Bildung

The idea of the Bildung is very interesting, especially Berman's exposition that the German Romantists considered the encounter with the foreign as the dialectic mediation which enables a higher fulfillment of oneself. In this mode, the foreign is embraced only because it facilitates progression towards one's higher self. This may ties into Duncan's question about the not-so-radical foreignness of the German Romantic project. Berman explains that for F. Schlegel, limitation is inherent in the experience of Bildung: "Limitation is what distinguishes the eperience of Bildung from the purely erratic and chaotic adventure where one loses oneself" (48). No matter how humble, self-critical one starts on the journey of Bildung, ultimately all the foreignness seems to matter only in relation to the ideal self. The vision of perfecting oneself thus seems to prescribe standards of the inclusion of certain foreign materal (e.g. the Greeks), and the mode of encounter which may be beneficial to the formation of the self.

In this context, Berman's casual invocation of the Umheimlich seems interesting (page 46, in parenthesis). For all we know, the Umheimlich is anything but a simple term designating the unfamiliar. It means the weird feeling of familiarity amongst the most estranged context. Ultimately, therefore, the experience with the forieng is a search for the self. But where does that leave the foreign? Does it retain its integrity when it is subsumed in the process of Bildung?

Lastly, it is interesting that Berman didn't discuss the meaning of "experience" in its original German meaning. Hegel also employs "experience" as the major mediating element in the development of the consciousness. In German, it is Erfalrung. Falrung, meaning travel or journey, defines experience as always a forey into the foreign.

Week 5

I would like focus my post on Goethe's notions of translation and Weltliteratur , which I found to be perplexing albeit also interesting. First of all, I appreciated Goethe's insights into translated texts' ability to reveal to the readers things that are foreign, and thereby reveal things that are inherently of their own but theretofore were left hidden from their view. I found such dynamic between the original and translated texts interesting, and thought translation certainly can perform such function to a certain degree. I also like the idea of Weltliteratur where there will be an "active coexistence of all contemporary literatures."

But the details of Goethe's depiction of Weltliteratur and the role of translation ultimately, at least for me, undermined his ideas to the point where I was left doubtful than being convinced. If the development of world literature reserved an honorable role for Germans and if--as he wrote in a letter (Berman claims that Goethe might have not wholeheartedly believed in what he was writing in the letter)--that "when someone understands German well, he may do without many other languages (57)," with his being a German, how convincing his advocation of world literature can be? Moreover, if translations should be considered belonging to the national literature, isn't he, on a certain level, rejecting the "otherness" that makes translations so enlightening? He might have had better intentions but I can only view that as involving an usurpation of other cultures' accomplishments.

Lastly, this might just belong to the realm of personal differences, but although I greatly appreciate, admire and respect the process of translation, I do not think translations can always "attain the untranslatable." Goethe does not seem to take into consideration that a translation might not always be able to completely convey the content of the original text. Translating is something that I would like to pursue and I always wrestle with the inability to come up with the perfect translation, so Goethe's complete faith in translation was something that draw my attention.

Translation as Épreuve

Insofar as it introduces a distinction between l'étranger and le propre, translation serves to define linguistic, cultural, and national boundaries.  But translation can also function as a mediating force between these boundaries, and in this sense it holds promise as a transformative act.  This, I believe, is the sense of the word épreuve as used by Berman.

The linguistic changes wrought by translation can extend beyond the immediate confines of the translated text.  Berman cites Luther's translation of the Bible as a pivotal moment in the history of translation and literature in Germany.  This Verdeutschung served not only to render the text into German, but also to define the linguistic parameters for future translations.

If we turn our consideration to a discussion of world literature (including, but not limited to, the topics that Goethe raises in his essay), how might we envision a practice of translation that engages productively with 'foreign' texts?  What is the difference between translation as épreuve and translation as homogenization?  Although English, not German, is the dominant mode of linguistic discourse in the contemporary world, issues of history and economics (to which others have already alluded in their posts) remain pertinent.

How foreign is this "experience of the foreign"?

While I overall enjoyed the theoretical claims that Berman makes as he summarizes German Romantic thoughts on translation, I was kind of annoyed by the repeated reference to the Greeks as the "foreign" culture with which the German's must primarily interact with in their translations. It is this kind of encounter with a "foreign" that doesn't cause one to fall into the nasty aporetic trap of strangeness and in turn allows for the move of double fidelity to both the original text and the native language in translations.

What I find problematic in this claim is that it seeks to posit the experience of the Greeks as the primary beneficial experience of the foreign. The foreign here is not an experience with the "exotic orientalism" of say China or India that would instantly produce a dizzying vertigo in the German sensibility. Heavens no. Instead, the encounter with the foreign through translations is primarily viewed as an experience with the pinnacle of Western civilization (and thereby implicitly makes the claim that the Germans are heirs via translation of this tradition), which was for the German Romantics, the Greeks. In fact Berman even includes a quote from Eckermann stating as much: " 'But while we thus value what is foreign, we must not bind ourselves to some particular thing, and regard it as a model. We must not give this value to the Chinese, or the Serbian, or Calderon, or the Nibelungen; but if we really want a model, we must always return to the ancient Greeks, in whose works the beauty of human kind is always represented. All the rest we must look at only historically, appropriating to ourselves what is good, so far as it goes' " (63).

