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From: "M.A. King" <kingma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1998 12:02:35 -0400 (EDT)
On Fri, 22 May 1998, na.devine wrote:
> I think the difficulty is in the term 'l'on' which is translated here as
> 'one' but could be translated as a kind of vague 'they' or as a passive
> voice. at any rate it isn't a case of one definable person having
> control over others, but more perhaps a kind of theoretical apparatus -
> as described in 'on governmentality'.
I think that's probably right. But then in "Politics and Reason",
Foucault writes: "The characteristic feature of power is that some men
can more or less entirely determine other men's conduct." Maybe a slip of
the pen (hard to see how that could be, though; this is a prepared text,
not an interview, and the quoted remark is in the context of a definition
of power); maybe evidence of an oscillation between different definitions
of power.
----Matthew A. King------Department of Philosophy------McMaster University----
"The border is often narrow between a permanent temptation to commit
suicide and the birth of a certain form of political consciousness."
-----------------------------(Michel Foucault)--------------------------------