March 1, 2007
EVENT: Equipment and Ethics 3/8/07
There will be a discussion of Rabinow and Bennett’s work on equipment and human practices in Rabinow’s office at 2pm, Thursday, March 8th. Please read the attached article before attending.
Getting Rose Discussion Started
The following comes from an email exchange between myself and Micheal Watts and is intended to touch off some discussion here (Watts is always a good interlocutor because he has a pretty well defended position from a particular perspective at all times which is a good challenge for us when it comes to articulating what we are trying to do):
Watts: what ya think of Rose?
Amelia: Well, I also had the good fortune to hear him speak the day before in Rabinow’s office, and that influenced me as much as the talk today. But and so, he is very clear, very modest (as is often noted), and very smart. I like the way he takes up governmentality and does his own thing with it. If I have any complaints, if I am even allowed to have any considering my own work has yet to get anyplace, it would be that his concepts are a bit overdetermined. or maybe just that they are too general and he means for them to be very specific. This may have not come out in the lecture, but when he talks about the molecularization of thought and the neuro “style” of thought and action, he is only talking about specific practices relating to human life in the fields of human health and psychiatry. I for one feel like these moves go on to varying degrees and with varying effects all over the place, in ecological settings as well, to name just one area, and that this also has a profound effect on what happens with contests over the conduct of conduct and articulations of self-conduct. I find myself comparing Rose’s work with Agrawal’s on environmentality. Both these guys take up Foucault in strong ways, but they go different places with it. Environmentality and The Politics of Life Itself would be good to read together for the contrasts. so what did you think?
Watts: well to be honest I thought it was curiously predictable; alot of the ground he covered has been covered by others in a more critical way I think (viz the success of the RD Laing anti-institutionalism movement and what it implies for the treatment and diagnosis of sanity/normality); and I found some of his comments (about Pharma) sort of odd if not breathtaking. He is of course brilliant and erudite and all that but the interesting stuff (not the aanalysis of DSM etc. which is surely a bit old hat) was where he should have started. Seems to me compared with his ideology and conscoiusness days its become a bit less edgy and dull- in fact the shopping list of hypotheses left me cold. Why after all (pace Joey Ramone) wouldn’t 20% of the US- facing the terror of neoliberalism american style- want to be sedated? But there again I think that RD Laing could do no wrong and that Marxism has something to offer which, well, puts me on another planet.