/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4793090]

What is /lit/'s opinion of this wahabi right here?

I just picked up a couple of his books because his "archeology" concept is practically engineered to satisfy certain curiosities and interrogative forms I have had about the development of western civilization and the relationship between its "conceptual" legacy and its mundane history. I am about seventy pages into Madness and Civilization, and it has some interesting ideas, but what i have read critically about his historiography seems to boil down to "he is talking out of his ass".

So what do you think? Am I wasting my time? A genuinely interesting perspective on history as it pertains to cultural awareness and the "zeitgeist"? A goddamn Al-Qaeda sympathizer?

Also, recommend more writers/philosophers who attempt synthetic exegeses of humanity and its development/ the development of the natural order in general. Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics is a good example of what I have in mind.

[Anonymous No.4793097]

>>4793090
Fails to meet disciplinary standards of history.

[Anonymous No.4793118]

>>4793097
Yeah, that's what I read.

To be honest, its also sort of what I was looking for. I think what he is attempting is an exploration of topics and facets of society which were not identified and cataloged by the cultures being investigated, such as psychoanalysis and the differentiation between different forms of "madness", so he is forced to rely on artistic representations and some striking cultural practices such as the Ship of Fools.

I like the idea of trying to reconstruct the precursors to modern institutions and compare what existed in their place prior to their invention, because its useful for thinking about what has been lost or gained from the intentional structuring of society around predetermined objectives.


Cosmicomics is more "hard science", I suppose, but its still very confabulated.

[Feminister !!F9QVQ82MjmE No.4793123]

The method he says in down in The Order of Things is good, and he does a lot with it. His notion of power, especially biopower, is worth learning. However, once you understand his ideas, you figure out that he's just reapplying them over and over to different things, so keep that in mind. You shouldn't hold him up as THE philosopher, but he contributed greatly to ending the modern stagnation of philosophy and social theory.

[Anonymous No.4793138]

>>4793123
Yeah, I don't have any sort of deifying attitude about Foucault. Biopower sounds interesting, is it basically a constructivist version of an environment? The reason I even care about him at all is because he made up the methodologies he is using specifically to talk about things that are outside the realm of rigorous anthropology and sociology.

What actually drew me to him was his History of Knowledge, an idea I have had many junk-fueled arguments over with several people. The cultural/biological/evolutionary/civil history of "truth' and its value to humanity is what I want to read more about.

The invention of "truth" was probably the first cognitive achievement which separated historical man from other higher order animals. To gain it is practically an instinct equal to nutrition and sex.

[Feminister !!F9QVQ82MjmE No.4793155]

>>4793138
>is it basically a constructivist version of an environment?
Not exactly. It's basically the idea that production of commodities and advancement of science and a number of other things, are merely different facets of intensifying power, which has been encroaching as purpose upon all things.

>The reason I even care about him at all is because he made up the methodologies he is using specifically to talk about things that are outside the realm of rigorous anthropology and sociology.
Problemitization was his primary innovation in method, and thankfully he gave us abundant and clear examples of its use; it is his greatest legacy in the way that Socratic method is Socrates' greatest legacy.

>The invention of "truth" was probably the first cognitive achievement which separated historical man from other higher order animals. To gain it is practically an instinct equal to nutrition and sex.
I'd agree with that, although Rorty says it more blatantly than Foucault does (Foucault works a lot on invented truths more than directly addressing inventing truth itself), who was actually a bit critical of Foucault on the basis of Foucault looking for problems but not offering solutions.

[Feminister !!F9QVQ82MjmE No.4793159]

>>4793155
>problematization

[Anonymous No.4793182]

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[Anonymous No.4793189]

>>4793182
Foucault, or this conversation?

[Anonymous No.4793204]

>talentless hack uses scientific concepts in a nonscientific, amateur way
>most quoted of the xxth in human sciences

that does not speak well of these disciplines... even tho there are of course serious people in it despite these jerks who are, no coincidence, the most famous ones.

[Anonymous No.4793215]

>>4793204
He's not well quoted in my discipline.

[Anonymous No.4793233]

>>4793204
I only brought him up because of his topics. If there's somebody using scientific concepts in a nonscientific way that is amateurish I'd like to k now.

[Anonymous No.4793265]

>>4793090
Let's face it, postmodernism started getting old in the 2000s. Now it's widely despised, but mostly by people who don't know why they despise it. It's just out of fashion. The post-structuralists have been under critical bombardment for 30+ years. But if you don't read them (Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze, Derrida etc.) you won't understand their critics, their critics of their critics, and you might as well just cream 'ITS NOT CLEAR!!!!!!' or asphyxiate yourself while trying to get high on Bertrand Russel.

