Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies:
"The Continental Origins of Postmodernism"

Week 6: October 18-October 24 and Week 7: October 25-31

David Ross Comments on David Potts's Review of Michel Foucault's "History of Sexuality, Volume I" with follow-up by Bryan Register and Michal Fram-Cohen

Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 1999 5:47 PM

Subject: Cyberseminar: DR Comment on David Potts and Foucault

[From: David S. Ross ]

Comment on David Potts and Foucault


I am at a loss. I don't understand how the sort of thing that Foucault
writes has come to be regarded as serious thought. This, it seems to
me is an important question. Neither do I understand what Foucault
meant to accomplish, and I find this disconcerting. I am familiar, of
course, with the agenda of the post-moderns. While nothing in H.S.I.
contradicts that agenda, nothing in is seems to promote that agenda, at
least not with any vigor. In Philosophical Detection, Ayn Rand says of
bad philosophies: "The nonsense is never accidental.The elaborate
structures in which it is presented are never purposeless." I think
that this is true, but in the case of Foucault, I cannot discern a
purpose.

In that same article Rand gives her advice, well-know to members of this
list, for judging ideas: "You must attach clear, specific meaning to
words, i.e. be able to identify their referents in reality. You
must not take.any abstract statement.as if it were approximate. Take it
literally. Take it straight, for what it does say and mean." This
advice has served me well, but it didn't help with Foucault. I have no
idea how to take "Just as the network of power relations ends by
forming a dense web that passes through apparatuses and institutions,
without being exactly localized in them, so too the swarm of points of
resistance traverses social stratifications and individual unities"
literally.

My assignment was to comment on David Potts's review. I appreciated
David's account of Foucault's philosophy, particularly his comparison of
Foucault to Kuhn, and his discussion of the Borges example. David's
account of Foucault's epistemology gave me something with which to
integrate at least a passage here and there on a second reading of
H.S.I. On the assumption that Foucault's other writing are
stylistically similar to H.S.I., David has my thanks and respect for
gleaning such a clear account of Foucault's basic philosophy.

David ended his essay with a question about Foucault's historical
accuracy. I don't think this is an important question, since I don't
see that Foucault really used history as evidence. But it's at least a
question that emerges from H.S.I. that makes sense. I am no historian,
but I will say that I find Foucault's claim about sexual prudery arising
in the nineteenth century to be odd. The Christian antipathy toward sex
goes back to St. Paul, (in a sense, back to Plato), and as I understand
it has always played an important role in Christian practice. Also, it
seems natural for taboos against sex to arise as a means of birth
control. I have always taken the Victorian attitude toward sex to be
an expression of the Christian attitude, but that attitude predates the
nineteenth century by.well, nineteen centuries. And the practical
reason for sexual taboos existed in all human societies prior to modern
birth control. So I am skeptical about Foucault's claim.

I apologize for the thinness of these comments. I simply couldn't make
sense of Foucault.

____________________________________________________________
David S. Ross
Research Labs, Eastman Kodak Company
Rochester, NY 14650-2121

Phone: 716-722-0527
FAX: 716-588-5987
____________________________________________________________

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Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

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Sent: Sunday, October 31, 1999 10:00 PM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Foucault's Purpose

[From: David Potts]

David Ross writes:

>In Philosophical Detection, Ayn Rand says of
>bad philosophies: "The nonsense is never accidental.The elaborate
>structures in which it is presented are never purposeless." I think
>that this is true, but in the case of Foucault, I cannot discern a
>purpose.

I have not read enough by Foucault - or maybe I just haven't read the right
things - to feel able to sum up the meaning of his views. But I can try to
say a couple of things.

First, I think the most significant aspect of his philosophy is his social
constructionism. That is the key to interpreting most of what he says. It
is also novel to the later 20th century. Modern philosophers before
Foucault, such as Kant and the early Wittgenstein, may have set limits to
this-worldly knowledge, they may have said that there is a mystical, higher
realm to which reason has no access, but they never doubted that knowledge
is a matter of _finding_ truths about non-arbitrary, stable facts, that it
is possible to find such truths, and that we do so all the time. To say
that knowledge is _constructed_ truth - i.e., that truth is constructed
along with knowledge itself and that the "facts" are dependent upon
knowledge structures, not vice versa - this is new.

