16th August, 2007. 10:09 am. New guy looking for feedback.(wrongwaylouie)

Hey everyone.  I'm new her, and was curious what everyone thought about this document I submitted a few  months ago. It's slighty askew from his analysis of power, but I tried my best with the given direction of mind/body dualism. What do you think?

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25th July, 2007. 6:08 pm. Forging a life outside the academe(kirilov)

In temporary exile from academia - accepted ABD for a Phd, but because of the cost I've had to take two years off and even change fields do to a change in interests. From philosophy to comparative literature - a natural jump if there ever was one.


Engaging myself in the ultimate in Bibliphilia - collecting, buying and selling rare and foreign books, I just love the feel, smell and appearance of them, and even if they just pass through my possession on their way to a better owner, it is still the best I can do except part time academic research gigs. Halfway a grad student, but halfway not.

This is in part to get by to avoid selling my soul to the capitalist world. Someone may be interested so here's an image of the best of the best and a link to the rest.

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18th August, 2006. 8:32 am.(mapjunkie)

It was widely believed that friendship was going to be the next topic to come under Foucault's critical examination. There are traces in his 1980s writing that link his work on sexuality to upcoming thoughts on friendship. This leads to two questions:

1. What might have Foucault's work on friendship been?
2. Who has taken up work on friendship?

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14th May, 2006. 10:06 pm. foucault in prime time!(currentlymusing)

random foucault sighting in pop culture for your reading pleasure:

On the West Wing finale, when people are moving the outgoing president's things out of the oval office, a statue is removed from a shelf to reveal a book by Foucault. It seems to have a title in which the first word begins with an S and ends with a Y. Are there any books by Foucault that begin with the word "Society"? My first instinct would be a literal (but bad) translation of Surveiller et Punir--Survey and Punish-- but the English translations I've seen were always "Discipline and Punish."

Given these criteria, can anyone venture a guess as to the book?
Or better yet, did anyone see the show and got a better glance at the title?

Current mood: amused.

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29th April, 2006. 7:07 pm. Question about Foucault's theories of power(slack_scholar)

Hi, I'm a student in an Introductory Feminisms class and we're studying Foucault. I'm a little unsure of what Foucault means when he says that power is exercised rather than possessed. Can anyone explain this to me? Thank you.

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19th April, 2006. 3:09 pm. care of the self & sexuality(becoming_writer)

Hi all,

I'm helping to organise a couple of events this year that may be of interest. There is still space for anyone interested in participating in or helping to organise either event:

Who cares? An open weekend gathering for people concerned about themselves, each other and the world we live in. Third in a series of anti-capitalist gatherings. Lancaster, UK - 30 June to 2 July

Anarchism & Sexuality: ethics, relationships and power. Leeds, UK 4 November

cheers,
Jamie


X-posted a few places

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30th November, 2005. 3:32 pm. anyone read Merquior?(zaparil)

i have no access to his book on Foucault as i live in Russia. so i have a question for those who read it.
i have found this on some site:
Have you ever heard of 'Cratology'? Foucault had, it was his term.
"Cratology is an art and science of social power, theory of authority, core ability to lead, rule or manage people - a key phenomenon in the life of man, society and state. It is a new science. It characterizes the essence and features of power, its different types, forms, structures, mechanisms, technologies." [from Merquior, J.G. (1985) ‘Chapter 8: Foucault’s ‘cratology’: his theory of power’ in Foucault published by Fontana, London.]

so the question is - is 'cratology' Foucault's term really or is it Merquior's?

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15th October, 2005. 10:40 am. Happy Birthday(khepa)

He would have been 77 today. Happy Birthday.

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22nd August, 2005. 11:05 am.(sacrificaltotem)

here is a peice i wrote last summer it appered in siyahi interlocal, a turkish poststructuralism. http://www.livejournal.com/community/siyahi/
its based on deleuze's student thesis, its a bit rough ,i write the way i think very non linier and fragmented

