Mary,
I'll go to the source of my comment about Foucault. On page 100 in History
of Sexuality V1, Foucault states, "to be more precise, we must not imagine a
world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded
discourse, or between dominant discourse and the dominated one; but as a
multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various
stategies".
On 102, he continues,
"We must not expect the discourses on sex to tell us, above all, what
stategy they derive from, or what moral divisions they accompany, or what
ideology - dominant or dominated - they represent; rather we must question
them o the two levels of their tactical productivity (what recipical effects
of power and knowledge they ensure) and their strategical integration (what
conjunction and what force relationship make their utilization necessary in
a given episode of the various confrontations that occur).
In short, it is a question of orienting ourselves to a conception of power
which replaces the privledge of law with the viewpoint of the objective, the
privledge of prohibition with the viewpoint of tactical efficiency, the
privledge of soverignty with the analsis of a multiple and mobile field of
force relations..."
Burchell comments Foucault was argueing for an objectivity of power that
could be compared to the objectivity of freedom in liberalism. A focus on
the analytics of power rather than a theory per se.
This is where my comment came from.
Nate
Nate Schmolze
http://www.geocities.com/nate_schmolze/
schmolze@students.wisc.edu
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"Overcoming the naturalistic concept of mental development calls for a
radically new approach
to the interrelation between child and society. We have been led to this
conclusion by a
special investigation of the historical emergence of role-playing. In
contrast to the view
that role playing is an eternal extra-historical phenomenon, we hypothesized
that role playing emerged at a specific stage of social development, as the
child's position in society changed
in the course of history. role-playing is an activity that is social in
origin and,
consequently, social in content."
D. B. El'konin
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-----Original Message-----
From: mary bryson [mailto:brys@unixg.ubc.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 12:16 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: activity/reproduction/power
Nate wrote:
<While I am a tad bit concerned about
Foucault's desire for objectivity - reasoning or discourse freed from the
question of who does it beneifit etc>
I am confused (as usual)....i read this a bunch of times, and it still
strikes me that Foucault precisely is the writer who, for me, asks the
question about "who benefits" better and louder than anyone else.... Where
does this come from Nate?
mary
-- Dr. Mary Bryson, Associate Professor, Education, UBC GenTech Project http://www.shecan.com Curriculum Vitae http://www.educ.ubc.ca/faculty/bryson/cv.htmlIn societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of "spectacles". Everything that was directly lived has moved away into representation. - Guy Debord, "The Society of the Spectacle" c 1967
---------- >From: "Nate" <schmolze@students.wisc.edu> >To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu> >Subject: RE: activity/reproduction/power >Date: Sat, Apr 22, 2000, 6:25 AM >
> Diane, > > Positive relations is from M Foucault to contrast a notion of power as > soverign or repression. At one point he states those things we characterize > as soverign are merely byproducts. While I am a tad bit concerned about > Foucault's desire for objectivity - reasoning or discourse freed from the > question of who does it beneifit etc, I do think the notion of positive > relations is a useful one. > > So, I would not read "positive" so much as in a binary of good and bad, but > an attempt to analyze power utilized at various sites. The way I used it > was similar to practice or "lived experience" in that dominant Discourse > does not merely repress but produce. > > In rereading your discussion of ideology I think it points toward the > positive element of power as when you state, > > "we are discussing it in an ideological context of "academic meanings," > meaning that ideology is "out there" but not "in here" where we are > practicing and reproducing the very structures that > are relied upon for maintaining the kinds of shared dominance that makes > ideology ideological in the first place - a paradox of activity, indeed." > > Nate > > > > > > > > > > > > > Nate Schmolze > http://www.geocities.com/nate_schmolze/ > schmolze@students.wisc.edu > > > **************************************************************************** > **************** > "Overcoming the naturalistic concept of mental development calls for a > radically new approach > to the interrelation between child and society. We have been led to this > conclusion by a > special investigation of the historical emergence of role-playing. In > contrast to the view > that role playing is an eternal extra-historical phenomenon, we hypothesized > that role playing emerged at a specific stage of social development, as the > child's position in society changed > in the course of history. role-playing is an activity that is social in > origin and, > consequently, social in content." > > D. B. El'konin > **************************************************************************** > **************** > >
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