[Anonymous No.4793274]

>>4793097
>fails to be a positivist pile of shit

[Anonymous No.4793280]

[Anonymous No.4793284]

>>4793265
Who really cares? The sub-genres of postmodernism are wholly uninteresting topics, and whatever writers fall into the category who are actually worth discussing usually violate their definitions on multiple levels.

[Anonymous No.4793289]

>>4793274
Your suggestion that historiography is positivist shows you a cunt.

[Anonymous No.4793291]

>>4793280
>>>4793265
>>4793204
>Everybody wants to talk about the Women's studies public image of Foucault
>Nobody wants to help OP with his actual issue

I am not even going to pretend not to be same fagging here. I would like some good recommendations of people who do what Foucault is trying to do, but better, if you have them.

As I stated towards the end of the original post, its sort of why I am here.

[Anonymous No.4793299]

>>4793284
Even if they were uninteresting - I disagree - they are intellectually significant. If you find yourself trying to put forward a philosophical or political view in the near future, you will have to engage with their thought in some manner, even if not directly, in order to move beyond them and their critics (who often just strengthen their claims, rather than pulling them apart).

[Anonymous No.4793309]

>>4793299
That's not very post-structuralist of you to say.

[Anonymous No.4793326]

>>4793309
I'm not a post-structuralist. But I don't understand your claim.

[Anonymous No.4793328]

>>4793289
Of course it is. It's no longer generally even historicist. It's just pure positivism.

[Anonymous No.4793344]

>>4793118
>I think what he is attempting is an exploration of topics and facets of society which were not identified and cataloged by the cultures being investigated, such as psychoanalysis and the differentiation between different forms of "madness", so he is forced to rely on artistic representations and some striking cultural practices such as the Ship of Fools.

Complete non sequitur, though. This 'artistic representation' is not some methodological necessity but purely the result of being a pretentious frenchy. Like starting the Order of Things with a quotation from Borges instead of just saying what you mean.

[Anonymous No.4793352]

>>4793344
Yes, if everyone wrote like Stephen Pinker the world would be a better place.

[Anonymous No.4793356]

>>4793344
I didn't mean he was employing artistic representation. I mean he was using as reference material works of art to describe his subject.

[Anonymous No.4793362]

>>4793352
I'm not saying that, but Foucault and various other French thinkers write under the maxim of 'lots of style, little substance'.

[Anonymous No.4795049]

>>4793328
>Of course it is. It's no longer generally even historicist. It's just pure positivism.

Do you even know what historiographically conservative historians do? They do complex thousand of text hermeneutics with a gentle and playful negotiation of meaning amongst plural narratives.

And that's the conservatives.

Positivism doesn't exist in historiography you horrible little toilet skite.

[Anonymous No.4795232]

>>4793155
>Not exactly. It's basically the idea that production of commodities and advancement of science and a number of other things, are merely different facets of intensifying power, which has been encroaching as purpose upon all things.

ahahaha. dude, stop.

[Anonymous No.4795237]

>>4793352
Everyone would have a nobel in literature.

[Anonymous No.4795251]

>>4793362
Ah, that's not that true.
Think about this: Foucault's thought is hardly summarizable in a few lines, any book is packed with ideas. A dawkins book is summarizable in a couple of pages.

The reason is that anglo-american philosopher rehash a lot of accepted ideas as an introduction to their single one new idea. So it seems that is packed with ideas and it is clear but at the end of the day you have achieved very little.

The french mobilize a whole army of metaphors and linguistic tricks that at first confound you and seem pointless but that at the end of the day have given a new and completely different way of talking and thinking about things.

[Feminister !!F9QVQ82MjmE No.4795515]

>>4793362
Many French thinkers do that, Foucault is not one them, especially past his early years.

[Anonymous No.4795769]

>>4795251
>The three Critiques by Kant, among many large things, do an important small one: they render the difference between the sort of thought and writing which is inherently and necessarily hard and the kind, like Heidegger’s, which forms a soft metaphysical fog around even the easiest and most evident idea. (Gass, Temple of Texts)

Replace Heidegger with any french thinker.

[Anonymous No.4795884]

>>4793090

>out of his ass

Pool's closed.

[Anonymous No.4795910]

he was a pretty cool guy

[Anonymous No.4795974]

>>4795769
Clear example of american provincialism and bad prose.

An unsupported attack where on one side they champion what they like and on the other they attack whomever they don't like.

For example look at this introduction by Brombert to Steegmer volume on Falubert and Madame Bovary. No substance, just him badmouthing Flaubert at best for personal reasons (he just doesn't like Flaubert) at worse for ideological reasons (not forgiving him the criticism of comfortable post-revolutionary enlightenment, seeing in the mockery of Homais the mockery of themselves).

