Phillip,
On the basis of your description of Foucaultianism it would be hard to
distinguish it from a lot of other stuff, say the League of Womens Voters,
Public Interest Research Groups of all kinds, etc.
When I asked Nate about the Foucault issue I was specifically wondering
about how a theoretical framework (archaelogies of knowledges in Foucault's
case) might serve people to better assimilate and interpret their practice
as part of reflexive, feed-back evaluation. The simple fact of returning
information of course does start this process; but what is most relevant is
WHAT information is returned, whether the constructs of a given theoretical
orientation (eg, community of practice, division of labor, episteme, genre,
audience, etc. etc.) are actually useful in the specific practice to which
they are applied (eg, running a CTC, setting up neighborhood advisory
committees to link local needs to CTC programming, writing a journal
article, etc.)
This to me is where the tire hits the road--looking at which theoretical
constructs are used and useful in which types of practice. Theory as
artifact in which activity systems. I'm still waiting to see an example of
Foucaultianism in this kind of practice.
Paul H. Dillon
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