Re: "local" vs "universal"

I tend to see what Timo Siivonen is saying about Foucault's version of 
modernism as inclusive of a strand of postmodernism-- although I'm 
nervous about the claim that relying on reason vs authority to free 
ourselves isn't one of those metanarratives.  The Enlightenment project 
is afterall the exemplary metanarrative that post-modernists point to as 
having lost its legitimacy.  

Foucault's response, and again this is where he leans toward the "local," 
was several times to refuse to found anything on a unitary Reason 
(opposed to madness, the irrational, etc.),  but instead to reason within 
relatively specific situations, beginning with the diverse discourses of 
reason applicable (e.g., "reasons of state," medical reason, economic 
reasons, etc.).   

--Erick Heroux

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