Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2003 16:05:10 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [HAB:] Re: Power [Ali]


Ali,

the objection is that your quote conveyed a one-sided sense
of power, begging the question of the relationship of
strategical action to legitimate power. Inasmuch as the
small quote misrepresents Foucault, then what's the point?
It's certainly invalid to absolutely counterpose Foucault
and Habermas, as your quoted Foucault subscriber evidently
does. Foucault's view certainly doesn't add to
understanding power. If anything, it shows further that,
had Foucault not died relatively young, his convergence
with Habermas' mode of thinking would have been greater
than the converse. Political-theoretically, Foucault just
didn't mature his political thinking anywhere near to
Habermas', at the time of their both being alive (mid-80s),
and I don't see that Foucault's essentially deconstructive
project helps much for understanding how legitimate power
looks.

But again, I find their potential for
complementarity---rather than counterposition---very
attractive. But ultimately, I think that the
complementarity is very supplemental for political thought;
or, at least, I haven't seen much fruitfulness yet in the 
complementarity. 

Gary


--- Ali Rizvi <ali_m_rizvi-AT-hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Gary,
> 
> Even if we accept your interpretation that Foucault's
> conception of Power is 
> strategic (I suppose by instrumental you do mean
> strategic), what is wrong 
> with the strategic conception of Power? Does Habermas
> deny the existence of 
> strategic relations? No! Does Foucault say that
> stratetgic relations exhaust 
> all relations? No!
> 
> So what is the objection exactly?
> 
> regards
> ali
> 
>
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