Foucault/Derrida Exchange Continued

The reading for this week was Foucault's reply to Derrida, “My Body, This Paper, This Fire.” We begin by revisiting the basics of Derrida's critique, framed as a few key questions: Can one do a history of madness, using the discourse of reason? How can one hope to speak for madness? We also returned to some lingering questions from our discussion of Derrida's piece: What would it mean for Foucault if Derrida were right? What are the motivations or stakes for Derrida? Is his concern largely philosophical, political, historical? We answered tentatively that the stakes of Derrida's critique are primarily philosophical.


We then raised a general question about Foucault's response. Derrida accuses Foucault of misreading Descartes, and, through this, of a broader mistake in attempting a historical philosophy of madness. We notice that Foucault's piece focuses on the interpretation of Descartes, and wonder if, in doing this, he misses the second, broader point. In addressing this question, we ask if there is for Foucault a connection between the two aspects. We then point to a question Foucault poses near the end of the essay where he seems to address Derrida's larger point: “Could there be anything anterior or exterior to philosophical discourse?” (pg. 395). For him, the answer is yes. And the job of archeology/genealogy is to “get at the discursive determination” of such discourse.


The discussion keeps returning to the possibility that Foucault may have missed the force of Derrida's critique, and we make various attempts at formulating the latter's point in a succinct way. This was one attempt: We cannot speak about the “other” of philosophical discourse except by means of philosophical discourse. It would seem as though Foucault takes himself to be outside of the discourse of philosophy/reason—“pointing at things,” as we put it. For Derrida, there is no “getting outside” of such discourse. We venture this as one interpretation of Derrida's quotable “there is nothing outside of the text.”


Trying to understand what Foucault might say to all of this, we invoke the system/exercise distinction (i.e., “systematics” and “ascetics”) made by Foucault. He thinks that Derrida reads Descartes on the level of “system”—the reduction of discursive practices to textual traces is reading the Meditations as a set of propositions. Foucault sees Derrida as perpetuating a traditional, ahistorical model of philosophy. At this point, we hone in on what might be the key sticking point of the debate: the status of philosophical discourse. How can we keep doing this thing called philosophy, after it has been “historicized”? This seems to be more of a question for Foucault than it is for Derrida.


The group concludes with two questions, one concerning the debate between Foucault and Derrida and one concerning the trajectory of the former's work;

1. Is there an impasse between Foucault and Derrida on the question of textual analysis? With the rest of his work in mind, Derrida seems intent on “unreading,” while Foucault accuses him of a “misreading.”
   
2. Are Derrida's critique and the subsequent response instrumental in Foucault's shift from analyzing discourse to analyzing practices?
   

Foucault/Derrida exchange

The group begins with the context of Derrida’s paper and the break between the two philosophers. The discussion proceeds with (I) the analysis of Descartes’ passages quoted in Foucault, (II) Foucault’s reading of these passages, and (III) Derrida’s critique of Foucault.

I. Madness in Descartes:

The group has difficulty in dealing with Descartes, having not read him recently. The members identify, however, that the discussion of madness (in relation to doubt) precede cogito.

II. Foucault’s reading of Descartes

Foucault’s argument: the exclusion of madness from the discourse of reason – an act of silencing. This happens with the distinct way in which Descartes overcomes errors such as dreams. What differentiates madness from, say, dreams?

           

1. Body: in dreams I have a sense of body and a control of my body, albeit deranged or distended, whereas in madness the body doesn’t belong to me.

2. Recoverability: Dreams are subject to errors that can be corrected (confusion, illusion, etc.). When I wake up my deranged and distended body is corrected, whereas madness remains uncorrected. Errors outside reason can’t be corrected; therefore, madness is external to reason.

Then, one cannot suppose one is mad, for the condition of possibility of having the thought of madness is reason.

The group thinks that Foucault might be reading back cogito these passages, while Descartes is still developing the concept of doubt.

III. Derrida’s critique of Foucault

Derrida’s argument: one can’t do a historical/social analysis of madness as a concept or idea.

Madness as an absent present drives philosophical discourse. It is a motivating principle of the philosophical project as the essential other of discourse. It is in opposition to speech (65). It is before language and discourse; it is that which we do violence.

