The temperature seems to have returned to something resembling a habitat suitable for human life, which I’m happy about, as I’m planning to be out and around on my bike later. Though first I need to fix a flat — the second in one week! Defying everything I know about having (and keeping) a bike in NYC, I leave my bike locked up downstairs in front of my building, and no trouble has ever come my way. But if I wind up with a third flat I’m going to begin to suspect sabotage. Yesterday, a long but fun day doing manny duty with Greg for the twins (by the end of the day we were all covered in popsicle juice; sharing a popsicle with a one-year old in 90something degree weather is not a neat affair.) I am no longer so tired after our Tuesday babysitting gig that I can’t do anything but get in bed with Pringles and my laptop tuned to Hulu, so I actually got some satisfying work done last night. A flurry of re-visiting some old favorite readings — Rajan’s Biocapital, Chow’s Protestant Ethnic, some pieces in Global Assemblages — plus some time with Aihwa Ong’s recent book on neoliberalism, which I’m finding quite helpful. Something I’m sorting out right now: the limits of ephochal readings of Foucault (such as “disciplinary society”) and some reasons we might want to concentrate instead on descriptions of technologies that (as Ong characterizes neoliberalism) can be deployed within any sort of political regime. This seems consonant with a Deleuzeun understanding of “diagrams” (abstract, mobile), despite some of the responsibility Deleuze bears for encouraging epochal readings (his “society of control.”) Meanwhile, the soc blogosphere is rife with advice these days for the would-be job candidate — Newsocprof, Scatterplot, Rethinking Markets — which I’m really appreciating. “Going on the market” seems sort of terrifying, but completing a set of discrete tasks feels do-able.
6 Comments
Is there room for this to be a blog where I ask you clarifying questions? Like what you mean when you say, ‘epochal reading’?
I love clarifying questions. I also debated if “epochal readings” made sense, or said what I wanted, but I’m trying to deliberate less with the blog writing. What I mean is that sometimes Foucault characterized things in terms of large, overarching transitions: from an era of sovereignty, to a disciplinary society, for example. Then Deleuze said (once, but it proved really tantalizing) that now there was a transition from a disciplinary society to a “society of control,” which some have interpreted as a “biopolitical society” or as “Empire.” But in other places Foucault suggests that discipline describes a practice/technique/technology, and not a type of society — such that disciplinary tactics could be found in any type of society, though maybe more so in certain types, or at certain times. So while epochal readings are fun (they have an apocalyptic flair, often, like “worst era ever!”) I think they (1) make things too neat, (2) cast the past as “better” or “worse,” rather than “differently organized,” (3) make it harder to theorize the multiple and contradictory techniques that might exist in any place/time, especially in terms of differential and uneven application (as in, maybe right now in a time characterized by a rise of post-disciplinary technologies, some (raced) people are subject to old fashioned pre-disciplinary forms of sovereignty, i.e. put to death). For example, there has been much Foucault scholarship on how in terms of psychiatry we live in an age of self-regulation and self-control (we take our prescription drugs, take ourselves to therapy, do anger management exercises, write in our mood diaries). This “epochal reading” cannot account for direct and coercive forms of treatment, found in places like housing programs for people diagnosed with psychiatric disabilities.
PS — I found a blog that brought you directly and immediately to mind:
http://www.anygame-anywhere.com/nicole/blog.htm
Yes, that blog is perfect, and went immediately into the googlereader. Thanks!
And thanks for the explanation! I’m trying to wade through the order of things right now and i see what you mean–there’s lots of big sweeping stuff about the classical period, the 17th century, etc. I’m reading with just one other lay reader, and feel like I could really use a teacher for all this. I’m having a hard time understanding! Also, so much of the stuff he talks about in terms of taxonomy during the enlightenment is stuff we librarians still do all the time, a project we still believe in. but then i don’t know if I’m taking him too literally/misreading him. What does one do in the face of theories that one can only half-understand? Do you just forge ahead?
I realize I have strayed from the topic.
Yes, earlier Foucault (Order of Things) is considered to be emphasize these transitions between epochs (or epistemes), whereas later Foucault (History of Sex) not so much. In a great review essay Mariana Valverde writes: “The Order of Things contrasted the classical ‘episteme’ to the modern episteme, while Discipline and Punish contrasted sovereignty to discipline in an almost epochal manner. While both of these works contain many warnings against taking these abstract concepts as more real than the practices that constitute them, nevertheless, the ‘epochalist’ misreading [of Foucault sholars] was not wholly without basis.” Re: taxonomies. I think in Foucault, nothing is necessarily good or bad — he is charting how things come to be, like classification systems, and the power formations that emerge with knowledge systems. But I don’t think the thing itself is suspect — just limited, etc., and dangerous insofar as its genealogy is masked over so it can be naturalized. While the pessimistic/dismissive view of Foucault says “he leaves no room for resistance,” I prefer to read him as saying, “work with what you’ve got.”
“I think in Foucault, nothing is necessarily good or bad — he is charting how things come to be, like classification systems, and the power formations that emerge with knowledge systems.”
Thanks for this!
Post a Comment