What the hell? The German Romantics (or at least Eckermann--although Berman makes no real attempt to engage with this) thus seem to have only wanted an experience a "comfortable" foreign as a model, one that will buttress their belief in the preminence of Western civilization, and thereby allow them to construct the German national language and culture as its necessary apotheosis. I know it sounds like I'm hating on the Germans...but it just seem highly contradictory that all of a sudden there are "acceptable" and "non-acceptable" cultures with which to construct the experience of the foreign. This seems to demarcate a geographical limit to the German Romantic theory of translation to the Northwestern hemisphere... My question is then how can we use the elements of the German Romantic theory of translation to talk about East Asia? I think that we can definitely extropolate elements, but I'm wondering what exactly we would have to tweak and modify to make it work. What, in our current moment of globalization, actually constitutes an experience of the foreign?

Interesting points for discussion

I have only read the posts of Freda and Lita (DO YOU PREFER LITA OR LOLA?) so far, but I think both make important points. I think that Freda's question concerning the Eurocentrism of Goethe's theory of world literature is an important one. We have to keep in mind the historical limitations to the project of World Literature at that time (we can look, for example, at Goethe's distinctions between the "West" and the "East"), and to consider whether or not the "expansion" of its model to a more inclusive global society is possible or desirable. In other words, are ideas of cosmopolitanism themselves colonial? Does the idea of the "multitude" posited by Hardt and Negri get out of the "bad universalism" of Goethe's Enlightenment project? In the Japanese empire, for example, ideas of cosmopolitanism became effective as colonial discourse, and as a means for national assimilation. As Freda suggests, we have to address the problem of "universality" in Goethe's work, and in the various theories of translation in German Classicism and Romanticism.

Lita's comment brings up many important points. I also think that Goethe's discussion of the relationship between translation and economic exchange is significant. If translation occurs in a cultural marketplace, it is not solely a process of actualizing the spirit, but has close material connections with the modern (capitalist) economy. How do economic relations dictate what gets translated and what dies away, confined to its own language? If translation is a way to re-vivify texts, then which texts are lost to history and translation because of the economics of translation? These are important questions, I think, and are not unrelated to the colonial dimension of "World Literature." For example, why is there a whole canon of Japanese literature available in English, but most of the classics of modern Korean literature have not been translated? This problem is certainly related, but not limited, to the economics of translation.

Both Lita and Freda point out the position of German in Goethe's discussion. This is very problematic, and I don't think Berman really gives it enough attention. For example, Goethe's assertion that one need only learn German in order to read Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian literature (because of the quality of German translations) seems directly at odds with Berman's own claim, mentioned in my post below, that the translating drive posits the foreign language as superior to one's own language. I agree that Berman could have better addressed the problem of the universality of German in these theories of translation, although Berman's text is an explication, so we cannot necessarily impute the problems in German Classicism and Romanticism directly to him. I am curious to read his other texts on translation, to see if his own theories of translation repeat some of the problems of Eurocentrism, universality, and cosmopolitanism found here. For example, he mentions in the introduction that he came to the problem of translation through a project of translating Latin American literature into French.

Week 5 Reading Response

Goethe alludes to the nation-state conflicts that are hindering the building and consolidation of a unified world literature (277). Is this turn toward world literature a way to shore up a universal cosmopolitan humanism that we talked about in our discussion of Kant or is this just another colonizing move by a Western intellectual to elevate European epistemologies and categorize them as representative of the world, while silencing other forms of meaning-making that occur alternatively occur within the Western as marginalized knowledges and in other parts of the world as subjugated knowledges by white Western male scholars? Who is this secret silent congregation of like-minded intellectuals that Goethe speaks of (227)?

I was trying to make loose connections between Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri's conceptualization of the multitude of transnational “networked citizens” that possess the potential to shore up global democracy and the society of control in their book Empire and the multitude that for Goethe seems to be consolidated around universal world literature and humanism. I still have to think through the connections and contentions though.

The Drive to Translate

In hindsight, last week seemed rushed. There is a lot of material in Security, Territory, Population, and perhaps the lectures warrant more than one class discussion. However, for better or worse, we are moving on to The Experience of the Foreign, which is another exciting but difficult text. The good news is that we will certainly have a chance to revisit Foucault's lectures because we will be reading his course from the subsequent year (The Birth of Biopolitics) in which he extends the analysis of the apparatuses of security into the 20th century through a reading of German ordo-liberalism and American neo-liberalism. At that point, it will be useful to remind ourselves of the main points from last week, which should contribute to a more thorough review of the text than was possible in one class period. In any case, after three weeks of Foucault, it may be good to move outside of his material for a while.

