’s 1979 CdF analysis. Why not equal attendance to practices, given especially Foucault’s focus on practices? There is a danger of idealism here.
With respect to (2), topology nicely teases out the sense of combination, decomposition, and recombination that is clearly at work in Foucault’s analyses. It is rigorously on guard against totalizing explanations, epochal visions of genealogy, and overtly linear theories of history. This is all enormously valuable.
With respect to (2), there is a worry that sequence matters more than Collier’s description of the Foucaultian analytic seems to indicate. Isn’t the problem having to do with temporality at least in part a function of the presumed object of analysis? If we take Foucault as analyzing a mega-object like “society” then it doesn’t matter what sort of analytic he deploys, because the analysis will always yield a totality. But if we take Foucault as analyzing practices in their transformation at a more focused-contextual structure, then we are able to see his work as preserving a more micro-analytical approach.
With respect to (3), there was discussion of the kinds of constraints we are answerable to in formulating our metaphors for understanding Foucault.
With respect to (4), this bears on questions of nominalism versus realism. If we see him as analyzing practices, then it seems to make sense to say that “there was no homosexuality in Ancient Greece.” This is no more puzzling than the claim that “there were no foul balls in Ancient Greece.”
Since we talked about "topology", time, and Deleuze (thanks to Thomas) - John Protevi made two short translations from a book that had (significantly, I would say) influenced Deleuze - Gilbert Simondon's L'Individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (Grenoble: Millon, 1995)
ReplyDeleteHere are the links to:
1) Translation of "Topology, chronology, and order of magnitude of physical individuation" http://www.protevi.com/john/Simondon_physical_individuation.pdf
2) Translation of "Topology and ontogenesis" - http://www.protevi.com/john/Simondon_topology_ontogenesis.pdf
See you, Nicolae
All – thanks for these reflections and for taking up my paper. Colin directed me to this blog and invited me to comment. Here are just a couple very quick reflections on the above.
ReplyDeleteFirst, concerning the question about whether there is really a tendency to “totalizing” analyses in the Foucault of Discipline and Punish: From my perspective, the question is not to figure out what Foucault’s single, univocal position was during this period, since I don’t think he had one. I did want to read the 1978 and 1979 lectures out of one understanding of Foucault’s analysis of power that has stemmed from a British neo-Althusserian tradition (“governmentality” studies). I don’t think that tradition has Foucault wrong. I think that the kind of analysis it has developed is available in the Foucault of the knowledge/power period, and I tried to provide reference to passages that support this claim. (Can anyone really read the last lecture of the 1976 course and find that there is not a totalizing analysis suggested – one with strong Marxian accents?) Perhaps my concern is disciplinarily specific. In philosophy everyone may “know” that Foucault is an anti-totalizing thinker. But that is certainly not how he has been read in much recent critical social science, and I would add that the Agambenian reading (and the readings of that reading) have exacerbated this problem. So to me the lectures of the late 1970s provide not only a rich vocabulary for supporting this reading of Foucault, but also a set of methodological tools for actually conducting analysis of this sort.
Second, concerning “idealism” – I don’t understand this concern. If anything, it seems to me that concepts like the “episteme” risk idealism in that they logically imply epistemic closure (and one gets these not-very-interesting discussions around “rupture” to try to deal with this problem). In Discipline and Punish there is indeed an emphasis on practices. But I don’t think that they are the kind of practices (or forms of practico-critical reflection) that really allow us to understand how new thoughts are thought, or how new things are thought. This is why the emphasis on thinking-as-problematization seems so different and really quite interesting to me. And this is certainly not an idealist account – though our resident experts on Dewey would have more to say on this point than I do!
Best,
Stephen Collier
As per discussion by the group today...
ReplyDeleteThe initial worry about idealism is perhaps a meta-worry on the part of our group. "Thought" or "thinking" seems closer to "discourse" than to "practices". But this is or may be a comment more about ordinary language than about Stephen's article. We agree that Stephen's explicit analysis makes good use of "thought" in a way that emphasizes the interconnectedness of thought, action, materiality, &c.. We like the phrase "temporally unfolding situated practice" (Rabinow 2003, 17) which we take Collier to be agreeing with (cf. Collier 27 of 'Post-Soviet Social). We find thinking more robust than discourse (methodologically) when it is taken to involve "critique" and "reprogramming".
The only part of the worry that lingers for us is simply one about rooting out residual implications of our categories, concepts, terms, and words. We admit that this is probably more a philosopher's obsession than a thinker's virtue. Perhaps this obsession is better routed over to the marketing department than kept as an explicit feature of discussion. But messaging and marketing do matter in the long run.
The response to the worry about totalizing analyses is also well-taken. We (or some of us at least) also contest Agamben's reading of Foucault (even if there are some lessons to learn from Agamben). Perhaps the difference is this. We contest Agamben's reading in an even stronger way. We think the totalizing analysis given by Agamben is not accurate to any of Foucault. So, not adequate to D and P, and not adequate to Birth of Bio. This is a scholar's quibble about how to read Foucault.
More important are the methodological affinities. We agree it is important to read Foucault in order to understand how we might conduct a history of our present today (as well as an anthropology of the contemporary), moreso than to sit at the feet of some master. Methodologically, then, we agree with the 'topological analysis' of biopower, neoliberalism, etc. as assembled rationalities, or assemblages of thought, rather than as diagrams of a period of time in which is totalized the spirit of an age.