Foucault-L mail-list

François, Shannon, Nate, and Steve:
 
Thanks so much for your comments and suggestions; I?m not familiar with some of the works you mentioned (i.e., Rabinow's French Modern, Mitchell?s Colonizing Egypt, and pretty much all of the ones that Steve mentioned), but was happy to be reminded of some things that I have read in what now seems to be the distant past (Spivak on the subaltern and Chaterjee on nationalism, for example). I am especially grateful for the references on Said?s ambivalence toward Foucault that Steve offered.
 
Also, Nate wrote:
?[Steve?s] email reminded me that I forgot to say what was relevant to postcolonial studies about the Paul Bove article referred to by Spivak.  Specifically, Bove analyses the relationship between Said and Foucault in terms of both intellectual politics (one-upmanship, positioninig) as well as more substantive differences between Foucault's idea of the "specific intellectual" versus Said's adopted role as a "general intellectual" in the mode of Sartre. This bears upon Spivak's criticism of the Foucauldian refusal to "speak for" the oppressed.  Interestingly, her best point [viz. that the subaltern cannot (almost by definition) speak for herself] really hits its mark more with Deleuze? [snip]
?All in all, it's a bit of a confused argument that she makes, but it is still worth studying in some detail.  Because even if it doesn't all hang together that well, the various points she makes along the way are most stimulating and provocative (in the best sense of the term).?
 
One of the biggest problems I remember having with the article, and here I?m working from years? old memory, was her argument that Derrida was the way out of the very real dilemma involved of ?speaking for? the subaltern (or any subject incapable of being heard due to a lack of access): that one had to hear the voice/cry/etc. of the other within oneself or somesuch. I remember thinking that it sounded quite poetic and all, but also highly problematic.
 
Thanks again!

Best,

Keith

___________________________________

Keith Alan Sprouse
Box 176, Department of Modern Languages
Hampden-Sydney College
Hampden-Sydney, Virginia 23943
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