Continuing on from where I left on Friday, I think the main issue I've come to take with Foucault are his ethics. It seems to me that, when confronted with the problem of reflection in the sciences, Foucault's response was to embrace it instead of confront it. I, myself, am struggling to understand what I mean by this, but it seems to me that Foucault doesn't address the issue of reflection so much as he accepts it and even uses it to his advantage.
At the crux of all of Foucault's observations and analyses is the idea of contingency; that this is how it is, but that it very well could have been another way. I guess at this point I should say that it's mostly his forays into specific subjects, like sexuality or prison, that I tend to take issue with. I would go so far as to say that all of his epistemological, socio-historical and methodological texts are fine by me.
What Foucault does in these analyses of social institutions is dissect and de-robe them of all the assumptions they rely on in order to not only exist, but to develop and vindicate themselves. This, at the time, was incredibly groundbreaking. Now, however, it's left something to be desired for me, especially after I began reading Luhmann and other social systems theorists. I believe that, because of the time he was writing in, Foucault was more concerned with proving his analytical methods as valid, instead of trying to understand the institutions he was observing.
Foucault doesn't work with hypotheses. Foucault instead seems to dig and dig until he can get to the bottom of something. Foucault readily admits that this is more of a motivator than an actually expected result, but he nonetheless finds it fruitful to see just how far down he can get into the historical and social foundations under-girding contemporary social institutions. Archaeology was certainly an apt descriptor of what Foucault was trying to achieve.
By not working with hypotheses, Foucault's 'archaeological' work seems less like an exploration as it is a process attempting to prove something that the researcher is already convinced is true, and what it seems Foucault is always trying to convinced us of is the reflective and how it places in question the the logoi and theories informing the majority of our social institutions. The issue I primarily take with this is where it places reflection. Foucault doesn't ever seem to subject himself to the same challenge of reflection as he does to the sciences he sees operating around him. Instead, the challenge of reflection on Foucault's work is worn like a kind of badge of honour, or at least a scapegoat that leads to incredibly unproductive thinking. The contingency that is established in accepting the reflexive turn in scientific thought is what Foucault intends to prove, thus when reflection is used to scrutinize Foucault's use of it, than we're seemingly only further proving Foucault's point. You can't criticize Foucault with a look at reflexive science when that's exactly what he's attempting to establish in the first place. What Foucault sees as an attempt at exploring through the archaeology of science, I've come to see respect as a stepping stone, but as an incredibly stifling ethic that ultimately gets us nowhere else than accepting that our scientific methods are based on flimsy scaffolding. Latent in Foucault seems to be the idea that reflection is simply a challenge to science, and not one of its prime motivators.
Foucault's work proves the necessary consideration by the scientific community to consider our methods shaky foundations and massive short-comings. This reconsideration is based on the similarly valid notion that the scientific method is not without its issues regarding solipsism, tautology and tendency towards omnipotence. But where I've come to differ from Foucault is how he seems to present these shortcomings as science's weakness and seeds of downfall. Foucault's work finds solace in itself by addressing these things and then saying "You're preaching to the choir" when the critique is lobbed back towards it. What Foucault's work fails to recognize, however, is how these short-comings are actually a part of science's ability to recreate and adapt itself to new challenges. Science, like a lot of other social systems, doesn't admit defeat in the face of resistance. Science has yet to see its short-comings as a place to fold, but as a place to be productive. Foucault's work doesn't seem to take this into consideration.
Homeboy destroyed Chomsky tho.
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