Before writing a post on the "apparatuses of security," with some more reflections on the position of Foucault in relation to Marxism, I want to mention some things to think about in trying to connect Antoine Berman's text to what we have read so far. At first glance, it may not be quite apparent how it fits into the course. I know that I said in the first week that I would be writing up reading guides for you. Predictably, perhaps, that plan fell by the wayside. However, I think that it is actually much more useful for both you and I if I just post to this blog once or twice a week. So, here are a few comments about the Berman reading.

There is one claim in Berman's text, stated very early, on pg. 8, which is useful to start with:
"In reality, however, the translating drive leaves any humanist project far behind. Polytranslation becomes an end in itself, the essence of which is to radically denaturalize the mother tongue. The translating drive always starts off with a refusal of what Schleiermacher has called das heimische Wohlbefinden der Sprache--the indigenous well-being of language. The translating drive always posits an other language as ontologically superior to the translator's own language."

This passage is quite interesting in its implications. Here Berman relates what he calls the "translating drive" to humanism, claiming that the translating drive "leaves behind" any humanist project. The first striking thing about this statement is that German Classicism and Romanticism are in many ways two of the first models for the contemporary humanities. The study and translation of literature prominent in early 19th century Germany was foundational for establishing the position of the humanities in the university. Many aspects of their models (the organic formation of the text, the spontaneous poesis of the subject, the purposiveness of cultivation etc.) eventually made their way to the United States--in New Criticism, for example--by way of the study of English Romanticism (which had itself borrowed liberally from the German case). Humboldt was responsible in many ways for defining the methodologies and the historical purpose for modern university education, and he gave particular attention to the study of languages and to comparative methods in the study of literature.

In this sense, it is somewhat counter-intuitive that Berman would locate a drive to translate in the intellectual work of this period and would claim that this drive actually moves beyond the confines of the humanist project for which it was also foundational. In chapter 3, which discusses Bildung (culture or cultivation), Berman discusses this question in terms of an intimate relation between the drive for Bildung and the drive to translate. In other words, university education, which in modernity was connected to the project of "forming" national subjects, was also a project of translation in which the process of national formation entered into intractable relations with the foreign. By the way, I think it is these relations that confront the translator with what he calls an "ethics of translation."

Taken at the level of the drive, Berman suggests that translation studies, and perhaps comparative literature as an entire field of inquiry, has the potential to work entirely against the grain of the humanist project to which it seems so bound. This point is debateable, but nonetheless interesting for our moment. For example, why are there so many students studying literature and comparative literature who are critical of the humanist project? How do the polytranslations involved in the "experience of the foreign" occur within the confines of the humanist project while also pointing well beyond them? What "models" or "practices" of translation facilitate a sublimation of the translating drive into the humanist project and which ones potentially subvert it?

Berman relies on an overly simplistic determination of "drive" in terms of sexual desire. Nonetheless, there is a question of desire involved in the relation between Bildung and translation, and psychoanalysis may provide us with a vocabulary for translation studies. It is possible to differentiate "drive" from both "desire" and "wish," but for now I won't get into these differences. In his early articulations of the relationship between the unconscious and dreams (e.g. The Interpretation of Dreams), Freud used terms such as "condensation" and "displacement" to refer to how the dreamwork created the manifest content of dreams. Interpreting the "latent content" of dreams remained an ongoing process which required the analyst to consider the dream-thoughts and associations of the analysand, what s/he knew about the analysand's past, and general principles concerning the structuring and development of the psyche (e.g., Oedipus, etc.). According to Freud, the psyche in its most rudimentary "formation" is, at least to some degree, an effect of repression. Repressed content emerges from the unconscious in the form of dreams, and, furthermore, dream content is never a direct translation of the "wish." Rather, the dreamwork patches together images through condensation, displacement, and other mediating narrative devices. The simple point here is that if the practice of translation is the effect of a drive, it is misguided to expect that any translation will somehow produce an adequate "copy" of the original. Maintaining "fidelity" to the original, while not sacrificing the coherency, conventions, and style of one's "own language," is a consistent problem whose final overcoming can only be imagined through a kind of repression. Structural models of languages that require a total consciousness of meaning are an example of this sort of repression, which forecloses many of the ethical, historical, and analytic problems that Berman is concerned with. This is one of my hypotheses.

Therefore, one question tomorrow will be how, precisely, Berman can claim that the "drive to translate" leaves behind the humanist project. Clearly, this problem is bound up with the "denaturalization" of the mother-tongue. In many ways, Freud also assumed such a "de-naturalization" of the mother-tongue, and equally connected it to the problem of the drive. Does the insight that there is nothing natural to the "mother-tongue" allow the practice of translation to move beyond humanism? Is there more to it?

In the style of this blog, this is by no means a cohesive argument, just some initial thoughts on tomorrow's text. Before entering into this sort of speculation tomorrow, it will be useful to discuss in detail the various modes of translation that were conceived during this seminal period in the creation of the humanities. Berman's text has the benefit of providing an overview of this period in German intellectual history while at the same time drawing out some of the most important theoretical problems.

Week Four: So is Foucault a Marxist or what?

