Foucault-L mail-list

Hi All,
As i'm sure Michael is aware ' freedom of conscience'  has a 
peculiarly poignant relationship to English history, especially from 
what as been termed the 'early modern period' onwards. I won't bore 
both him and the rest of the list by launching into an explanation of 
how it was deployed by English dissenters against the Anglican 
establishment, and concomitantly by Parliamentarians against the 
Monarchy, this is all very well travelled ground. What i would like 
to point out- something that is far less known and appreciated- is 
how this notion was equally deployed by the Monarchial Anglican 
establishment themselves in service of their own ends. Thus i'm 
wondering if Michael was aware that king James [Charle's the II's 
successor] in April of 1687 issued his _Declaration for the Liberty 
of Conscience_ a general indulgence of 'dissenters' of all 
denominations, including Catholics! Needless to say its reception was 
mixed. Thus, contained within this historical event, we are witness 
how a particular 'ideological instrument', that of 'freedom of 
conscience', which had reference primarily to a rather discrete 
social configuration of historical individuals [Protestant 
dissenters], was appropriated, reinterpreted, and redeployed by 
another social configuration with exactly opposite interests, beliefs 
and ends! This brings to mind Foucault's quote in _Nietzsche, 
Genealogy and HIstory_ that: "if interpretation is the violent or 
surreptitious appropriation of a system of rules, which in itself has 
no essential meaning, in order to imposed a direction, to bend it to 
a new will, to force its participation in a different game, and to 
subject it to secondary rules, then the development of humanity is a 
series of interpretations".
Bradley
[who is very glad that uni semester has finished and he can spare 
time once again for pleasant intellectual procrastination]

"Of all writings I love only those which the writer writeth with his 
blood. Write in blood, and thou shalt learn that blood is spirit"
Nietzsche. "Thus Spake Zarathustra".