There is a notable difference between Foucault and Kant in this regard. For
Kant, as I see it, the "sense data" and the empirical world they comprise
are organized by our "hardwired" cognitive categories. Empirical knowledge
is knowledge of this world, and the truths of science consist in
correspondence of propositions to this world. The enterprise of knowledge
can succeed because the same hardwired principles by which experience is
organized also inform our knowledge processes. For Foucault, on the other
hand, there are no hardwired categories but an "episteme." Like the Kantian
categories, the episteme organizes experience, but unlike the categories
the episteme emerges from the social structures and processes of knowledge
itself. The social process of knowledge constructs its own truth.

Therefore, the effect of Foucault's approach is to trivialize knowledge
further than earlier philosophies have done. Knowledge (including truth
itself) becomes not merely limited but socially arbitrary; it becomes
relative to a given society and a given social epoch.

Second, Foucault is concerned to politicize knowledge. This comes out
clearly in HSI. Sexuality has no basis in "fact" but rather is a sort of
dirty trick "deployed" by the bourgeoisie first to set themselves above
others (by having more refined and purer sexuality) and later to control
others by making them conform to sexual norms. Foucault has said similar
things about justice and punishment and about psychology and mental illness
(makes you think of Szasz :-).

So if you've ever been annoyed by people who act as though all scientists,
no matter how seemingly innocent, are really governed by more or less
deceitful political agendas (e.g., they're doing "male" science), you have
one of their "road pavers," to use Rand's term, in Foucault.

-David


*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

*************************************************

Sent: Thursday, October 28, 1999 8:21 AM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Foucault's Clarity

[From: Bryan Register ]

David Ross has

>no idea how to take "Just as the network of power relations ends by
>forming a dense web that passes through apparatuses and institutions,
>without being exactly localized in them, so too the swarm of points of
>resistance traverses social stratifications and individual unities"
>literally.

Luckily, I have.

Neither power nor resistance comes from a single source or institution.
Rather, power and resistance stem from many individual interactions, and
institutions are organized and re-organized around power and resistance.

Here's an example of a model wherein power and resistance each come from a single source.

The owners of capital have power with relation to the workers, because they
employ the state as a means of exercising control. Likewise, the workers'
vanguard party is the sole source of resistance to the owners of capital,
because only this party has consciousness of the nature of capital and the
relations of power to which it, and the ownership of it, gives rise. The
state is the institution from which all power flows, the party the
institution from which all resistance flows.

Here's an example of a model wherein neither power nor resistance come from
a single source.

There is an interlocking network of many parts which sustain our
contemporary way of life and contemporary relations of power and resistance,
but the network has never been designed or planned. Primary education, in a
non-conscious and unplanned way, crippled the basic conceptual faculties of
children. More advanced education teaches its subject matters in a
non-systematic and non-hierarchical way, but with a vaguely altruist and
statist twist to whatever the subject matters are. Meanwhile, the means of
artistic production, especially the music and film industries, in an
uncoordinated way, celebrate mediocrity, averageness, and even viciousness
(Forrest Gump v. Pulp Fiction). Also, the two main political parties, while
they have not agreed with one another to do this, have randomly split up the
political playing field so that no coherent political positions can be seen
to make sense; any coherent political position like socialism or
libertarianism will seem to cut across the anti-conceptual boundaries the
parties have arranged. Just as these cultural institutions, and many others,
express many power relations (cultural elites v. ordinary people, teachers
v. students, politicians v. constituents, etc.), resistance comes from many
sources. Some people homeschool their children, other people sing songs
about values (Rush), some people articulate coherent political positions in
opposition to the dominant view. But when e.g. romanticist art begins to
dominate, the cultural elites and their political friends will create a new
institution to preserve the old power relations, the NEH.

Not only is what Foucault says here subject to clarification, it turns out
that you agree with it.

How shall I say this... Ayn Rand is virtually unintelligible when she
formulates many of her key ideas. Any fan of Rand owes the postmodernists
more than irritation.