One of the things that struck me the most in the lectures was Foucault's juxtaposition of the mercantilist state against the more modern conception of the state promoted by the economistes, which dictated that the state should only intervene in order ensure the good circulation of natural phenomena--whether that be the laissez-faire regulation of grain scarcity or the relations of human beings with each other and their production--either of goods or commodities.

I think that he perhaps explicitly refrains from positing whether this transition is a good thing or a bad thing--that is, the transition from a police-state mercantilist system to the laissez-faire roots of free trade, but you definitely can understand why Sartre would lambast him as being the last defense of the bourgeoisie...although that would seem to be a misinterpretation.

And yet, you could say that Foucault's analysis, whether he says that it is more an analysis of the emergence of the art of governmentality, is really a Marxist, or class analysis of society. I just want to highlight one particular moment in the 13th lecture: "Apparently the development of the market economy, the multiplication and intensification of exchanges in the sixteenth century, and the activation of monetary circulation, all introduced human existence into the abstract and purely representative world of the commodity and exchange value. Maybe, and maybe it should be deplored, in which case let's deplore it" (338).

He then goes on to say that what is more interesting for him is the analysis of the art of government and how to control the state forces through manipulation of the population etc. Yet all of this is based on a fundamental shift in the transition of economies: from mercantalist to free market. Perhaps even though we can't say that he is bona fide, card carrying Marxist, he is still intimately wedded to the Marxian critique of history.

Week 4

When reading The Order of Things last week, it seemed to me that Foucault was focused more on explaining the break between, or the distinctions between, the Classical period of wealth, natural history and general grammar and the modern period of economics, biology and philology. In Security, Territory, Population, Foucault talks about three different periods, namely, those of sovereignty, discipline and security. While his aim is to explain their differences, he does so by also drawing attention on their commonalities, and I think that is one of the reasons that I found this week's reading to be more intriguing.

The problem of scarcity is one of the common factors that govern the structure of the three kinds of society. During the time of sovereignty, scarcity was seen either as a manifestation of bad fortune or a punishment for person's evil nature. In a juridical and disciplinary society, the the authorities sought to prevent scarcity by keeping the price of grain at the minimum level. On the other hand, in the apparatus of security, the overarching stance is that of laisser-faire, which is letting the natural courses of things have their way so that they can nullify the reality that they themselves are parts of.

Moreover, there are also continuities. The art of government, for example, has persisted in exerting influence on the development of administrative apparatus ever since the sixteenth century. It is only that the art of government was still trapped within the structures of the administrative monarchy until its 'unblocking' was enabled by the emergence of the perspective of population during the eighteenth century.

Week Four Reading Response

I'm still reading and absolutely love the letures; i'll stick to just one small point of clarification... In the third lecture Foucault discusses processes of normation and normalization (57). He argues that disciplinary techniques of the state and government rely on a norm as a model for constructing the normal and the abnormal. So the norm is the milieu, drawing from his secon lecture, within which the normal and abnormal are judged. Foucault tries to differentiate between normation, which I read as the process by which the norm comes into being as regulative and normalization the process by which what's normal is constructed. I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive, as Foucault is suggesting- he seems to be distancing himself from processes of normalization in talking about the norm, but I think that in order for norms to become regulative they rely on processes of normalization whether or not normalization is related to law, social interactions, ideological apparatuses etc. What do you all think?

Economy and People

So far two issues concerning security intrigue me the most.

First of all is the model of security as a system that aims at allowing fluctuation and compensation play out by itself. Of course this is very much an economic model as Foucault's example demonstrates. But there are two sense where we can view it as an economic model - firstly, and more specifically, as the capitalist economy, and secondly economy in a more general sense, namely the mechanics of any circulation and equilibrium. Concerning the capitalist economy, one wonders whether we can say, in the voice of a vulgar Marxist, that a higher development of capitalist economy gave primacy to the technologies of securty in the 19th century. For example, in the discussion of scarcity, the liberalist argument works with the important aspect of an expanded market - one that includes other country in the region, but also, at this time, an emerging global market in sight. Concerning the general model of circulation, on the other, it ties in well with Foucault's argument that the object of the power mechanism (population here) is viewed for the first time as something natural. The idea that energy and material eventually balance out seem to cohere with our knowledge about biological and physical realities. It thus seems a response to a more mechanical view of the world which in turn somehow dehumanizes the human subject into yet another natural phenomena.

The question about the human as natural phenomena leads me to my second interest, which concerns Foucaults statement that the population is different from the people. Of course we can surmise different meanings to the formulation, but what is really interesting to me is that the people seem to be those who are resistent or disruptive to the systematic calculation of the population. It reminds me how revolts or revolutions so frequently have to assume the name of the people, and to reassert that the people should be the real actors in the political scenes. At the same time, however, the revolutionary ideas are very frequently coded in rational calculations for the greater good (I am thinking of William Godwin here), and for example the public policy after the French Revolution seems to carry out exactly the abstract management of the population. Can I try to explain this by just saying that the French Revolution (and William Godwin for that matter) are after all a middle-class movement, in which the values are inevitably bound up with the capitalist economy that I discussed earlier?

