> Date sent: Mon, 8 Dec 1997 14:38:39 -0500
> Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From: Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: dialectics, etc.
> Ricardo Duchesne wrote:
>
> >These are just two sides of the same coin: if is is an "inner essence
> >we could never name", liberating it means producing a whole new
> >subject.
Doug Henwood:
> For Foucault et Cie., there is no inner essence, so how could it be
> "liberated"? That's the point of the passage. Elsewhere, Foucault said
> that he rejected the notion of a "process of liberation" in favor of
> "practices of freedom," since "liberation" depends on the notion of
> something repressed yearning to breathe free. And, as he also argued, what
> we think of as "repression" (in both the political and Freudian senses)
> doesn't block the expression of the (nonexistent) inner essence: it
> produces subjects and desires. So these aren't two sides of the same coin;
> these are two inconvertible currencies.
>
> Doug
That's precisely the point, since "there is no inner essence"
liberating it MEANS producing a whole new subject. Otherwise why
speak of "total innovation"? But let's not get bogged down over such
semantic infelicities: talk of "producting new subjects" as of
liberating our "essences" has been shown to be extremely repressive
in their consequences. Of course, I am not saying you are making any
such "talk". Nor do I want to question your reading of
Foucault about whom I know too little. ricardo