Bryan


*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

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Sent: Thursday, November 04, 1999 11:46 AM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Re: Foucault's Clarity

[From: Michal Fram Cohen ]

First, I would like to state that my silence on Foucault so far does not
imply agreement, only dumbfoundness.

I found Brian's last post in reply to David Ross clear and intelligible,
so I would like to comment on it. Brian writes:

"There is an interlocking network of many parts which sustain our
contemporary way of life and contemporary relations of power and
resistance, but the network has never been designed or planned."

I tend to disagree. The network was certainly designed, planned,
implemented and sustained by all the individuals who advocated or
enacted the ideas behind the type of education, politics and art we have
today. It was not done explicitly, not by a Committee for Irrational
Culture, but each intellectual, bureaucrat, teacher or artist
contributed his share to the network. Since human society never had a
period of total freedom or a culture of total rationality, it appears as
if the network of power and resistance has existed from the dawn of
time. It appears as though the members of society are only the network's
puppets. However, when history is examined more closely, it is apparent
that the network can be changed or even replaced. Such a change is a
Revolution, or a Renaissance.

For Foucault, there are no *entities* in relationships of power and
resistance, only a network of relationships. Thus, there is nobody there
to design, plan, implement or sustain the network.

[Michal Fram-Cohen]


*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

*************************************************

Sent: Friday, November 05, 1999 8:30 AM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Re: Foucault's Clarity

[From: Bryan Register ]


Michal Fram Cohen says:

>The network was certainly designed, planned,
>implemented and sustained by all the individuals who advocated or
>enacted the ideas behind the type of education, politics and art we have
>today. It was not done explicitly, not by a Committee for Irrational
>Culture, but each intellectual, bureaucrat, teacher or artist
>contributed his share to the network.
>...
>For Foucault, there are no *entities* in relationships of power and
>resistance, only a network of relationships. Thus, there is nobody there
>to design, plan, implement or sustain the network.

If you wish to disagree with me about it, I could look up the passage
wherein he says that the network is brought about by the intentions of
actors, but that the actors do not intend that the network be brought about.
I did not take Foucault to be suggesting that human beings are not
independent entities with intentions and wills of their own, and I think
that this would be a one-sided reading. Rather like taking Rand to deny my
free will because I'm none of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, or Rand.

[Moderator's note: in this last, somewhat cryptic sentence I take Bryan to
mean that as in some Objectivist analyses these four philosophers are the
fundamental drivers of history, everyone else might in some sense be thought
to effectively fail to choose a philosophy freely, and thus might be
construed to lack free will. I suppose Bryan takes some of the comments in
"Fact and Value" as the model of such a view. ]

Foucault and Rand (as I understand her) *agree* that there is a network of
power relations which influence the behaviors of agents within the networks,
and I don't see any reason to believe that Foucault would deny the other
half of the Randian coin, the part about how we're in some ways independent
of that network, or can become so. This is why he advocates a form of
resistance to the contemporary power structure in other works. If you're not

there, you can hardly resist.

Bryan

PS Just FYI, my name is spelled with a 'y,' not an 'i.'


*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

*************************************************

To: TOC Cyberseminar <cybersem@objectivistcenter.org>

Sent: Monday, November 08, 1999 7:33 AM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Re: Foucault's Clarity

[From: Michal Fram Cohen ]

Bryan Register wrote:

> If you wish to disagree with me about it, I could look up the passage
> wherein he says that the network is brought about by the intentions of
> actors, but that the actors do not intend that the network be brought >
about.

I do not recall this particular passage, but I can take your word on it.
The way you describe it, the passage is self-contradictory. What are the
intentions of the actors, if they did not intend to bring about the
network, but their intentions did bring about the network anyway? Are
the actors in touch with their intentions? This severance of the agents
from their actions is typical of Foucault. Things happen although nobody
intended them to happen. Foucault avoids the possibility of foresight on
the part of the actors as to the results of their intentions. He blurs
the issue of a person's accountability to his actions.