Vapid scholarship, and I'm said that Gass, whom I generally admire, has given such a cheap shot to Heidegger (cheap because his judgment of Heidegger says more about him than about Heidegger: because he has clearly failed to recognize what would have become a classic).

[Anonymous No.4795993]

>>4795049
>implying we can know history happened
Sounds a lot like what you're peddling is "historical science" or HISTORY BASED SCIENTISM
Please go back to /pol/ or /b/ with the other autistic "intellectuals", we don't need this rationalist stool in our groupthink.

[Anonymous No.4796002]

foucault wasn't a jew and i can respect that. 90% of post-modern guys attacking western civilization are just angsty jews trying to tear down white achievement

[Anonymous No.4796023]

>>4793097
>Shirer's half-assed history of the third reich where he says that the SA riotousness is due to their beinng homosexuals: fine.
>Foucault inventing in the 60s new ways of doing historiography: does not meet disciplinary standards of history.

Geez get it together.

[Anonymous No.4796044]

>>4793097
>elaborates the confines of a discipline
>fails to meet the standard of said discipline
no shit

[Anonymous No.4796083]

>>4796044
You say that as if you have a secure hermeneutic outside of historiography.

>>4795993
You're a fucking cretin mate. Marwick "Two Approaches to Historical Study."

>>4796023
Other shit exists is a juvenile fallacy.

[Anonymous No.4796093]

>>4796083
It's not other shit exists. It's that you can't judge by today's standard scholarship from 50+ years ago.

[Anonymous No.4796099]

>>4796002
Instead we have an angsty homo

[Anonymous No.4796102]

>>4796083
>You say that as if you have a secure hermeneutic outside of historiography.
>implying that "disciplinary standards of history" isn't a standard from the outside that is a product of power

let's be clear who said there was an outside first

[Anonymous No.4796221]

If Foucault's history of sexuality is flawed, what are the best alternative explanations?

[Anonymous No.4796222]

>>4796102
>I don't get what a hermeneutic is and how it relates to epistemology.
History has always recognised its insideness.

Do you show your tutor your ejaculate proudly?

[Anonymous No.4796225]

>>4796099
problem, faggot?

[Anonymous No.4796229]

>>4796225

Foucault never fails to haunt the jimmies of essentialists, biological racists, and /pol/scum.

[Feminister !!F9QVQ82MjmE No.4796242]

>>4796221
Explanation for what? Foucault said that the relatively sudden study and classification of sexuality was used to concentrate power, the point where sexuality transitioned from art to science; you want an alternate explanation of why it was studied?

[Anonymous No.4796244]

>>4796221
biology

[Anonymous No.4796257]

>>4796229
>>4796225
It makes sense from a tumblrwiener perspective, tho
>homos don't have le privs
>get buttmad at whatever they call the place they live in
>deside to tear it down because if they can't have power NOBODY CAN
>???
>anarcho-communism

[Anonymous No.4796268]

>>4796257
fascinating insight into the logic of retard

[Anonymous No.4796275]

>>4796268
>r*****
Nice ableism.
Here's the door:
>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.4796277]

>>4796242
Yeah, an explanation of the emergence of sexual identity, especially homosexuality, at the turn of the 20th century. Particularly interested in Marxist perspectives.

[Anonymous No.4796595]

>>4795251
>Think about this: Foucault's thought is hardly summarizable in a few lines, any book is packed with ideas.

You mean packed with vague claims not actually supported by arguments or evidence, which yet somehow make perfect material for English term papers? Yeah, I was aware.

[Anonymous No.4797178]

>>4796595
>>4796083
Obviously this piece of shit is not a graduate student in history. Babby's first stab at Foucault.

Anyone studying European, Colonial, or Intellectual history has to confront Foucault.

His work on discourse alone has created new inroads in the study of in postcolonial, aesthetic, and intellectual history.

Dumb shit probably doesn't even know he had a good relationship with the annales school.

[Anonymous No.4797198]

>>4793090

>namedrop Foucault and Zizek in an English exam essay response
>95%

>namedrop Foucault and make vaguely disparaging remarks about him in conversation at the university bar
>hipster chicks failing first year analytical philosophy all on my dick

THANK YOU BASED FOUCAULT

[Anonymous No.4797211]

>>4797178
I am only one of the posters you identified as the same person. I'm not a historian, no, but Foucault's History of Sexuality for example is ripe with shitty scholarship. Cf. Amy Richlin: 'Why does this man have his own adjective?' in Rethinking Sexuality: Foucault and Classical Antiquity

[Anonymous No.4797212]

>>4797198
>name drop Foucault and make disparaging remarks on him in an English exam essay response
>F

[Anonymous No.4797226]

>>4797211
Amy? Who? the fuck cares.