To Build One's House Upon the Sea - by Joe Taylor
Man created both "point" and "line" concepts. But once he understood these concepts' undeniable meanings, the rest of geometry consisted in exploring the logical implications that arose from this. This creates truth and discourse. And the "truth" was already there waiting to be "discovered" right, but this is one measure of the world, one truth that dominates, it excludes and displaces, marginalizes as we learn from Husserl in his work on geometry. To build your house upon the sea is to build your "self", your foundation, your base, and thus your approach to the world, from a constant undulation, a moving unknown sea; narcissus leans over to the pool and looks in, a marine lover maybe. You ask "is this a discussion on anarchism?" Typically I interpret anarchism as an objective approach to truth. How does relativism play a role in such an objective? Or even Nietzsche a.k.a. Irrigaray’s marine lover? Who offers us no objective or empirical truth as anarchism strives for - when we say truth, we mean Plato’s forms, Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason"; these all look for a core measurement, a center. Narcissus looks into the water and sees himself. Now he has a measurement, but a center that has always been haunted by an absence, marginality. It seems that all Western thought, let alone metaphysics, was interested in a center. Whether it was dualistic or truth as a fixed point like God was, and as science and positivism is now, Narcissus had a fixed point from which to approach the world, even hierarchy, subject-object dualism. But people approach the world fragmented as subjects, yet objectively become anarchists, usually because of a confrontation with the political, and always with a pre-thought in Heidegger's sense.









This is often how people become anarchists with "thought", but not with "thinking", inspired by some others thought, when approaching the world. But we must approach ourselves first, a "know thy self", an essentially relativist approach that we can see with Max Stirner "ownness", or Foucault’s continuous plane of variation; relativity, subjectivity, selfhood, or specific subjectivity (read ego), that is contingent to larger social relations. In other words, we might say that someone becomes an anarchist in order to confront. A politics of reaction, so to speak, a crisis, it never seems to be because of an encounter with the "self" or with "Dasein." I never felt comfortable with the term "post anarchism". It denotes a hierarchy, a category, a very linear heirloom from Marxism, a center to approach the late capitalist world, a label. It's true; you need this categorization to understand the world. But lets try something more like a homelessness, like water pooling in cracks and in the holes of surfaces. Stirner’s idea of the self and Heidegger’s Dasein and the self, Stirner’s interrogation of being, in the "ego", his concept of self is not a self at all, but an assemblage of singularities affects and intensities, explanations, not complete at all, its an in-between in the Deleuzeian sense. The self according to Deleuze is imperfection, the identity crisis of Stirner; looking in a pool of water he sees himself, looking into the mirror he see the other and his own, so we are starting to sea a house being built upon the sea, slowly being built from pieces of wood floating on its crust pieces of sunk in ships and drift wood, building your house, Irrigaray’s marine lover, a nomadic house.

Multiplicities are prevalent here; no totality, its subjectivity; liberating, not culturally liberating; armed with Heidegger's concept of "thinking” not "thought", and Stirner’s chaotic multi-directional moving egos, we move away from the Hegelian of base thought, so that anarchism becomes a response to modernity and a reaction to the modern state, and its practices of normalization. So anarchism therefore mimics its father, a lot of "thought" but no "thinking"; remember, thinking is movement upon a sea, but thought is land base, more architectural. Instead you must drift like Irigaray's marine lover, so back to nomadic homelessness, discourse and a way to approach the self. "Socrates was one with no home". Or "atopos", no foundation, a "house upon he sea" always being built, but selves according to Stirner are different from what they are and what they wish they are, much like anarchists. An inside/outside identity is created by the State; Narcissus looks into the pool an inside/outside of hierarchical thought, and anarchists emerge as the politics of reaction and identity; atomized fragments, a network of selves, pieces of floating driftwood and sunken ships that were the lives and faces of others. I build my house, we confront the world with this identity, this self consciousness, whether it is "anarchist" or not, it's always atomized within a margin, an excluded, an unseen, the self vs. the world, like Stirner’s union of egoists but not really as a union, but as one body with many bodies that moves on different plateaus of identities, ever shifting, many worlds in the one as the Zapatistas say. So for anarchism, as its moves in reaction to the state, anarchists attempt to escape from the state are ultimately led right back to the state. A product of modernity, anarchist identity as such is closely tied to the State and its discourse then becomes "post-anarchist", so back to the margin, the nomad, the in-between. An identity that moves between borders; a homelessness, a union of egos, a multiplicity, multi-directional, always rhizomatic, non-hierarchical, always a becoming (a house), but never a beginning (of the house), or an end (to the house). Rather its always being built, from the driftwood of ideas and practices, Narcissus and Stirner never fell into the pool - they did not need to. They both saw the self and their own in the water, the liquidity that acts like a mirror. About this Entry

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7th August, 2005. 7:06 pm. Madness & Civilsation(thomdyke)

I've had a brief search around the internet, but was wondering if anyone out there knew where I can find an electronic version of Madness & Civilisation...pdf/html/txt formats are all fine.  Any help would be much appreciated!

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