© Mukesh Williams 2010
Foucault understands Kantian enlightenment as blackmail. For Kant enlightenment is an “exit” and a “way out.” It is a “difference” that the present introduces with respect to the past. Therefore Kant’s Enlightenment is located “at the crossroads of critical reflection and reflection on history.”
DISCURSIVE SYSTEMS
Foucault believes that certain discursive systems—the ways in which objects, concepts, and enumerative modalities are organized—generate specific strategies that are finally embodied in themes and theories. He talks about a diffraction in discourse when two incompatible objects or concepts emerge under similar conditions and occupy the same discursive space (either/or). However, the conditions that become a part of the discourse exist outside the discourse as a kind of discursive constellation. Discourses are also shaped by authority which decides who can say and who can spend. The field of authority is in turn governed to some extent by the field of desire—fantasy, forbidden and satisfaction.
KANT’S PERMANENT CRITIQUE OF HISTORY
Kant introduced a new kind of philosophical inquiry in western thought that reflects upon man’s relationship to the present, his historical mode of being and his individual self as an autonomous subject. Kant according to Foucault introduced a permanent critique of our history and changed the philosophical environment we inherit. According to Foucault we should not get trapped in either accepting or denying the project of Enlightenment. Instead we should see it as an ongoing critique of our historical practices.
ENLIGHTENMENT AND HUMANISM
Foucault points out that we should differentiate between the concept of Enlightenment and humanism. The notion of humanism comes from religions, science and politics. The concept of humanism enters religion and ideology—whether it is Christian humanism or Nazi humanism—and creates a conception of man. Enlightenment forces us to reinvent ourselves, while humanism gives us an unexamined conception of man. Enlightenment does not seek “formal structures with universal values” but investigates into the nature of events—as to how we think and what we do with our thinking. It functions as archeology, design and method not as metaphysics or moral action which is the domain of humanism.
Foucault argues that there is no “complete or definitive knowledge” of our historical limitations. However in spite of knowing this we still wish to go beyond it. And this is seen as a contradiction in Foucault’s epistemology and thought. Foucault wants us to believe that though we do not have a definitive knowledge of our historical condition we always want to begin anew. We always wish to critique the present.
HABERMAS AND TAYLOR
Foucault has been criticized by Jurgen Habermas for his lack of normative standards in his philosophical inquiry. How can we have a permanent critique of power without an analysis of truth inquires Habermas. Charles Taylor talks about rescuing freedom and truth from a discourse of discursive practices and power. The claims to power, Taylor argues, belongs to a linguistic field from which categories of truth and freedom cannot be excluded. How can we understand Foucault if he does not deal with our liberation from dominating forms of power? If we talk of illusion, mask or disguise that control us, then we should also talk about a standard of truth that can be used in unmasking them. A Foucauldian irony which does not take sides is not enough to resolve our dilemma. There should be one standard to critique the present otherwise it becomes a totalitizing exercise of philosophy. If there is no single standard we would lack a position from which to judge. A panoptical gaze is not enough.
STYLE OF DISRUPTION
The argument against the objections to Foucault is that such criticism forces him into a binary opposition. Foucault himself considers these objections a kind of Enlightenment blackmail. He interrogates the multiple uses of language by interrupting the epistemological, normative and rhetorical narrative through different claims on the subject. He asks questions to show how social practices shape us, bind us and limit our understanding of self, truth and rationality. His style of disruption follows earlier iconoclastic philosophers such as Socrates and Nietzsche. He is not anti-self. We can see in his writings that on the one hand he ridicules and dismisses the self that has come about as a result of power-knowledge regime, but on the other hand allows the self to establish a relationship with itself in an act of reconstitution. There are some pro-Foucauldian scholars who see Foucault’s language and lack of a single standard as exciting us into action rather than limiting us into inaction.
MODERNITY
We can understand Foucault better if we see his understanding of modernity as an attitude, an ethos—“a mode of relating to contemporary reality.” Modern man therefore constantly tires to “invent himself” and produce himself; he does not possess an essence. So producing and inventing ourselves is what ethics means.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Geertz and Foucault: Culture and Symbolic Anthropology
Mukesh Williams
The interrogation of alien cultures from the standpoint of the west was further aided by the rise of symbolic anthropology in the 1970s and 1980s. Symbolic anthropology significantly influenced cultural poetics which later came to be known as new historicism. American anthropologist and liberal humanist Clifford Geertz simultaneously confronted the data collecting approach in social sciences and the universalizing discourses of Marxism. He explained culture as symbolic "patterns of meaning" that men and women employ to communicate and develop "attitudes toward life." His ethnographic model employed "thick description" to explain social expressions of an alien culture that were somewhat confusing and enigmatical to the Western mind.