> I don't see any reason to believe that Foucault would deny the other
> half of the Randian coin, the part about how we're in some ways
> independent of that network, or can become so. This is why he
> advocates a form of resistance to the contemporary power structure in >
other works.

Here I would like Bryan to quote the passage where Foucault says that we
are or can be independent of the network. I think that resistance to the
Law as such, which is what Foucault advocates, does not indicate
independence of the network's laws, only blind resentment toward the
laws. Perhaps Foucault's resistance to the laws of logic makes him
independent of logic in his own mind, but there is no need for his
readers to share his view.

Michal Fram-Cohen


*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

*************************************************

To: TOC Cyberseminar <cybersem@objectivistcenter.org>

Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 1999 9:26 AM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Re: Foucault's Clarity

[From: Bryan Register ]

Michal Fram Cohen wrote:

>I do not recall this particular passage, but I can take your word on it.
>The way you describe it, the passage is self-contradictory. What are the
>intentions of the actors, if they did not intend to bring about the
>network, but their intentions did bring about the network anyway?

Well, one possible model for a similar system would be: One intends to act
to one's own economic advantage through exchange with others; others intend
to act to their own economic advantage through exchange with still others
and with one; nobody plans for a market to result, yet a market results.

I'll make up a similar cartoon for some hyper-simplified relation of power.
Og starts hitting his wife, just for the hell of it. Grog notices that Og's
wife is more obedient than his own, so he starts hitting his wife. Soon
enough, lots of people are hitting their wives. There's a whole system of
wife-hitting. The men even sit around discussing how to and how not to hit
your wife; norms develop. Some men who are offended by the wife-hitters band
together (probably with a few wives) and try to get the tribal elders to
have the wife-hitting stopped. But the wife-hitters persuade the elders that
it's all-natural violence: the gods designed men to hit disobedient women
and women to do what they're told (and to be too stupid to figure it out
without getting hit). Even many of the offended are swung around to this
line of argument, and over time it becomes an accepted practice such that
any wife trying not to be hit is formally punished by the tribe. Nobody
intended for there to be legal sexism, and yet there it is.

William Dale was the first on this list to notice this feature of Foucault,
in his intro essay, where he says:

>He further characterizes power relations as intentional, but nonsubjective.
>While they are intentional in being directed in a particular "direction,"
>they are not the intention of individual people. In this way, they are
like
>Adam Smith's "invisible hand" or Hayek's notion of the coordination of the
>market through human action, but not by human design. Furthermore, the
>"points of resistance" in the network of power relations are also
>everywhere, like resistors in a large electric panel.

Nobody needs to design a network for the network to come into being out of
the unintended consequences of the unintegrated actions of many agents.

Bryan


*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
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scholarly discussion.

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Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 1999 9:27 AM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Foucault and logic

[From: Bryan Register]

Michal [Fram-Cohen] continues:

>Here I would like Bryan to quote the passage where Foucault says that we
>are or can be independent of the network.

I haven't got it on hand; I'll ask a friend who's a Foucault fan for
guidance in this direction.

>Perhaps Foucault's resistance to the laws of logic makes him
>independent of logic in his own mind, but there is no need for his
>readers to share his view.

I don't suppose you would care to cite the passage in which Foucault tells
us that things aren't what they are? Foucault never resisted logic, he
resisted a set of what he thinks are artificial categories imposed on the
world with no justification beyond the power relations the categories
sustain.

To read this as resistance to logic is to read Rand as an irrationalist,
too. When you tell someone that you reject the distinction between necessary
and contingent truths, they're liable to accuse you of being an
irrationalist and rejecting logic. (Indeed, you *have* rejected modal
logic.) The analytic- synthetic distinction was the buttress of scientific
philosophy. The fact-value distinction was supposed to protect pluralist
democracy. And so forth. Rejecting these things in front of an analytic
philosopher is liable to get you an accusation of embracing irrationalism.

We need to cleanly distinguish logic from the logic of a particular
ideology, system, culture, area of study, and so forth.

