Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 08:33:25 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: wittgenstein, lyotard, foucault




On Tue, 9 Dec 1997, MATTHEW FRANCIS WETTLAUFER wrote:

  He is deliberately vague when he speaks of
> "doers", and those who do power change all the time.  At best they are
> producers of discourses, of new knowledge, trainers of the body.  One
> could almost dispense with the "grid" of interdisciplinary institutions
> and speak only of power; 

Dear Jon,

Rereading what I wrote above and what you wrote I change my mind!  I
think Foucault does retain the vocabulary of mechanisms of power (i.e.,
the interdisciplinary grid of institutions--clinic, hospital, military,
school).  

I would have to think through this one.  The way I understand Foucault's
discussion of these mechanisms is that they are expressions of an
episteme, they can't be battled against because as mentioned already, to
do so confers upon them greater stability.  But within their "hold" there
also are the productions of new knowledges.  So they don't have just an
oppressive bearing about them--power, which they "do", is not simply
oppressive. 

I offered a reading that reads Foucault figuratively onthis account since
who or what is involved in this grid seems to me incidental--as an
episteme it will change.  Foucault, in talking about the emergence of
these mechanisms doesn't give us a history but a genealogy, which suggests
to me a figurative reading.  He isn't describing things as they "really
are" (again I think that distinction between the way things really are and
a figurative reading of them is problematized already).  He's offering a
possible reading, a possible departure point for the rise of various forms
of control (and any departure point would be arbitrary).  What do you
think? 

But your reading certainly is possible (just as Eric's reading of
Lyotard's turn to Kant is absolutely possible--Lyotard is always
referencing Kant and he does seem to be turning more towards him).  I
thought however that I would offer variants to those readings to "stir
up the pot"! (not that they are readings I made up--they've been around
for some time).

Matt