In the opening essay, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture," Geertz remarks, "Analysis is sorting out the structures of signification--what Ryle called established codes, a somewhat misleading expression, for it makes the enterprise sound too much like that of the cipher clerk when it is much more like that of the literary critic--and determining their social ground and import"(p. 9). This statement had a great impact upon the method and procedures of both anthropologists and literary critics in the middle of 1970s (Geertz, 1973 9).
Geertz in After the Fact elaborates upon the post-positivist critique of empirical realism, which questioned the traditional theories of truth and knowledge and introduced an indefinite "quest" after the fact in anthropology (Geertz, 1996 168). In the beginning symbolic anthropology was "suspected as European, literary, or worse, philosophical." And to quite an extent these suspicions were well founded. In an attempt to restructure anthropology and formulate graduate programs in it, anthropologists overhauled curricula driven beyond the boundaries of their discipline into an area of new intellectual practices arising out of a combination of "the linguistic, the interpretative, the social constructionist, the new historicist, the rhetorical, or the semiotic"(Geertz 1996 114).
Now the ethnographer's task was not only to re-conceptualize his discipline but to adapt the new methodologies to his discipline. In Available Light, Geertz explores issues in political philosophy, religion and psychology through a postmodernist and multi-cultural perspective. Here he brings to the surface the symbolic significance of the concepts of nation, country, identity or self and how their unstable meanings change through time and place. But he makes an interesting remark in the beginning of the book, which would gladden the hearts of literary critics. Geertz wrote,
A lot of people don't quite know where they are going, I suppose; but I don't even know, for certain, where I have been. But all right already. I've tried virtually every other literary genre at one time or another. I might as well try Bildungsroman (Geertz, 2000 3).
Geertz's light-hearted statement of becoming a novelist and writing a bildungsroman has far-reaching implication both for anthropology and literature. A bildungsroman narrates the story of the psychological development and moral education of its protagonist, and now anthropology is called upon to do the same. The thin margin that once separated the imaginative text of a writer and the scientific text of an anthropologist has almost disappeared by now.
The interpretative and exhaustive method of anthropology was quickly appropriated by cultural historians, and subsequently by literary critics, more as a narrating practice than as a cultural theory. Literary critics particularly employed the interpretative narrative technique of this ethnographic model to understand literary culture and the literary ethos. Interestingly Geertz's interpretative ethnography was criticized within the field of anthropology by fellow anthropologists as reducing economic and material conflicts in society to impressionistic understanding of local cultures. His use of thick description failed to relate "cultural texts" to a larger tradition of literary, economic and social change.
The Geertzian method of finding indigenous cultural significance to the exclusion of social laws has drawn criticism from critics such as Roger Keesing, Dominick La Capra, Vincent Pecora and Aletta Biersack (Pecora, 1989 243-276). These critics point out that culture can be both mazes of "mystification" or streets of signification. It all depends on who constructs cultural meaning and interprets culture; and what are his ulterior motives.
Naturally new historicist practices have also come under attack. Hayden White in Tropics of Discourse sees literary conventions and linguistic constraints impacting on the writing of history (White, 1978; 1987). The historical discourse now becomes a narrative prose discourse that represents past structures as models in order to explain their meaning. In Metahistory, White sees the historian functioning as a chronicler of events that happened in the past and constructing a story from it (White, 1973). The controversy about the new methodology continues. The linguistic turn towards culture in history, sociology and anthropology has been dealt with exhaustively in Beyond the Cultural Turn which analyses different aspects of the narrative mode and offers a postmodernist critique of knowledge seeing the body and self as important sites intersecting culture and society (Bonnell and Hunt, 1999). Walter Cohen sees the new historicist reliance on "arbitrary connectedness" between different aspects of social reality as a significant lack of an "organizing principle" (Cohen, 1987 34).
The interrogation of alien cultures from the standpoint of the west was further aided by the rise of symbolic anthropology in the 1970s and 1980s. Symbolic anthropology significantly influenced cultural poetics which later came to be known as new historicism. American anthropologist and liberal humanist Clifford Geertz simultaneously confronted the data collecting approach in social sciences and the universalizing discourses of Marxism. He explained culture as symbolic "patterns of meaning" that men and women employ to communicate and develop "attitudes toward life." His ethnographic model employed "thick description" to explain social expressions of an alien culture that were somewhat confusing and enigmatical to the Western mind.
In the opening essay, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture," Geertz remarks, "Analysis is sorting out the structures of signification--what Ryle called established codes, a somewhat misleading expression, for it makes the enterprise sound too much like that of the cipher clerk when it is much more like that of the literary critic--and determining their social ground and import"(p. 9). This statement had a great impact upon the method and procedures of both anthropologists and literary critics in the middle of 1970s (Geertz, 1973 9).
