Word: foucault
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...those historians who rebuke him for being too personal and too impressionistic, Foucault offers a bristling response...
That too he sees as an issue of power. Says he: "I was never really integrated into the Communist Party because I was homosexual, and it was an institution that reinforced all the values of the most traditional bourgeois life." In his historical research, Foucault was impressed by the fact that although a few homosexuals were burned at the stake as late as the 18th century, such drastic punishment was rarely actually used. Says he: "The practice of arrest served rather as a mechanism of control. So I tried to turn the problem around, saying to myself...
...truly need a true sex?" His newest discoveries, due out in book form shortly, are a series of 18th century cases in which men asked the Parisian authorities to imprison their wives or children. Says Foucault, with considerable understatement...
...Foucault's constant turning around of problems, his new questions that often remain unanswered, can be exasperating. He frequently thrusts forward a dramatic idea only to back off and start redefining terms...
...Foucault has never been able to explain historical change, how things get done. There is also no role in his scheme for such things as justice, freedom, beauty, those positive ideals." Adds Princeton Philosophy Professor Richard Rorty: "His obviously sincere attempt to make philosophical thinking be of some use is not going to get anywhere unless he ... can join the bourgeois liberals he despises in speculating where we go from here...