Reflections on Kant; Freedom from the World, Freedom in the World

I want to address some of the topics that have been brought up on the blog so far. Since communicating in written media is different from conversation, it is possible that some different directions can be explored here.

One issue that is of interest to me was brought up by Jonelle in the second week. In her discussion of Kant and Foucault she asked something like [I'm paraphrasing], "as humans can we ever escape from our world through Enlightenment? Is it possible to ever see the objects of the world as they really are and therefore somehow free ourselves from the world through knowledge?" She used a complete consciousness of the political system and political situation as her example, I believe.

This is a central problem that Kant was concerned with. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he began by asking how synthetic a priori judgments are possible. That is, whether we can bring together various objects under categories and concepts prior to any experience of those objects. In order to understand the conditions of knowledge "prior to experience," the Kantian subject set itself off from objects, and established a relation with them that opened up the possibility of knowledge. This setting off of the subject from the object is referred to as "the subject/object split" in philosophy.

The problem, as Jonelle suggested, is that once we set ourselves off from objects in an attempt to see things as they truly are, we presume ourselves free from the very conditions we are trying to understand. If we are completely free from those conditions in this manner, however, there is nothing to guarantee that our ideas about them can have any sort of objective validity. In other words, once a person says, "I am completely free from the various objects that I understand," it is unclear what constitutes the connection between ourselves and what we supposedly understand. Although I am being a bit crude and a bit brief here, this is more or less why Kant introduced "regulative ideas" in the Critique. Regulative ideas [or "transcendental ideas"]surpassed any possible experience. They were completely hypothetical, not constitutive (to use his distinction). Nothing related to an object is necessary for a regulative idea, as in those ideas that have a constitutive use. The purpose of regulative ideas is to expand the understanding to its greatest unity and extension. This does not mean that they free the mind from any consideration of truth. Rather, the understanding can only be extended and unified by a careful consideration of the various illusions that can emerge in our reasoning.

The regulative idea is a focal point (focus imaginarus) where the conditions of knowledge and the objects of knowledge would be adequate; therefore, it allows us to organize our knowledge and thoughts reasonably, by way of the ultimate purpose for producing our knowledge. In this sense, the antinomic question of whether the subject is completely free from the world or is completely determined by it (which appears in the Critique of Pure Reason) can only be "solved" through the free hypothesizing of ideas that are not random ruses, but will rather lead the subject to the greatest possible truth about the world to which s/he belongs. Ideally for Kant, it seems, we would belong, in an entirely free manner, to a world which we adequately understand as a totality. (BTW, in Kant's idiom, only such a totality could properly be called a "world"; that is why he states that transcendental philosophy is concerned with cosmological ideas). But, Kant suggests that this is not so easy because reason continually foists illusions onto us that we have to grapple with and clear up.

In Foucault's reading of Kant as I understand it, the empirical study of man is haunted by the same possibility of infinite transgressions on the part of reason. In others' behaviors, temperaments, feelings, and ideas we confront a dispersed time in which no two people seem to cognize the world in the same way at any given moment. If this is the case, what is the regulative principle that can guide a variety of subjects to a use of their freedom that is also truthful? In other words, the reasoning subject can regulative himself or herself according to the ultimate goals of knowledge, but how can the thoughts and feelings of others arrive freely at the same truths? Pragmatic anthropology, with its ultimate goal of defining "man" empirically, steps in to describe man in his actions as a free being, and to also establish what the most truthful of those free actions are. This is accomplished through communication and speaking, a kind of deliberation.

The question of whether we can ever be both Enlightened and free in the world, therefore, is taken up in two ways by Kant, in a fashion that was not recognized until Foucault's penetrating analysis. The first is through transcendental philosophy and the hypothesizing of regulative ideas, and the other is through an infinite empirical analysis of man as the locus of this possibility for self-regulation. By the way, the most prevalent modern concept dealing with the relationship between the free human being and the world which determines him/her is the concept of "culture." Culture suggests both a passage to freedom and those determinations of ourselves that seem the most intractable. Interesing problem...

This is how I have come to understand Kant and Foucault. In order to come to a better definition of freedom, I agree with Foucault that freedom has to be de-linked from the question, "What is man?" or "What does it mean to be human?"

From Security to Population

In his first lecture, Foucault defines three types of security: the legal code (code légal), the disciplinary mechanism (mécanisme disciplinaire), and the devices of security (dispositifs de sécurité).  The first two types are quite straightforward; it is the last that poses the most difficulty and that occupies Foucault's attention.  The devices of security hold within them a more totalizing power because they transcend the binary oppositions to which the other types of security so rigidly adhere.  Ostensibly, the devices grant greater autonomy to a population, allowing a wider scope of acceptable action.  But because they operate more subtly to enforce the regulative norm, their influence permeates the territory in which they are enacted.

