Origins: Rose-Briar Motif

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 07 May 13 - 01:27 PM

It's been so many years since grad school that I can't give you a detailed rundown.

Phrases that come to mind, however, include:

"endless deductions from baseless or questionable premisses, each increment more likely to get farther from the truth rather than closer"

"tendentious arguments against a straw-man Enlightenment Project"

"unhelpful, unwarranted reductionist view of post-Hobbesian human life and society as a cynical power struggle"

"caters to his own paranoid leanings and encourages the same in others"

"ingenious enough to open up a new but largely sterile field for doctoral candidates and played-out junior faculty members in need of tenure"

"impenitently obfuscatory"

"attacks the very liberal humanism which, even if epistemologically illusory, has freed a billion people from absolutist, pre-Englightment-style rule"

"If he's correct, should we prefer political and linguistic anarchy?"

Etc.

Of course I realize that by claiming the emperor has no clothes (or, in Foucault's case, no more than a tattered Nehru jacket) I prove myself to be one more zombie brainwashed by the manipulating gatekeepers of knowledge - and the more shadowy powers behind them.

Unlike Foucault's own, more trusting brainwashees.

(I won't argue with his idea that semantic categories constantly shift but he didn't come up with that one himself, and we have proof it's true.)

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 May 13 - 01:37 PM

Wow, Jon!
Can you translate all that into layman's terms? Very impressive!

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 07 May 13 - 03:48 PM

Rather a challenge, Steve. We're talking about a major philosopher and psychoanalytical and cultural theorist, beloved by millions. (Well, by many thousands at least.)

In a nutshell, and SJL may wish to correct me, Foucault held that the search for "scientific" knowledge is little more than a search for power. (Remember the old saying, "Knowledge is power"? That's Fookie all over!) The Big-Brother elites who "know" - or, in F's interpretation - *claim* to know, develop the power to subjugate everyone else. They determine what's "true" or "false," "right" or "wrong," "normal" or "sick." If you resist, especially by being gay, or a so-called "schizophrenic" or "criminal," they overt and subtle vays of making you conform, like putting you in prison or the looney bin. "Objectivity" is the self-interested subjectivity of the wielders of knowledge and power. And Big Brother (the imaginary God or his cynical or unwitting human stand-ins) will, one way or another,be keeping an eye on you. (Ever notice those surveillance cameras? They're meant to catch Winston Smith-type resisters - oops! I mean - heh-heh - criminals.)

According to Foucault, the science-and-reason-driven Enlightenment, and the liberal humanist philosophies and political systems it inspired, are no truer or freer or fairer or better than Pharaoh or the Spanish Inquisition. It's all about the survival of the fittest, whether you know it or not, and fittest means strongest or most ruthless - subtly or overtly.

Everybody has a power-driven agenda. "No innocent texts" means that books and movies are sending you hidden messages (from the conscious or unconscious of their creators, or the unconscious of your sick society as a whole) that Foucault's followers will happily decode for you.

(Foucaultians either have no power-driven agenda - so you can trust them; or else they openly proclaim that they do - which makes them equally trustworthy! Of course, a real Foucaultian ultimately trusts no one: see "The X-Files.")

"No innocent readers" means that your understanding of anything you read (or see or hear) is based on your own unconscious power-driven agenda or else own your unconscious Freudian desires, which - perhaps unbeknownst to you - also constantly evaluate everyone your eyes fall upon as a potential sex partner. Because sex, like knowledge, is Power! Baby!

To give Foucault his due, he'd read a lot and had facts at his fingertips (of course, he had no reason to trust them, since they came from other people's books - but that's another story).

And what an imagination, eh?

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 07 May 13 - 04:20 PM

Foucault's main constructive contribution to knowledge (uh-oh!) is the emphasis he puts on the subtle and unconscious influence of social norms on what we believe.

I don't believe that was a new idea. But if it was, kudos!

