Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 08:57:09 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: wittgenstein, lyotard, foucault




On Wed, 10 Dec 1997, jon roffe wrote:
> I do think that Foucault's books are difficult to come to terms with 
> within the regular frames of reference (like real and figurative).  And, 
> as he himself was willing to suggest, his work is as much a part of 
> power structures as anything else. However, this doesn't make them 
> impotent, I don't think.  The very contingency of his 'histories' is a 
> way of offering alternatives, as well as owning up to the fact that all 
> we ever have is 'versions' (the ghost of Neitzche again).

Didn't he call his books "little bombs" waiting to go off unexpectantly?  
Or am I thinking of someone else?  I agree with you absolutely,
Foucault's work is not impotent in its impact--if anything he has had a
profound influence upon the academy and on political activism--he has
made us rethink our assumptions about power and action.  (He is very
indebted to Nietzsche as you point out--another person who has had a
delayed impact upon the world through his writing).

Have you read The Order of Things, from his so-called structuralist
phase?  I'm thinking of reading it because I was told it is in some sense 
a critique of Husserl, and I'm working on a big project on Husserl right
now, reading his work and reading people influenced by him (Derrida,
Heidegger, Adorno, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Gadamer, Levinas, etc).  I'd be 
curious as to your opinions about that work--I'm mostly familiar with his 
middle period, if one can call it that--the prison and psychiatry
writings--more than his later work on sexuality which I only know through 
feminist writings.

> > Now, would I be right in saying that this kind of
theorising
has an > influence on differends?  - it seems to me that in fragmenting 
> 'official' versions of events and viewpoints, new possibilities emerge.
> Am I being too optimistic here?!


I think you're right.  I'm reading Lyotard's work on Heidegger which is
similar but different to the works of Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida on
Heidegger, and all of them rework or reask the questions of Heidegger's
political decision of 1934 and his subsequent silence on the matter.  New 
possibilities do emerge in these rereadings, though I am unsatisfied with 
all of them ! even Lyotard's, though less with his than with the other
two.

Best regards
Matt