Foucault describes the sociopolitical function of these devices as bio-power (bio-pouvoir), a term that links security and population.  Security is immanent in population, and the population is at once subject and object of its controls.  Moreover, insofar as the human being exists as part of the population, the human sciences cannot be separated from the dynamics of power.

Post Once a Week / Week 4 Reading

Hello all,

Please remember that posting once per week is an assignment for the course. You should make up the first two weeks of postings if you missed either. I am also going to make a post on Wednesday that responds to some of the topics that have emerged in the posts but maybe have not been touched on in class yet.

We will be reading Security, Territory, Population next week. The assigned chapters are on the syllabus.

Travis

Week 3 reading response

Two questions arose during my reading of The Order of Things. The first of which is similar to the question posed by Tug in that I am curious about what kind of factors could have compelled the reconfiguration of positivities at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century. Foucault writes that, during this period, as wealth, natural history and discourse began to take on the likeness of economics, biology and philology, respectively, the departure from the Classical age had occurred. Foucault tells us that this change did not occur abruptly as Ricardo's work was harbingered by that of Adam Smith, Cuvier's by Lamarck's, and Bopp's by Coeurdoux's and William Jones', but he does not explain how this change, which occurred almost simultaneously to the three--seemingly disparate--modes of being, had come to take place during this specific time in history.

The other question I have might be irrelevant or it might just be that I am confused by the similarity in terminology, but can Ranke's positivist/empiricist history, which is one of the major methodologies of historiography in Korea, be worked into Foucault's discussion of the nineteenth-century positivism/empiricism?

Defining the Human Sciences

Foucault's genealogical inquiry into the human sciences reveals the social, political, and historical contingencies behind such fundamental fields as biology, economy, and philology.  His study demonstrates not only the temporal brevity of these ostensibly timeless ideas, but also their capacity for change.  Is it the transcendental aspect of the human being that allows for such change?  Foucault describes a dramatic epistemological shift that occurred in early 19th century Europe, but I would like to understand more clearly how it was possible for this transformation to occur.

Foucault also introduces three pairs of ideas that, in his estimation, cover the knowledge of man in its entirety: function and norm, conflict and rule, signification and system.  These three pairs derive from biology, economy, and philology, respectively, but Foucault asserts that we should not consider them fully distinct from each other.  Rather, these models, which represent the essence of the human sciences beginning in the 19th century, are inextricably intertwined.

Week 3 Reading Response

In Foucault’s explanation of the differences between eighteenth and nineteenth century economic epistemic formations he discusses the change from representational knowledge frameworks where systems are circular to productive frameworks of knowledge and accumulation that have to do with linearity and causality. His assertion, drawing on Ricardo, that “all value is determined, not according to the instruments that permit its analysis, but according to the conditions of production that have brought it into being” (255-256) explains this shift. Foucault says that this is due to the accumulation of capital and the disarticulation of value from being defined by what it materially represents in exchange. I’m confused because aren’t the instruments of analysis also a part of how something comes into being-- isn’t this also an element of capitalist accumulation? Why does this shift from the representative to the productive have to mean that the instruments of representation/production are no longer a part of how something is assessed as valuable (“better” quality goods for more expensive textiles)?

Similar to the shift with labor and value Foucault talks about the ways in which grammar transforms words from the representative and subjects them to the rules of a grammatical system. So words shift from being mere representational systems to a part of a “grammatical totality” that gives them meaning in relation to the entire system. As an example I was thinking of how we read words as an entirety, as a whole system internal to itself, a collection of letters. In general, it is not important how we arrange letters in a word, if the first and last letter remain in tact our brains will reassemble and read the word as an entirety. For example, “lcous of pwoer” or “dsiuorcse of kwoneglde.”

Week 2 response

I am not really sure of my understanding of Foucault’s and Kant’s texts. With that having been said, what struck me as most interesting while I was reading Foucault's Introduction was the repeated appearance of the theme of reciprocity. In Foucault's discussion of Spielen, for example, he writes that human beings engage themselves in the world by playing the game, but, at the same time, it is the world that acts as their teacher in the sense that they are bound by the prescriptions and rules of the world. (54) Relationship of reciprocity also exists between Können and the Sollen: borrowing the words of Foucault, “Power at the root of its possibilities” (the Interior) might be “translated and betrayed in its Phenomenon” (the Exterior), but it is in such perversion of Power that the Power is recalled “in the mode of obligation.” (72) Anthropology’s Didactic and Characteristic work in the same way in that “man does not make anything of his possibilities without also being engaged in their manifestations,” (71) and it is in their manifestations that the truth about the possibilities are revealed; in other words, cognizing the Interior of the Human Beings leads to cognizing the Exterior and, in return, cognizing the Exterior helps cognizing the Interior. The question of Was ist der Mensch? in relation to the knowledge of the world seems to work in similar ways: in answering the question of “who is the human being?” one cannot help but to invoke the world because human beings view themselves as “citizens of the world.” It is the ‘I am’ that discovers the world in playing its games, but through their interactions with the world they also come to objectify themselves as a part of the world. (79) A good illustration of this is in the case of Kantian banquet, enabled by language, people converse and interact with each other, and it is in this moment that an individual’s freedom encounters that of others and, as a result, becomes a part of the totality. (102)

