Ghost in the Wire

Hey Dr. Rufo,

I just wanted to say that I hope there's no hard feelings between us. I honestly was just throwing out a question, much less taking a firm position about anything. I personally like Derrida a lot, and I think he is a very useful theorist. I was just simply erecting a schema I thought made sense, and in fact I thought I made the idea up myself. Nevertheless, you have made some good points and I do see your perspective and I‘m sure if we were in person we could chat and I wouldn‘t be surprised if we would come to a consensus. I just want to say that I don’t think I was calling Derrida an anti materialist and much claim that, to me, it seems like he thinks ideas lead to the construction of the material rather than the reverse.
I'm a second year MA student so trust me man I still have a lot to learn. Once again I hope there are no hard feelings and I can’t wait to read your piece in the book by Biesecker and Lucaties. When will that be out anyway?

Take care and thank you for the insight :)

Josh H

PS: If you could recommend an article for me about these issues I’d be very grateful.

Look, there's absolutely no hard feelings. This is a debate that happens a lot, and this post was only marginally related to our exchange (related in that the exchange was a proximate cause, but not the source of my frustration). Suffice it to say that I think it's difficult to schematize poststructuralism at all. I have had similar arguments about schematizing "Theory." I've yet to figure out what's beneficial about doing so, or at least figuring out what benefit outweighs what I think of as obvious and negative political consequences. And by way of answering your postscript, and also affirming my point, check out Negri's response to Derrida's Specter of Marx in the compilation book Ghostly Demarcations. Negri complains that Derrida ignores material class relations, but does so from within what many consider another "posty" philosophy. I personally find Negri unconvincing, but it's something you might want to read through.

As for the BL materiality project, I have no idea what their timeframe looks like. But I think it will be a very interesting, possibly even very important, collection when it surfaces.

Just out of honest curiosity, and not as a call to debate, what are the obvious negative political consequences of schematizing theory?
Btw I tracked down your article Rhetoric and Power: Rethinking and Relinking the other day. I think its a really awesome article. Its about time someone placed a greater emphasis on power in the rhetoric field.
Your are really an inspiration to me since you yourself are rather new as a scholar and have already made a serious mark. I can tell your extremely passionate about rhetoric, just like me.
I'll be starting UT Austin next semester so I'm very excited about that. Maybe after going there for a couple years, I'll be able to engage you more.

Take care and see you at RSA,

Josh

Thanks for the feedback, though I must admit, I think that essay is wrong. I actually wrote that essay as a MA student, submitted it to A&A with minor modifications about a year and a half or so into my PhD program, didn't hear back from them for a year and a half, and had decided in the interim to drop the piece after a presumed rejection. But, as it turns out, they accepted the piece largely without revision, and as I'm happy with sections of it, I said sure. But I think I'm too quick to dismiss Foucault. The more accurate argument is not that Foucault's conception of power is problematic, especially in its later conception (which I still think is true), but that the use to which Foucault is put within discussions of rhetoric and power (from McGee to McKerrow) asks far too much from a concept that does far too little or very different sorts of expositive work. That's a slight difference in argumentative thrust, perhaps. My other disagreement with that piece is that, although I find Bourdieu's work interesting, I still think there are some serious problems with his conception of agency. Unfortunately for me and that piece, the much better and more succinct formulation, which comes courtesy of Ernesto Laclau, wasn't something I was exposed to until the end of my second doctoral year. For Laclau, rather than being a dialectical negotiation as it is for Bourdieu, agency is the distance between the structure that determines the decision and the decision itself. This is, so far, the best formulation of agency I've seen, and were I writing the piece today, I'd argue for a much more Derridean line (I find Laclau's arguments to be heavily Derridean).

As for the political consequences of schematizing Theory, let me point you to two posts here that were part of a rather tense exchange with the folks at The Valve: here's the first and here's the second. In addition, Matt Christie, who is one of the fine folks over at Long Sunday (and who was the one who invited me on board, for which I am in his debt), and who also blogs separately, has a fantastic round-up of related posts, which if you get bored and have a LOT of free time, will give you plenty to read on the subject.

To which "later Foucault" do you refer? Just out of curiosity. As a professional Foucault-watcher, I notice that the periodization of his work -- insofar as the secondary literature is concerned -- makes no sense whatsoever. "Power as such" was, primarily, a concern of the "middle" period; 76-78, mostly (D&P, 'SMDB', HSI). And I think this work was very much an elaboration of The Order of Things, which remains his best work.

Sorry, I don't actually periodize him that strongly. I meant something more along the lines of: earlier writings on power work well for me, by the time History of Sexuality 1 hits, well, he's lost me. So later Foucault should be read as "later (writings on power by) Foucault". Though I'm curious, what do you think about the evolution of the term in Foucault's middle period? Am I wrong in seeing an evolution, or broadening of the scope and the term? I also think the term becomes more corporeal in terms of its explicit location/siting in the body, though again, I'm certainly open to being wrong on that, too.

I like Order of Things, too, and I have a real soft spot for This is Not a Pipe.

The "normal" orthodox periodization (in terms of major publications) among the "Anglo-Foucauldians" is "archeaological" (up to, but not including D&P), "genealogical" (D&P, HSI) and then "ethical" (the rest). The lectures complicate the matters slightly, but when has complication ever gotten in the way of simplifying in order to create an orthodoxy?

I find the genealogical works on political theory to be the most interesting (the so-called middle period) along with OT. In terms of a political theory or in terms of politics, I think the ethical works suspect and I really don't know what to make of them. The middle period sees a certain shift -- away from rare and expert knowledges (penology, psychiatry) to the minor knowledges and an increase in concern with the theoretical/philosophical grounding of his work. The attempt to articulate a ground for his project is something I find quite interesting, especially when it is put in conversation with OT. I think the 'analytic' is an attempt to elaborate the final chapter in OT. Somewhere Stuart Elden refers to these works as a 'politicization' of OT. Seems to be an essentially correct intuition.

I think you're right about the body. I think he brings it in to create that ever-so-desired 'materialist' ontology and epistemology.

This is way after the fact, but for what's it worth I get the sense that the Derrida = radical idealist meme comes largely from a misreading of the "il n'y a pas de hors-texte" quotation. Many (but not all) of the people who are making sweeping claims about Derrida's work are, paradoxically, really only familiar with a tiny fraction of it. They've read, say, an article written by a guy whose college roommate once rolled a joint on the cover of Grammatology, and, of course, that quotation -- "There is nothing outside the text." The problem is that, even though Spivak is good about pointing out the French pun (hors-texte = book's back matter), which would normally alert Francophones that maybe the statement shouldn't be taken with the utmost seriousness, for native English speakers on the other hand, "There is nothing outside the text" just cries out deep-philosophical-claim-about-reality. We're left then with a bunch of know-nothings playing Samuel Johnson and kicking rocks to prove that, yes, indeed the world is not made of "text."

The best part of all this is that Derrida is really talking about what to do with context -- not to mention those wily transcendental signifieds -- and had our Johnsonites bothered to check the context of the quotation, they would see that in fact all this talk about nothing outside texts comes in midst of a discussion on Rousseau and biography.

Anyway, Derrida has an interesting essay on Paul de Man's ideas about the materiality of the letter in a collection called "Material Events," if anyone is interested. There, Derrida talks about a "materiality without matter" -- but I'll just leave it at that.