Foucault-L mail-list

          Response to JLN et al:

          The problem with the Gilligan-style feminist "rationality"
          is twofold: first of all, she is not describing a
          rationality, but its "female" counterpart, compassion,
          sentiment, etc.  Here she is caught in the same old jargon
          as the neo-Kantians.
          What I would like someone to comment on is FOucault's notion
          that: 1. a rationality is immanent to a discourse (HS,
          ENGLISH edition(sorry), p. 94-95:
          1. "Power is not something that is acquired, seized, or
          shared"
          2. "Relations of power are not in a position of
          exteriority.."
          3. "there is no binary and all-encompassing opposition
          between rulers and ruled at teh root of power relations..."
          4. "Power realtions are both intentional and nonsubjective."

          Alongside these Spinozistic (can I say that?)
          considerations of th immanence of rationalities in power
          relations, I'd like to throw in one more theme:
          "I think, in fact, that reason is self-created, which is why
          I have tried to analyse forms of rationality: different
          foundations, different creations, different modifications in
          which rationalities engender one another, oppose and pursue
          one another." (Politics, Philosophy, Culture 28-29)

          I think that F's conception of ratioanlities and power
          relations poses a severe challenge to the critical
          theorists, and that the heart of teh challenge concenrs the
          two principles mentioned: the (self)cretivity of
          ratioanlities, and the principle of immanence.  For the
          "critters," reason has an exteriority - it lies apart from
          power relations, just as the Descartes found it necessary
          for the subject to stand apart from its object.

          Joe Cronin
          TMC
          croninj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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