Monday, November 30, 2009

Foucault presentation thoughts...

I primarily focused on Foucault and postmodernism for my portion
of the presentation, I thought the class could discuss:

Foucault's hypothesis that: "...in every society the production of discourse
is at once controlled, selected, organized, and redistributed by a
certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and
dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its
ponderous, formidable materiality." (and in particular his statements
that sexuality and politics are the primary areas in which discourse
is controlled) (1461)

Principles of exclusion:
Prohibition (forbidden speech)
Division and Rejection (madness)
Opposition Between True and False (Will to truth)

His connection to earlier texts:

"Since the Greeks 'true' discourse is no longer the discourse that
answers to the demands of desire, or the discourse which exercises
power, what is at stake in the will to truth, in the will to utter
this 'true' discourse, if not desire and power? 'True' discourse,
freed from desire and power by the necessity of its form, cannot
recognize the will to truth which pervades it; and the will to truth,
having imposed itself on us for a very long time, is such that the
truth it wants cannot fail to mask it."

Additionally, I found a Derrida quote where he talks about the
importance of the author to the text, which echoes Foucault's statements
on page 1465.

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