Help with Foucault?

[sloth]

For a short paper assignment (3000 words or so) on political philosophy I am thinking of focusing on Foucault's power/knowledge. I like his ideas on disseminated power and after reading discipline & punish i'd really like to work in the growth of the prison and other institutions and their influence on discourse. Are there any philosophers that spring to mind I could use perhaps in contrast or concert with his ideas? Hobbes' Leviathan would be an obvious choice but i've already studied it a fair bit and the department probably wouldn't appreciate reading their own notes regurgitated to them. I was thinking Marxist considering his ties with it.

In any case if you have read any papers on Foucault that have particularly tickled your fancy please let me know, i'm trying to wade through the bog of literature on him to get a better jist of his standpoint so I can gather some counterpoints but it isn't easy reading and i'm on a bit of a tight deadline. I'm wondering if its even worth reading Derrida if it's just the political side i'm interested in?

I think i've written more in this post than I ever have on these boards but I know there's some smart cats out there and I can't talk to my tutors at the moment because i'm stuck at home. So, if you're feeling generous feel free to throw some tender cuts of intellectual beef my way. Thanks.

[Sethomas]

I think my Chicago roomie stole my copy of History of Sexuality. All I remember about that book is that, like I've said several times on this board, you could replace every instance of the word "sex" or "sexuality" in the book with "baseball" or "hotdogs" and it would still make about the same amount of sense.

[The One and Only...]

Post-structuralist thinkers like Foucault suffer from collectivist pitfalls, failing to realize the nature of the social dialectic from which the individual is sculpted, shaped, formed, and so on.

In short, you should do a book report on me.

[Sethomas]

Isn't it a bit hypocritical to apply historical dialectic to non-collectivist economical systems? The Fichtean system (attributed falsely to Hegel) wouldn't have been taken seriously beyond the 19th Century if not for the association made by Marx between worker/product alienation and thesis.

Sure, if you want to be fun and use archaic philosophy in your thinking, feel free. Just be consistent about it.

[Seven Force]

EDIT: Never mind.

[The One and Only...]

Isn't it a bit hypocritical to apply historical dialectic to non-collectivist economical systems? The Fichtean system (attributed falsely to Hegel) wouldn't have been taken seriously beyond the 19th Century if not for the association made by Marx between worker/product alienation and thesis.

Sure, if you want to be fun and use archaic philosophy in your thinking, feel free. Just be consistent about it.

I'm not applying a Marxist or Hegelian dialectic. I'm using the term in the loose sense.

It is true that society makes man, but it is also true that man makes society. It is the interaction of individual forces and the larger societal complex that they comprise which gives way to mans' development.

[derrida]

sloth:

http://www.panopticweb.com/2004conference/3.munro.pdf

It is true that society makes man, but it is also true that man makes society. It is the interaction of individual forces and the larger societal complex that they comprise which gives way to mans' development.

When does Foucault deny this? Or are you simply saying he does because wikipedia says he's a post-structuralist?

[The One and Only...]

When does Foucault deny this? Or are you simply saying he does because wikipedia says he's a post-structuralist?

He does not particularly deny it, but I have never seen him give much consideration beyond the influence of the social complex.

[derrida]

Please learn what a secondary source is, you dumb pedophile.

You read textbooks for fun and are a compulsive masturbator.

"there are no relations of power without resistance" (1980, 142)

[The One and Only...]

Please learn what a secondary source is, you dumb pedophile.

I was reading Technologies of the Self before I found it painfully boring.

BUT WIAT OMG HE DIDNT RELALY RITE IT LOL!!!

You read textbooks for fun and are a compulsive masturbator.

You idolize french cocksuckers.

"there are no relations of power without resistance" (1980, 142)

Are you going to give me a context for that statement? It's insufficient for me to make any real comment, unless you'd like for me to pull some post-modern underlying textual meaning out of my ass and impose it on Foucault's words.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

I think Sloth is gonna be ok.

[derrida]

Why is it more important to describe possible, theoretical maneuvers of a free agent than it is to describe actual, historical instances of repression? Freedom can be understood as the ability to create something new, which is a common notion.

Projection, anyone? I don't idolize anyone, and I like my cocksuckers German, fyi. I think Foucault had interesting ideas that also have practical implications concerning medicine and institutional management. You, on the other hand, are a huge fag with delusions of intellectual grandeur.

[The One and Only...]

Why is it more important to describe possible, theoretical maneuvers of a free agent than it is to describe actual, historical instances of repression? Freedom can be understood as the ability to create something new, which is a common notion.

Unless you understand the "theoretical maneuvers of a free agent" you won't have a basis from which to promote change. History is chiefly irrelevant - we need to look forward.

Projection, anyone? I don't idolize anyone, and I like my cocksuckers German, fyi. I think Foucault had interesting ideas that also have practical implications concerning medicine and institutional management. You, on the other hand, are a huge fag with delusions of intellectual grandeur.

You don't idolize anyone? Your s/n is fucking derrida. DERRIDA. Clearly you fail to understand the self-referential sarcasm I carry in some of my posts. And where did I ever say I disagreed with all of Foucault's points?