Thanks for that Mary.
I have read Lois McNay on Foucault, and I liked her a lot, and it was
there that I did learn that in his latter days Foucault changed his
mind about the subject and introduced the subject into his thinking. I
found that material very useful actually, but I was really surprised
when I read McNay, because no other Foucault critic seems to use that
part of Foucault. For example, Nancy Fraser, who I also rate very
highly, criticises Foucault for not having an ethical theory, but
Nancy Fraser's weak side, if any, is also objectivism.
As for Judith Butler, I confess I have only read a couple of her books
and one or two by her "followers" and perhaps I have missed something
there. Martin certainly seems to think so.I will get hold of "Giving
an Account of Oneself" as soon as I can and investigate.
Thanks again for that Mary,
Andy
At 09:12 AM 11/11/2005 -0800, you wrote:
>> Poststructuralists claim to have "deconstructed the subject",
for them
>> it is an illusion.
Actually, I recommended three texts that are post-structural and
not
deconstructionist in their methodology. Late-career Foucault and
current
Butler do not take as their target the deconstruction of the
subject at all.
In the Butler text, and also Cavarero, the authors provide very
comprehensive analyses of the major philosophical perspectives for
thinking
about subject-object relations, and there are minor, but not
insignificant
overlaps with what concerns most CHAT citizens ---
inter-subjectivities. And
there are overlaps in literature, which I sometimes think is most
profitably
sought in the literature from psychoanalysis on object relations --
a good
chunk of the Butler text looks at this literature.
I was thinking about all of this yesterday -- the way in which we
are
speaking different languages in this community <as in any other
community>
such that by the time one message gets across the great divide,
almost all
the meaning is lost. It seems a very potent difference to note that
for some
of us -- like, me, for example -- psychology is not about "mental
processes", and if I am to talk at all about psychology, then it is
to be
interested in the ways in which scholarly traditions endeavor to
provide an
account of interiority that is rich enough and complex enough to be
situated
in a context of geographic, historical, chronological <at minimum>
flux. And
this actually, is where I find that LSV started off on the right
track in
his work on semiotics, and then got derailed by mentalistic
traditions
which, likely because of his very early death, never got back on
track. So
for me, Bakhtin is more helpful, when I am looking back to
foundational
texts.
Mary
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Alexander Surmava's Tour - September/October 2006
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