Moreover, when the Critique, to the three questions of “what can I know, what should I do, and what may I hope for?”, added the fourth question of “what is human being?”, the fourth question, in turn, gave rise to anthropological questions of “The sources of human knowledge, the extent of the possible and natural use of every knowledge, and the limits of reason.” (82) But Foucault writes that the set of three anthropological questions ultimately comes back to the set of three questions of the Critique. The three anthropological questions can all be answered in terms of the connections between the world and the human beings: in the sense that the world “envelops all real existence”, it is the source of human knowledge; the world is also a human’s domain in that it is a set system of necessities, and so it is the extent of the possible and natural use of every knowledge; the world is also the limits of reason because it is impossible for human beings to function beyond the world. In turn, the world as a source tells human beings what they can know, the world as a domain tells them what it is that they should be doing, and the world as a limit lets them know what they can hope for. Therefore, Foucault writes that anthropological questions, which repeat the questions of the Critique, have no independent content of their own.

Historicizing and Language

Foucault's stylistic approach to his Introduction to Kant's Anthropology reveals how committed he is to historicizing Kant's text. As he shows how the text interacts with the Copernican revolution, the influence of the Kantian system on medicine, Kant's own many years of teaching his class on Anthropology as he was writing his critiques, as well as the intellectual exchanges with Beck, Schutz, and Hufeland, Foucault is able to access Kant's work in a highly contextualized way.

This approach produces a critique that works on multiple levels. Most importantly, it dissects the historical circumstance of the Anthropology to reveal how Kant undercuts his argument for the a priori existence of the capacity for understanding in each individual through the transcental illusion, namely, the sleight of hand in thinking that the idea of human finitude is natural rather than our own retroactive reconstruction. However, Foucault believes the structure of the mind that Kant describes in the Critique is still valid in the Anthropology--only that now we must forget trying to get back and some originary or a priori, but enact it in the "temporal dimension," which is necessarily mediated by language. Here is the origins for Foucault's notion that what can be considered "knowledge" must be communicated between people through language. Language then becomes all-important in the construction of Foucault's notion of the "episteme" or discourse.

I also think that his conclusion with the Nietzschean gesture is very intriguing--I haven't read The Order of Things but I believe that argument is better elaborated in the latter work....

Week 2 Reading Response

The ways in which the human, nature, reason were theorized by Kant and other Enlightenment thinkers are fraught with Cartesian dualisms that feminist, anti-racist, and queer theoretical positions and social movements have taken serious issue with for decades (over two hundred years in the case of feminism). This is due primarily to the fact that Enlightenment thought as the foundation of Western liberal discourses and frameworks that most modern democratic societies are based on violently center the rational individual (Western, white, male, presumably heterosexual) and private property and justify domination and competition as a means to achieve individual freedom even as they assert common notions of liberty and freedom. That said...

1) In "The Idea of Universal History," Kant appears to be searching for a working and what he believes to be inclusive definition of the cosmopolitan "political body of the future" that is first and foremost concerned with "maintaining the whole" (53). He prefaces his idea of cosmopolitanism with the idea of the unity of the continent of Europe as he speaks of the unity of the whole and what he refers to as the necessary competition that drives humans to be all that nature has in store for them. Today, cosmopolitanism is infused with capitalist neoliberal economic and political practices and policies that create unified systems of oppression that are shared worldwide although distinct in their own contexts as well as mutual interest upper-class elites, namely in the U.S. and Europe, as capitalist competition continues to drive and move capital transnationally.

How does Kant's notion of the cosmopolitan stand up to contemporary notions of the cosmopolitan that are dictated by capitalism and capitalist exploitation?

2) Kant offers strong critiques of war in the Idea of Universal History (pp. 47, 48, & 51) because of the debt it generates, the uncertain outcomes, the harm it causes to surrounding states. He asserts that societies should work their way out of political conflict and invest in progress through the cultivation of education; governments, Western in particular, are stunting the growth of their citizens as they take part in expansionism, colonialism, and other forms of domination. This goes well with his assertion that creating a “civil society that can administer universal justice” is the most important challenge to humans (p. 45).

3) In “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View,” Kant articulates anthropology as a move toward “cognizing the interior and exterior of the human being,” as explained in the anthropological didactic, this fuels the colonizing and problematic argument that he makes throughout all of the readings for today that (some) humans are privileged superior knowers of the world.

At the same time, I found his analysis of the necessity for a (re)cognition of the sensitized experience of life provocative: "There are also many cases where we do not even trust the judgment of our own senses alone” (17). Because the Enlightenment tradition privileges reason and rationality from the mind, it is difficult to cognize the proprioceptive, the affective domains of embodied ways of knowing and experiencing life and the world. Although, Kant is somewhat contradictory in articulating this issue as he continues to privilege human science, and white western androcentric thinking and claims to truth and knowledge, he is cognizant and calling attention to the necessity to understand and be in-tune with the ways in which senses affect how people understand the world. He adds to this idea, in “The Critique of Pure Reason” with the introduction of the concept of intuition. Kant utilizes an analysis of the senses and apperception as ways to claim the relationality of learning and understanding in order to create a contrast to the individualist journey for affirmation and personal gain, a journey that he simultaneously endorses: "For through, the I, as simple presentation, nothing manifold is given; only in intuition, which is distinct from this presentation, can a manifold be given and only through combination can it be through in one consciousness" (179).

