March 12, 2007
Security, Territory, Population
The blogs are already buzzing about the translation of the 1977-1978 College de France lectures, which still can only be pre-ordered from amazon. One blog entry from theoria – if you ignore the asinine homophobe (apparently an asinine Marxist homophobe, which, when you think about it, might not be much of a contradiction) who makes the first comment — makes the following observation, of utmost interest: “Among those who have had the opportunity to see STP in French, the general consensus appears to be that the whole Anglo-Foucauldian ‘governmentality’ and ‘history of the present’ project will have to be rethought in many of its essentials. If you read the entirety of Mariana’s article, I think you can see her trying to resist that rethinking in significant ways.”
Also note the extraordinary resistance in the comments to the idea that Foucault embraced any part of liberalism. Truly, the politics are those of the 19th century.
In any case, we should be thinking and tracking the reaction to these lectures as they come out. Volunteers? Collaborators?
I think you mis-characterize Old and his comment – likely not in the best taste, but I don’t think he’s a homophobe. Regarding a potential “break” with the “History of the Present” interpretation of Foucault, see Lorna Weir’s recent book on pregnancy and her article with Brian Singer in the European Journal of Social Theory. A second article of their’s on population and governmentality is likely to appear in the same journal this year.
Perhaps a summary of these could be posted if you are willing?
I don’t know from Old, but calling someone a “fist-fucker” — unless there is some rather elaborate “signifying monkey” thing going on — feels just a touch homophobic. Idiotic in any case. Foucault, as we know from one of the only good books on him, was not exactly eager to be considered a “gay intellectual.”
Craig referred me to these comments here after receiving an email from elsewhere about the same comment. I sent the following message along for Craig to forward to the other inquirer:
I shouldn’t have said such a thing. It probably reveals an unacceptable remainder of homophobia. The comment was made with the expectation that it would be read by only a very small circle of people who already know that I have an extraordinarily high regard for Foucault. As the comment of mine below it reveals, I simply don’t find the reading of Foucault that suggests he embraced liberalism, in any way, persuasive in the least. In fact, I am persuaded this way in large part because I think the presentation by Miller of the Foucault who “lived dangerously” in the San Francisco bath house culture simply doesn’t allow such an interpretation. I agree with Scollier’s comment that Foucault did not seem eager to be a gay intellectual. I have suggested elsewhere that he may very well have seen gay marriage as unacceptably bourgeois and a concession to a society dominated by malthusian coupling. But those allowances don’t excuse the comment. In fact, if anything, they suggest that in semi-private discourse, I am more comfortable in showing the remainder referred to above.