Geertz in After the Fact elaborates upon the post-positivist critique of empirical realism, which questioned the traditional theories of truth and knowledge and introduced an indefinite "quest" after the fact in anthropology (Geertz, 1996 168). In the beginning symbolic anthropology was "suspected as European, literary, or worse, philosophical." And to quite an extent these suspicions were well founded. In an attempt to restructure anthropology and formulate graduate programs in it, anthropologists overhauled curricula driven beyond the boundaries of their discipline into an area of new intellectual practices arising out of a combination of "the linguistic, the interpretative, the social constructionist, the new historicist, the rhetorical, or the semiotic"(Geertz 1996 114).
Now the ethnographer's task was not only to re-conceptualize his discipline but to adapt the new methodologies to his discipline. In Available Light, Geertz explores issues in political philosophy, religion and psychology through a postmodernist and multi-cultural perspective. Here he brings to the surface the symbolic significance of the concepts of nation, country, identity or self and how their unstable meanings change through time and place. But he makes an interesting remark in the beginning of the book, which would gladden the hearts of literary critics. Geertz wrote,
A lot of people don't quite know where they are going, I suppose; but I don't even know, for certain, where I have been. But all right already. I've tried virtually every other literary genre at one time or another. I might as well try Bildungsroman (Geertz, 2000 3).
Geertz's light-hearted statement of becoming a novelist and writing a bildungsroman has far-reaching implication both for anthropology and literature. A bildungsroman narrates the story of the psychological development and moral education of its protagonist, and now anthropology is called upon to do the same. The thin margin that once separated the imaginative text of a writer and the scientific text of an anthropologist has almost disappeared by now.
The interpretative and exhaustive method of anthropology was quickly appropriated by cultural historians, and subsequently by literary critics, more as a narrating practice than as a cultural theory. Literary critics particularly employed the interpretative narrative technique of this ethnographic model to understand literary culture and the literary ethos. Interestingly Geertz's interpretative ethnography was criticized within the field of anthropology by fellow anthropologists as reducing economic and material conflicts in society to impressionistic understanding of local cultures. His use of thick description failed to relate "cultural texts" to a larger tradition of literary, economic and social change.
The Geertzian method of finding indigenous cultural significance to the exclusion of social laws has drawn criticism from critics such as Roger Keesing, Dominick La Capra, Vincent Pecora and Aletta Biersack (Pecora, 1989 243-276). These critics point out that culture can be both mazes of "mystification" or streets of signification. It all depends on who constructs cultural meaning and interprets culture; and what are his ulterior motives.
Naturally new historicist practices have also come under attack. Hayden White in Tropics of Discourse sees literary conventions and linguistic constraints impacting on the writing of history (White, 1978; 1987). The historical discourse now becomes a narrative prose discourse that represents past structures as models in order to explain their meaning. In Metahistory, White sees the historian functioning as a chronicler of events that happened in the past and constructing a story from it (White, 1973). The controversy about the new methodology continues. The linguistic turn towards culture in history, sociology and anthropology has been dealt with exhaustively in Beyond the Cultural Turn which analyses different aspects of the narrative mode and offers a postmodernist critique of knowledge seeing the body and self as important sites intersecting culture and society (Bonnell and Hunt, 1999). Walter Cohen sees the new historicist reliance on "arbitrary connectedness" between different aspects of social reality as a significant lack of an "organizing principle" (Cohen, 1987 34).
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Postmodern Philosophy: On Bernstein's The New Constellation
A Brief Note
Mukesh Williams June 2010
In short, one might say that once 'we' fully experience the rupture that has occurred with the 'postmodern' moment, once 'we' grasp the full force and sting of the critiques of humanism that trace their lineage to Nietzsche, then even the 'non-foundational pragmatic humanism' which I had been developing must be discarded--thrown into the abyss of failed metaphysical and philosophical projects. Needless to say I do not accept this judgment nor am I impressed by what has now become a cliché among many ‘post-modern’ writers, i. e., that humanism is passé, to be dismissed by laughter. But I do recognize that these critiques and deconstructions call for a strong response.
--Richard Bernstein, The New Constellation , 1992
In the book New Constellation Richard Bernstein examines the ethical and political dimensions of the modern-postmodern debate. Bernstein argues that the debate must be understood more as a protean “pervasive” mood created by thinkers like Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Habermas, Rorty and MacIntyre than an intellectual revolt. However he admits that these ideas have had a profound impact on the culture of thinking in our times. Their contributions have created a distinctive constellation of ideas in the realm of politics and ethics and renewed the old Socratic inquiry ‘How should I live?’ The image of the constellation holds the book together after the emergence of the postmodern stimmung or mood. In Hegelian terms post-modern philosophy keeps the ‘other’ as other, since the postmodern negation of reason does not help it to provide a unified whole. Bernstein questions the post-ness of post in the word postmodern and suggests a more pluralist world of ideas that could involve some kind of integration with other philosophical notions that came earlier. The highly illuminating sections in the book deal with Heidegger’s concept of technology and his unwillingness to disown a contentious Nazi past and Rorty’s liberalist utopia and anti-foundationalist ideas. It is possible to understand through this book some of the forces that shaped the Anglo-American and Continental traditions in our times.