The idea of "one consciousness" works well with his concept of the unity of the whole, and setting aside the totalizing voice of it not to mention all of the people who aren't centered in his thought (women, people of color, poor people), in what ways might it be in conversation with human rights discourses today that operate on certain universalist claims to social and political entitlements?

Anthropology and the Humanities

In my reading of Foucault's Introduction, I was most concerned with how his presentation of Kant's Anthropology relates to our own consideration of the humanities.  Within the space of this post, I would like to address two themes that I hope will relate to broader discussion: the epistemological centrality of the human being, and the self-reflexive role of the human being in the world.

With regard to the former, Foucault returns again and again to the basic question underlying Kant's Anthropology: "Was ist der Mench?"  (What is the human being?).  This question provides not only the impetus for the practice of anthropology, but also the fundamental orientation for all philosophical inquiry.  Only insofar as one is human can one approach other questions such as "what can I know?" or "what should I do?"  As a human endeavor, philosophy cannot stand outside the purview of the humanities.  This reading of Kant brings his Anthropology into dialogue with his three Critiques.  It also seems to drive Foucault's historical analysis of these texts, as he emphasizes Kant's contemporaneous engagement with the Anthropology and the Critiques.

The second theme relates closely to the first.  In our meeting last week, Travis introduced Foucault's notion of the human being as empirico-transcendental doublet.  In Foucault's view of Kantian philosophy, the human being is at once the transcendental subject and the empirical object of knowledge.  Addressing the aim of anthropological reflection, Foucault emphasizes Kant's idea of "Spielen" (to play), the quotidian human connection to the world.  Only through this connection do we relate to the world around us.  Yet we do not stand apart from all that we encounter--we are also a part of the game.

Go Ahead and Post

Please go ahead and start posting right here. Keep in mind that the posts are only responses to the week's readings. You can write about things you find interesting, confusing, or difficult. I encourage you to try to post as far ahead of class as possible. Try to read each others' posts before class. I will read the posts as well. We will be building off of the posts in our class discussion. It is okay to post before you have finished the reading.

Japanese and Korean Sources

I have begun to compile a bibliography of some relevant Japanese and Korea language sources that those with the requisite language knowledge could present on in class. I have posted the short list to the CCLE course web-site (underneath the syllabus). I will be adding to it along the way. However, after collecting some titles, I realized it may be more fruitful and efficient, if you are interested in finding a text to present on, that we discuss your interests first. Of course, you may not need any suggestions, in which case you can just present on whatever texts you are working on presently in your research. Again, this presentation is not required, but rather is meant to provide a forum for those working in Asian Studies to present their work to an inter-displinary (and captive) audience, and to connect it up with some of the theoretical issues we are dealing with in the course. By the way, the presentation could easily become the basis for the final paper as well.

Corrections / Additions to Week 2 Reading Guide

As you'll see, I wrote out the Reading Guide rather quickly...

1) In my haste, I accidentally wrote "Welterkenntniss" and "Menscherkenntniss.". The terms are actually "Weltkenntniss" and "Menschen-Kenntniss." "Kenntniss" means "knowledge," whereas "Erkenntniss" is more specifically "cognition." So, knowledge of the world and knowledge of men.

2) There is an incomplete sentence in the "QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION" section. It should read, "The concept of Kunst suggests both artifice and the intentional production of meaningful phenomena." Also, the end of the sentence before that should read "a phenomenon" not "a phenomena."

3) Foucault uses "I-subject" and "I-object." I wrote "object-I" and "subject-I."

4) Upon further review I believe that Foucault is referring to the whole critical project (including all three Critiques) when he writes, "the Critique." However, the Critique of Pure Reason is still central because that is where Kant discusses "apperception" and "understanding."

5) One important point I did not include is that Kant is concerned with 4 main questions. What can I know? (addressed in The Critique of Pure Reason); What should I do? (addressed in The Critique of Practical Reason); What can I hope for? (addressed in The Critique of Judgment); and, finally, What is man? (dealt with, obviously, in the Anthropology). Foucault states that the final question, "What is man?" does not have an independent content, but rather is to carry the division of the other three questions into a final cohesion (p. 86 is crucial here). After all, what is the being that knows, acts, and hopes? Foucault goes as far as to say that the Anthropology takes the Kantian project from mere critical philosophy to "the realization of transcendental philosophy?" What he seems to mean is that "man" is the regulative idea that allows us to imagine that all of the conditions of possibility for an adequate knowledge have been met. Does Foucault overstate the primacy of the Anthropology?