[Bryan Register]


*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
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Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 1999 10:44 PM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Re: Foucault's Clarity

[From: Michal Fram Cohen ]

Bryan Register wrote:

> Well, one possible model for a similar system would be: One intends to >
act to one's own economic advantage through exchange with others;
> others intend to act to their own economic advantage through exchange >
with still others and with one; nobody plans for a market to result, > yet a
market results.

This example does not include any rules or laws, only voluntary trade in
a very primitive, or very free, society. What Foucault is concerned with
is not a network of voluntary relationships but a network of rules and
laws which elevate and protect some while oppress others. My point is
that the rules and laws did not evolve on their own without the
intentions of some individuals to create and maintain these rules and
laws.

Bryan's second example about the "wife hitting" custom that becomes a
law actually proves my point. At one point, some tribe's members had the
clear intention of turning the "wife hitting" custom into a law, while
other members intended to dismantle the custom. Here I can quote Bryan:

> The men even sit around discussing how to and how not to hit
> your wife; norms develop. Some men who are offended by the
> wife-hitters band together (probably with a few wives) and try to get >
the tribal elders to have the wife-hitting stopped. But the
> wife-hitters persuade the elders that it's all-natural violence...
> Nobody intended for there to be legal sexism, and yet there it is.

The ones who intended to turn the custom into law succeeded. The law
could not be established without their intentions and effort. They
certainly intended to establish legal sexism, even if they cannot
understand such abstract terms.

Similarly, in another tribe, the ones offended by this custom may
succeed and the elders would declare a new law punishing a husband who
hits his wife. The custom will disappear because the ones offended by it
intended it to disappear.

In the first tribe, the law in favor of wife-hitting cannot be
maintained without the intentions of everybody to maintain it. Some
members can question the validity of the argument that the gods designed
men and women in this way. They may observe some evidence to the
contrary, especially if they encounter the other tribe where
wife-hitting is forbidden.

Michal Fram-Cohen


*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

*************************************************

Sent: Thursday, November 11, 1999 3:44 PM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Unplanned Networks (was: Foucault's clarity)

[From: Bryan Register ]

Michal Fram Cohen has cast doubt on my cutesie examples. Since they were,
after all, cartoons dreamed up in about thirty seconds, I would not wish to
make these examples bear any real weight. Let me just ask this. When you
write a post to this list, is it a part of your conscious intention to
support (and not just adhere to) the conventions of the English language? -
nevertheless, we suppport the conventions through our adherence to them, and
they fade away when we remove that adherence either through common choice or
widespread linguistic incompetence. Nevertheless, neither the support nor
the fading away is very often the consequence of anyone's choice or
intention.

For instance, it is now virtually *ungrammatical* (and not merely allegedly
sexist) in the academy - for good reasons or bad - to use the masculine
pronoun to refer to a person of indeterminate sex. Things are that way now
because the convention of using masculine pronouns to so refer were called
into question and dropped, intentionally. Yet, when I speak in class and
employ feminine pronouns as a matter of habit, it is not part of my
intention to support the new grammatical rule of academia. Many other
students never even intentionally dropped their old habits but merely picked
up the new one without consideration; I opted for the new way intentionally,
but I don't intentionally opt for it again every time I use a feminine
pronoun. Nor does the fact that I am encouraging others to adhere to the new
convention enter my thoughts, though no doubt I am doing so just as others
encouraged me earlier on.

Actually, my example about Og might not be in such bad shape. Og hit his
wife because he liked to; he was a sadist. His nearby neighbors hit their
wives because they thought they would end up with more obedient wives that
way. People farther out in the community started hitting their wives to
prove their masculinity. The tribal elders made the law that we must all hit
our wives because they had a theory about human nature.

Og hardly planned all this. Nor did the guy who made up the theory realize
that he had made it up not to establish justice but rather to rationalize an
already existing custom. There are a wide variety of goals here, most of
which are carried on in total ignorance of the other goals and all of which
are distinct from the others in some ways and connected in others - often,
the connections are things no one knows about, and the disconnections are
things no one thinks about. But the network of actions, customs, and laws
was never planned *as a whole*, even though various parts of it were
introduced intentionally.

Or, the short form, Read Your Hayek. 8^)

Bryan


*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

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