Re: Miller and New Foucault Text

Dear "philosophically challenged," I think you may have misunderstood
something in my post, two things in fact.  First, I was merely being
curious about the relationship between the production of knowledge
and the disciplinarity of intellectual fame.  The rah-rah polemic
between the popular vs. the elite is not the point.  Freud and Marx
were actually worried about the effects of their work, how it was
received, by whom, how it was distorted, what it was used to
justify, etc.  And, Foucault's own words on several occasions shows
that he too, as a responsible intellectual (a word he didn't believe
had much value) who was also the activist you remind us he was,
was interested to see how Foucauldianism was becoming established.
The second point is that I do think we should celebrate the scope,
play, and possibilities of all kinds of interpretations of everything
and everybody.  We have that "right," but I don't think we have the
right be Mr. Gumps about it; in other words, we do have an obligation
not to be stupid, and criticize poor intepretations, like Miller's.

Stephen Katz,
Trent University 


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