As far as I can see, the author is gorssly distorting Foucault. He was not an irrationalist at all; I think we’re all agreed that he was concerned with facts and reality (although Jim is correct to note that he had a tendency to invent historical facts in the service of a broader truth). What I think I and others are denying is that he was a foundationalist; that his description of the panopticon had a particular normative oomph that it would have had if it was Habermas writing.

Where is that quote from, BTW?

31: it seems clear that unless the author is grossly distorting Foucault. . .

That’s what my money is on, but I’m not sure what he’s quoting there. Care to provide a link to the full essay?

I’m being glib, but I’m not joking: this whole thread surprises me.

I’m going to post a paragraph from an essay from Ducts.org, which seems to capture the essence of what I’ve generally heard about Foucault:

Another notable postmodernist who, presumably, would be untroubled by the charge of nonsense is Michel Foucault—who invokes a “new metaphysical ellipse” (171). But what exactly is this new metaphysics? According to Foucault, it is the metaphysics of the “phantasm” behind which “it is useless to seek a more substantial truth” (ibid). Common sense is the enemy for Foucault because it carries “the tyranny of goodwill, the obligation to think ‘in common’ with others, the domination of a pedagogical model, and most importantly—the exclusion of stupidity” (181). Because a metaphysics based on common sense and goodwill—in other words, a humanist metaphysics—excludes stupidity, Foucault argues, “we must liberate ourselves from these constraints; and in perverting this morality, philosophy itself is disoriented” (ibid). How, then, do we get with the new metaphysical ellipse and thereby become fashionably stupid? According to Foucault, stupidity

requires thought without contradiction, without dialectics, without negation; thought that accepts divergence; affirmative thought whose instrument is disjunction . . . What is the answer to the question? The problem. How is the problem resolved? By displacing the question (185).

Now, this is not a scholarly essay, but it seems clear that unless the author is grossly distorting Foucault, he is no friend of rationality (ergo he is not a closet Habermasian).

From the above posts it seems that the argument is that Foucault’s writings betrayed a normative committment somewhat similar to Habermas’. Such a committment, if it is implicit in Foucault’s writings, though, seems to contradict his explicit positions. We are left, then, with either a Foucault who truly is as the usual picture of him is (a “postmodernist” for lack of a better word) or a Foucault who is a closet Habermasian but also contradicts himself. (Of course, from the quotes above, he would seem to have no problem with contradiction!)

I’m being glib, but I’m not joking: this whole thread surprises me.

Whether Foucault thought bondage and butt fucking amounted to a “valid form of communicaiton” or not and what Habermas thinks about such things (if he thinks about them at all) is hard to say. Both are Kantians so I suspect that Foucault and am certain that Habermas would think consent (implying symmetry, reciprocity and so forth) is a relevant criterion in sexuxal relations. Indeed, most bdsm activities presuppose such consent and the opportunity to refuse (safewords and so forth).

I say this as a man who has read a little Habermas and fucked a few Foucauldians. (call me biased)

As to Foucault offering a “just the facts ma’am” account, I am dubious for a couple fo reasons. First, that presumes it is possible to provide such an account. he may presentt his genaologies in hopes of doing so, but, well, he doesn’t succeed. It may not be a coerent project. Second, he himself offers reasons to think your interpretaiton is not right. At least hihs self-presentaiton makes things seem considerably more complicated. So here is a comment of his:

“As to the problem of fiction, it seems to me to be a very important one; I am well aware that I have never written anything but fictions. I do not mean to say, however, that truth is therefore absent. It seems to me that the possibility exists for fiction to function in truth, for a fictional discourse to induce effects of truth . . .”

On my view he is intentionally and systematically overstating things – hence MIS-representing them – as a way of warning us about dangers he discerns. Then of course, we must ask what criteria one uses to define something as “dangerous” – and there the normative concerns are simply unavoidable.

I wouldn’t say I was part of the “postmodern consensus” – I’ve always regarded Foucault as basically a Humean about normative statements. What he does in D&P (and in Madness & Civilisation, which I think it much more difficult to put into anything like a Habermasian perspective) is describe the facts of the matter; that in fact, the social institutions of law and order operates on a disciplinary basis, whereas everyone involved in that society claim that it operates on some other basis. However, this is just a factual assessment because that is all that’s possible.

There is an implicit normative assessment that you identify, but it’s not that it just happens to be the case that it’s implicit; it couldn’t be explicit because that’s not what Foucault believes. If he were to take the step into saying that disciplinary societies are bad, then the whole point, IMO, of his philosophy is that this is not a straightforwardly meaningful statement.

Or in other words, Habermas thinks that the statement “this is a bad prison and this is a good prison” means something like what it appears to mean. Foucault thinks that the form of the language is utterly misleading here, and that the statement can only be interpreted as a very complicated one about power relationships in society. That’s true whether the statement is being made by David Blunkett or by Foucault himself. Because of the way the English and French languages are constructed, there is always a temptation to pick up something like the Habermasian meaning when Foucault is describing power relations, but IMO the point of Foucault is that the power-relations are all there is. Hume would say that there is no intrinsic reason to be more concerned about the extinction of the continent of Asia than about the pricking of one’s thumb, and Foucault would … well he would probably reject that sort of argument, but in the context of prisons he is saying something like the same thing.

Surely if there was a straightfoward normative/polemic interpretation of D&P, it would be easier to work out from M&C whether Foucault thinks that a modern rehab clinic is a better place than Bedlam?

Tim. Foucault can use words any way he likes I guess. But in D&P (and elsewhere) he uses equality and symmetry and reciprocity and so forth in the same sraightfowwardly “positive” way we all do. And, in fact, you may not be radicaly misrememering the paper, but there is lots of textual evidence there to suggest that he does in fact use “our” normative vocabulary in familiar ways. He differentiates power from domination in just those terms (actually referring to contractual relations, for instance). So I guess I don’t quite get your objection. I am saying your distinction between Foucault and “us” is misguided; he is one of “us” on these matters.