Thus, when we talk about it we’re putting the straightjacket to madness, incorporating it into discourse. This is what Foucault does, as he is speaking within discourse and thus reason. Therefore, by bracketing madness Descartes is more sincere than Foucault who takes it up, assuming that you can talk about it. Descartes in fact performs the reality of madness in the philosophical discourse.

The group acknowledges the deconstructionist tendencies that Derrida would later develop, agreeing with certain aspects of his critique. And yet, how Derrida’s intervention contributes to (or even relates to) the general discussion of the containment of the mad man or Foucault’s larger project is undetermined.

Foucault, "Discourse on Language" (1971)

We began the session with several questions, many of them relating to the concept of truth:

1.     Would it be useful to map out the text, basically?

2.     Foucault suggests that “it is always possible one could speak the truth in a void” (224).  Is this possible and/or consistent with his philosophical project?

3.     Does Foucault understand himself to be a “monster on the prowl,” in the sense that he is speaking the truth, but not within the discursive framework of his time (223-224)?

4.     How does Foucault himself fit within his own definition of “the author”?  Is he an author, or fictional, as he suggests “authors” in fact are?

5.     What is the relationship between the author-function and spoken language?  Is there a difference between the truth that can be found in written narratives, and truth that is spoken?

6.     What does it mean to say that “the theme of the founding subject permits us to elide the reality of discourse” (227)?

7.     Foucault talks about logophobia and logophilia (228-229), which is strange since he rarely speaks of affect.  How is this significant?

We then outlined a sketchy framework of Foucault’s method in the lecture:

1.     Three sets of procedures to regulate/control discourse:

a.     External Exclusions

                                               i.     Prohibitions:

1.     Objects

2.     Rituals

3.     Expertise

                                             ii.     Divisions/rejections

1.     Oppositions btw. reason/madness, e.g.

                                            iii.     Will to Truth

b.     Internal Rules

                                               i.     Commentary

                                             ii.     Author

                                            iii.     Disciplines

c.     Rarefaction among speaking subjects

                                               i.     Ritual

                                             ii.     Fellowships of discourse

                                            iii.     Doctrine

                                            iv.     Social appropriation of discourse

2.     Several reinforcements of these regulations within modern philosophy

a.     Indicts Cartesians, phenomenologists, and Hegelianism

3.     Methodological principles to counter discursive regulations:

a.     Eventually yields two analytic methods: critical and genealogical (critical here seems to mean archaeological)

4.     Ends with hagiography of Hyppolite.

We then opened up into a broader discussion of Foucault’s aims, especially concerning the phrase Will to Truth:

1.     What does Will to Truth mean?  Why is it a will to truth, not the production of truth?

a.     We then debated whether Foucault is lamenting the production of truth in our modern discourse, and nostalgic for its production in, for instance, ancient Greece.

2.     We asked, finally, what the “goal” is in unearthing and explaining our modern Will to Truth.

a.     Two central themes emerged: Foucault’s project could be seen as descriptive, but also (or either) as an act.  That is, he could be read as describing the rules and regulations of discourse, but also of trying to modify that discourse insofar as he describes it in his archaeological manner.

Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, selections

We began, as per the usual custom of our little group, with questions:
 * Can Foucault escape the subject and subjectivity, as he seems to want?  Is this attempt at getting out from under the shadow of the subject (the transc. subject) compromised if we put archaeology into reflexive relation with itself?
 * What is a 'system of disperson' (p. 37)?  How does it differ from other conceptions, e.g., from 'difference'?
 * Why abandon the term 'archaeology'?  What is at stake in an 'archaeology of sexuality' (192)?
 * Why the need for an account of unity?
 * What is at stake in the conception of 'practice' in AK that we don't find in OT?  (see p. 49)
 * Four thresholds of positivity, epistemologization, scientization, and formalization.  Is this itself a formalization?  Are these useful?  What is the value or gain of a use of a 'scientific' language in the context of a critique of science?

Discussion then ensued...

How is archaeology able to account for itself?  What is archaeology trying to account for?  What is the status of archaeology as a critique?  What is archaeology's relationship to its object of critique?

How does archaeology express a principle of constraint/selection?  MF starts (in Ch. 2) with four hypotheses: object, style, concept, theme.  Explanation rather happens by way of "forms of division" and "systems of dispersion" (37)?  How do "forms of division" and "dispersions" at the level of savoir give rise to stability or unity of connaissance?  One key to the depth savoir is that it itself is not unified (as object, style, concept, theme).  Rather, "dispersion" (38) is c-o-p of "regularity".