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 May 13 - 04:31 PM

Looks reasonable to me, especially the sex bit!

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 07 May 13 - 04:47 PM

In regard to your first post, Lighter, I declare the following "inadmissable," or, perhaps a better word, "unworthy":

"caters to his own paranoid leanings and encourages the same in others"

"Ingenious enough to open up a new but largely sterile field for doctoral candidates and played-out junior faculty members in need of tenure"

"impenitently obfuscatory" 

I was not raised to insult brilliant professors :-)

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 07 May 13 - 06:13 PM

Relativism is the bad faith of the conqueror, who has become secure enough to become a tourist.

                                                 Stanley Diamond

And if I were to tell the story of someone- or a people- whose point of view should I tell it from? Should I tell it from the point of view of those who have already had their say? Or will I try to find out what life was like for the voiceless and then apply my own human empathy? Of couse I should do the latter.

I have never come across a scholar who was as extensive and as thorough as Foucault, as adept at invoking cold hard facts and documentation to illustrate what reality was like for the poor and disenfranchised, or for madmen and the condemned who were particulary at risk in this category. Voiceless entities.

"An edict of the King, dated June 16, 1676, prescribed the establishment of an "hôpital général in each city of his kingdom."

Directors, appointed for life, exercised power throughout Paris: (1967 p.40)]"They have all power of authority, of direction, of administration, of commerce, of police, of jurisdiction, of correction and punishment over all the poor of Paris, both within and without the Hôpital Général"

Argue with that. What do you suppose it was like for those people? It just might be that I care and you don't. To each their own. I know Jim does. It's what his whole life has really been about. Although I don't think he ever expected an internet stranger to happen along and sum it up just like that :-)

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 07 May 13 - 07:01 PM

"The directors having for these purposes stakes, irons, prisons, and dungeons in the said Hôpital Général and the places therto appertaining so much as they deem necessary, no appeal will be accepted from the regulations they establish within the said hospital; and as for such regulations as intervene from without, they will be executed according to their form and tenor, notwithstanding opposition or whatever appeal made or to be made, and without prejudice to these, and for which, notwithstanding all defense or suits for justice, no distinction will be made"

Argue with that.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 07 May 13 - 08:54 PM

For every example of that kind, one of the opposite kind could be produced.

You'll believe, says Foucault, what your unconscious wants you to believe - and that unconscious has been created by the elite-controlled society around you. (Apparently his argument didn't apply to what he himself wrote, because he claimed that what he wrote really *was* true. Which, I suppose, would be possible, but only by accident.)

So if you accept Foucault's argument, you have to believe that all you believe is irrational. Foucault says your beliefs either serve your own unacknowledged will to power, or else they're determined (against your will, if you have one) by the controllers of knowledge, Foucaultian or non-Foucaultian.

Or, of course, both.

Argue with that.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 07 May 13 - 10:05 PM

Lighter, in regard to your second post on Foucault which I just read over. It's obvious to me that you haven't read Foucault.

"No innocent readers" means that your understanding of anything you read (or see or hear) is based on your own unconscious power-driven agenda or else own your unconscious Freudian desires, which - perhaps unbeknownst to you - also constantly evaluate everyone your eyes fall upon as a potential sex partner. Because sex, like knowledge, is Power! Baby!"

Really? Hmmm, that's why I must now leave this conversation. How can I hang around people who are basically just mocking me. I can't. It's a waste of time.

See ya mean boys! Playground's all yours!

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 07 May 13 - 10:24 PM

"Your analysis of Foucault is skewed and totally off the mark but I think you know that," she said on her way out.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: Lighter
Date: 08 May 13 - 10:32 AM

Since Foucault tells me that "constructed knowledge" is meaningless except as a method of control, I'd better get back to my day job of using my understanding of Foucault to resist those trying to crush me while I try to crush all the others I can.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose-Briar Motif
From: GUEST
Date: 08 May 13 - 08:02 PM

Undistorted Summary of Foucault