I'm talking about modern history not spergo classics that will be replaced by archeology as soon as we find a civilization older than 20,000BC

[Anonymous No.4797234]

>>4796242
Try Mosse the sexuality of the masses

[Anonymous No.4797252]

>>4797211
You mean that your standard of well argued scholarship is the hack amy richlin that says stuff like "why does foucault say the familiar game of curdled milk? Did I live a sheltered life? Or is it that he is only talking about man?"

[Anonymous No.4797968]

>>4797252
What's wrong with that? I don't know what that game is and googling gives me five links to texts on Foucault and some made-up entry on urban dictionary.

[Anonymous No.4798009]

>>4797968
It was just a joke on the fact that sperm looks like curdled milk.
Probably the guy got jacked off.

[Feminister !!F9QVQ82MjmE No.4798046]

>>4798009
>muh "little girl"
>muh prosecution is "petty"

[Anonymous No.4799030]

>>4797178
>Anyone studying European, Colonial, or Intellectual history has to confront Foucault.
Do you know what the verb "confront" means?

>His work on discourse alone has created new inroads in the study of in postcolonial, aesthetic, and intellectual history.

By people who actually use approved historiographical methods. Strange that the only criterium of disciplinarity is adherence to a hermeneutical method: a discourse of discourses; a method which Foucault cannot adhere.

>Dumb shit probably doesn't even know he had a good relationship with the annales school.

"Mates down the pub" fallacy. /lit/ has a very good relationship between fascisti and class struggle anarchists: because we are down the pub and discussing literature.

[Anonymous No.4799275]

>>4799030
>confront
con·front
kənˈfrənt/Submit
verb
verb: confront; 3rd person present: confronts; past tense: confronted; past participle: confronted; gerund or present participle: confronting
1.
meet (someone) face to face with hostile or argumentative intent.
"300 policemen confronted an equal number of union supporters"
synonyms: challenge, face (up to), come face to face with, meet, accost; More
antonyms: avoid
face up to and deal with (a problem or difficult situation).
"we knew we couldn't ignore the race issue and decided we'd confront it head on"
synonyms: tackle, ADDRESS, face, COME TO GRIPS WITH, grapple with, take on, attend to, see to, deal with, take care of, handle, manage More
antonyms: avoid

You need to read some articles. I can not educate you, my friend. It is sad, though; I would think someone with your writing ability would have substantive knowledge about history/philosophy. This a common problem amongst pseudo intellectuals such as yourself.
You can not understand Foucault without understanding late annales. You must therefore not study history, or you study American history.

[Anonymous No.4799307]

>>4799275
>You can not understand Foucault without understanding late annales. You must therefore not study history, or you study American history.
And you mustn't read English historiography in the least if you're spouting this shit.

I read Foucault through Castoriadis, '68, and the well agreed standards of historiography.

You seem to have read him through Lukacs, bourgeois idealism, and a willingness to tolerate gross methodological errors.

The pity of the pitiful inspires the traditional response: disgust.

[Anonymous No.4799407]

>>4799307
Camille Paglia please go.

>bourgeois idealism
>confirmed Communist, not Marxist
hehe. Thanks, I needed that.

I will give you a solid example in your field of "English historiography", where Foucault is confronted. The author fails to create a meaningful alternative to the panopticon--much like you fail to construct a sentence without name dropping every philosopher that you encounter on wikipedia.

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/V/bo5815536(dot)html

[Anonymous No.4799513]

>>4799407
Thompson Althusser has been around for fucking years mate. Marwick's restatement of the point has been cited every other week.

>The author fails to create a meaningful alternative to the panopticon
This was covered at length in Thompson/Althusser, and resolved by the self-negating subject.

I notice that you've consistently avoided disciplinarity and methodology. Foucault failed, manifestly, on the contested epistemic terrain he wished to describe.

[Anonymous No.4799567]

>>4799513
>Althusser
Foucault have stumbled on a truth that the partisans of these philosophers
have often denied: that the two works are not opposed and external
to each other, the one an alternative to the other. Rather than
feeling compelled to choose between "Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses" and Discipline and Punish, and thus between Althusser
and Foucault, to the extent that we take the commentaries in all their
unevenness to be objectively determined effects of the works in question,
we may read the apparent dilemma, Althusser or Foucault, in the
manner of Spinoza, as Althusser sive Foucault, Althusser, that is,
Foucault

http://www.csun.edu/~snk1966/Warren%20Montag%20Althusser%20and%20Foucault%201970%20to%201975(dot)pdf
Read, and do not make haste judgements.

[Anonymous No.4799636]

>>4799567
The rational and the proletarian choice is choosing EP you fucking cretin.

[Anonymous No.4799648]

>>4799636
>proletarian choice
and...4chan!

[Anonymous No.4799679]

>>4799648
Like any space where unimpeded worker to worker contact occurs, 4chan has elements of resistance and elements of enslavement.