Questions to track as we move forward:
 * Move from archaeology to knowledge.
 * Account of unity without appeal to transcendental subject without dialectical teleology

Foucault, The Order of Things, Preface + Selections

We began with Foucault's use of the term "historical a priori" in the Preface by asking how such a thing might be uncovered/unearthed (to use the language of "archaeology") and how Foucault sets himself to account for its genesis in a particular historical period (xxii). This raised the question of where Foucault is locating the forces or discursive practices associated with its constitution. Are we to imagine that this historical a priori hovers over the realm of concrete discursive practices in a particular historical moment but appears in them and shapes them as rules or norms? Or does it rather emerge piecemeal out of practices, some of them as yet inarticulate, and only achieves the status of a norm once it is articulated in scientific discourse in one of these moments quick and profound re-ordering which are the subject of this work? 

Further we wondered how, if it is Foucault's project in The Order of Things to construct the "middle region" between, as he says, the use of "the ordering codes and reflections upon order itself" is to be imagined as a space (on an analogy with other spaces) and whether such a space is to be identified with Foucault's own discourse. This raised the question of where the subject of this order is located within it as something articulated by the order, alongside it, within it, or in a relationship to these process which is as unstable and open to discontinuity as the order which articulates it. 

We found Foucault's use of the term "archeology" to characterize his own project curious given that archeology brings with it both the methods and historical baggage of the science it functions on an analogy with and furthermore wondered to what extent his own work at this stage (given its preoccupation with the "pure experience of order and of its modes of being"(xxi) ) might not operating within the very horizon of scientific inquiry he is trying (re)construct using a new (but not fundamentally different) concept of genesis.

2013-14 Research Plan and Fall 2013 Kickoff

CGC will be meeting again this year with a focus on questions of "Methods" and "Historiographies".  Our plan, roughly, is as follows:

* Fall 2013 -- readings from the late 60s and early 70s on method; meetings Thursdays at 2p
* Winter 2014 -- Foucault's 1971 CdF lectures, "Lectures on the Will to Know" (in its entirety)
* Spring 2014 -- workshop on shared problems in collaborators' own research projects

We will have a kickoff meeting on Wed Oct 2nd at 3:30p in SCH 250A (Colin's office); meetings thereafter will be every Thursday at 2:00p in SCH 211B.  We will not meet on Thurs Oct 24th (due to the SPEP conference).

Tenative reading schedule for the Fall term:
Wk 2 - Oct 10 - The Order of Things (1966), pp. ix-xxiv, 17-25, 50-58
Wk 3 - Oct 17 - The Order of Things (1966), pp. 71-78, 217-221, 236-250 (tough going, just slog through it), 303-312, 344-348, 386-7
Wk 4 - Oct 24 - no meeting - go to Foucault panels at SPEP
Wk 5 - Oct 31 - The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), selections tbd, ?pp. 31-39, 178-195
Wk 6 - "The Discourse on Language" (i.e., "The Order of Discourse") (1970)
Wk 7 - Foucault/Derrida debates
Wk 8 - Foucault/Derrida debates
Wk 9 - Nov 28 - Thanksgiving
Wk 10 - "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" (1971)? CdF 71 lectures?

Hacking, Chs. 20-22

The best idea in chapter 20 is... that Durkheim's conservative sociology (169, ch. 19) is essentially one that celebrates the norm, the average, the mean -- "the normal is what is right" (168).  This is encapsulated in Durkheim's shifting views about crime from 1893 to 1894.  This was a conceptual not an empirical shift (173).  What Durkheim shifted to was a functional explanation of social forms, such as crime or suicide, according to which these forms serve some social function.  This functional explanation makes sense only under the auspices of normality.  The best idea is: "two ideas were intertwined in Durkheim's early work: normality and functionalism" (171).

The best idea in chapter 21 is... statistical laws became autonomous (laws) when they could be used as explananations.  Is autonomy here a synonym for stability?  Statististics becomes a stable style of reasoning, stable in both the immense body of data produced but also in terms of the techniques (and practices).

The best idea in chapter 22 is... TBD.