Mukesh Williams June 2010
In short, one might say that once 'we' fully experience the rupture that has occurred with the 'postmodern' moment, once 'we' grasp the full force and sting of the critiques of humanism that trace their lineage to Nietzsche, then even the 'non-foundational pragmatic humanism' which I had been developing must be discarded--thrown into the abyss of failed metaphysical and philosophical projects. Needless to say I do not accept this judgment nor am I impressed by what has now become a cliché among many ‘post-modern’ writers, i. e., that humanism is passé, to be dismissed by laughter. But I do recognize that these critiques and deconstructions call for a strong response.
--Richard Bernstein, The New Constellation , 1992
In the book New Constellation Richard Bernstein examines the ethical and political dimensions of the modern-postmodern debate. Bernstein argues that the debate must be understood more as a protean “pervasive” mood created by thinkers like Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Habermas, Rorty and MacIntyre than an intellectual revolt. However he admits that these ideas have had a profound impact on the culture of thinking in our times. Their contributions have created a distinctive constellation of ideas in the realm of politics and ethics and renewed the old Socratic inquiry ‘How should I live?’ The image of the constellation holds the book together after the emergence of the postmodern stimmung or mood. In Hegelian terms post-modern philosophy keeps the ‘other’ as other, since the postmodern negation of reason does not help it to provide a unified whole. Bernstein questions the post-ness of post in the word postmodern and suggests a more pluralist world of ideas that could involve some kind of integration with other philosophical notions that came earlier. The highly illuminating sections in the book deal with Heidegger’s concept of technology and his unwillingness to disown a contentious Nazi past and Rorty’s liberalist utopia and anti-foundationalist ideas. It is possible to understand through this book some of the forces that shaped the Anglo-American and Continental traditions in our times.
The Nakasendo Way
Mukesh Williams June 2010
No one inhabits these ancient highways
Except wildlife, words and emotions,
But the curve of the road, the wooden houses,
The stone steps, the steep climb,
And the unreachable horizon
Are still covered with heavy snow,
Pug-marked by raccoon dogs hunts,
Collaged with clog footprints
And terraced by winter blizzard.
Words can still recreate the history of
Matrimonial alliances, political intrigues
And economic transactions,
Emotions can still trace the travel of
Princess Kazunomiya from Kyoto to Edo
On the Hime no Kaido to marry a shogun
Leaving sentiment and family behind
Like a hungry animal, lost traveler or a storm,
To strengthen an empire, forfeit the self.
No one inhabits these ancient highways
Except wildlife, words and emotions,
But the curve of the road, the wooden houses,
The stone steps, the steep climb,
And the unreachable horizon
Are still covered with heavy snow,
Pug-marked by raccoon dogs hunts,
Collaged with clog footprints
And terraced by winter blizzard.
Words can still recreate the history of
Matrimonial alliances, political intrigues
And economic transactions,
Emotions can still trace the travel of
Princess Kazunomiya from Kyoto to Edo
On the Hime no Kaido to marry a shogun
Leaving sentiment and family behind
Like a hungry animal, lost traveler or a storm,
To strengthen an empire, forfeit the self.
Leslie Fiedler
(1917-2003)
There was something of
An attacking lion in him
He would take issues
To their precarious conclusions,
Till they were tamed or devoured.
When he closed his eyes
His memory circled
Like an eagle in the clouds
Wrenching details from a vast repertoire
To support his argument.
Sentences flowed from his mouth
Just as they did from his pen
But he was a stickler for details,
He just had to revise everything
No less than seven to eight times.
A hard man to work with
But if you were patient,
Willing to learn and
Did not give up half-way,
He could teach you things
That perhaps no man could.
His pugnacity and prowess
Was stranger than fiction
He was always making bold plans
To cross the border, close the gap,
Scrupulously surveying the terra incognita
Like a lion, eagle or a mahatma.
April 2006, Tokyo
There was something of
An attacking lion in him
He would take issues
To their precarious conclusions,
Till they were tamed or devoured.
When he closed his eyes
His memory circled
Like an eagle in the clouds
Wrenching details from a vast repertoire
To support his argument.
Sentences flowed from his mouth
Just as they did from his pen
But he was a stickler for details,
He just had to revise everything
No less than seven to eight times.
A hard man to work with
But if you were patient,
Willing to learn and
Did not give up half-way,
He could teach you things
That perhaps no man could.
His pugnacity and prowess
Was stranger than fiction
He was always making bold plans
To cross the border, close the gap,
Scrupulously surveying the terra incognita
Like a lion, eagle or a mahatma.
April 2006, Tokyo
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