Re: Applied Foucault

Nicholas Dronen wrote:

> 
>         But it must be agreed that it is odd for a troupe of supposedly
> oppressed peasants from a not-so-cosmopolitan region of Mexico to claim
> to be influenced by a philospher whose ideas are difficult to render
> accurately into slogans and hence are not easily communicable to people
> without much education.
> 
>         Original reports on the Zapatistas suggested that Marcos may not
> have been local to the region.  Some thought that he was a foreigner.
> The last I heard he was believed to be a school teacher from Mexico
> City.  The incongruity between the educational attainment of the
> peasants and their use of an often-technical philosopher makes sense if
> Marcos brought Foucault, so to speak, from Mexico City.  Otherwise, the
> fact is difficult to explain.


I, for one, am extremely curious to know how the Zapatista platform makes use of 
Foucault, and how Foucault's work was introduced into their political vocabulary.  I 
don't think it is patronizing to point out that the indian/peasant populations of Chiapas 
generally don't read such things.  Neither does it discredit their radical use of 
Foucault if we show that his work was introduced as by intellectuals schooled elsewhere.    

sb