Farge, Fragiles Lives, Ch. 4

The meeting began, as per usual, perhaps after a joke or two, with our questions:

* Is Farge's notion of "modes of rationality" (p. 50) related to Foucault's conception of the same?

* Farge speaks of "those extra qualifies of life and thought that come through in each document" (p. 50).  How would we characterize those?  How do those come through given that "no amount of analysis" can yield them?

* The first pages (pp. 44-45) describe a form of gender "equality" and "equality in terms of personal worth" in the 18th c..  What do we make of this?  How do we assess this?  How would we go about assessing it?

* Separation of affect & emotion from childhood (pp. 47-48, and again p. 68, p. 71).

* Framing an analysis in terms of "home" (near the beginning of the chapter) and then moving on from this (later on in the chapter)?  How is "home" functioning in the chapter?  How is "place" functioning?

We then moved to discussion:

We began with discussion of the particular mode of justificatory apparatus that Farge, the historian, is here offering.  When we meet moments in the text that we are skeptical about (e.g., the insistence on "equality" [p. 44]), what do we do with this skepticism?  What do we do particularly in light of skepticism around normative categories?
   - One approach is to ask what "equality" would have to mean such that "there existed a kind of equality" between men and women.
   - Another approach would be to give additional weight to the ways in which she qualifies it (e.g., "... in their relationship to the outside world"; or a mutuality of sharing responsibility).  It's interesting that here she doesn't offer a contrast case of a later (or earlier?) situation characterized by greater inequality.  It's also interesting that she doesn't qualify this point through class as explicitly as one might expect (but see p. 45).
   - Another would be to try to develop a criticism, or a skepticism around the claim.

We then discussed Farge's wariness of presenting "the nakedness of the document" (49) and "let[ting] the documents from the police archives speak for themselves"; very interesting in light of the Disorderly Families project.

We then discussed Farge's emphasis on "meaning" and "interpretation" (49); and the extent to which this fits with her idea of "modes of rationality".
   - There is an emphasis on the meaning that is in excess of the historian's work.  This is an emphasis on what is being left out.   "Those extra qualities of life and thought" (50).  These will not be accounted for by "the modes of rationality" (50).  But she doesn't want to sentimentalize, or over-sentimentalize, them (50).
   - So it sounds like "mode of rationality" is a contrast category to the "small strands of meaning" and the "unpronounceable" that the historian must leave out.  The historian always leaves behind something.  What motivates the idea that some of what gets left behind is important, and ought to be remarked as being left behind?

How does this fit with Farge's explicit separation of childhood from emotions, love, affect (p. 50, p. 71).  This is a separation of the mode of rationality from specific emotions (esp. love and affection; such positive emotions), but not from emotion as such, b/c emotions are part of rationality for Farge (cf. p. 285).

Is Farge here more doing archaeology (analysis of strata) or genealogy (analysis of strategies)?  Is she exploring what lies beneath or within the line of a form of rationality (archlgy)?  Or is she exploring how the line gets formed (gnlgy)?