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From: Philip Goldstein <pgold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 07:53:22 -0400 (EDT)
Oliviera writes that " All that I meant
is that F's "dispositif" (better translated as "device") should not be confu-
sed w/ Althusser's "appareil" (apparatus)." The point is that Althusser's
apparatus is totalizing and, hence, a version of Gramsci's hegemony,
while dispositif is not totalizing but a way of preserving the uniqueness
of discourse. I find the differences less simple. Althusser too is
opposed to a totalizing Marxism, and he too is a critic of Gramsci's
historicism. The apparatus is not hegemonic in Gramsci's totalizing
sense, but it does preserve the autonomy of science, whereas Foucault
clearly does not legitimate science in that way. Althusser is interested
in how the ideological apparatus reproduces itself, rather than an
external state or government. Does Foucault share that interest?
Philip Goldstein