Theory is a club/Foucault Jurassic Park

 

Ugh, theory is a club. Ugh, theory requires chops. Foucault’s name-dropping feels like the initiation of a secret handshake I don’t know the response to. While some of the most rewarding knowledge I’ve encountered alienates before it opens itself up, I can’t help but wonder what the academic world would be like if minds like Foucault slowed down. On the other hand, dense, stubborn text can serve the knowledge pool by requiring communal decodings which keep the academic environment alive, perhaps preventing some of the consolidation Foucault appears to examine, label, and account for epistemologically.

Breaking off one small part (and I could have this totally backwards) a priori as it is used in this selection refers to positivity of discourse. These collective positivities have certain characteristics that he stresses, including the tendency for reciprocal influencing with the elements they connect. All of this determines “decisive thresholds”.

Broadly (and a fixity of scope is something I feel Foucault struggles with providing his readers – but then again, theory in general addresses lofty atmospheric ideas over immediately tangible stimuli) It would seem that Foucault is questioning the ways human epistemological activity can rely on the collective concepts it generates in its wake.

Insert a silly reference to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which, since it applies to theory, puts us ALL in a club, one which Foucault cannot rope off in part for VIP bottle service as he subdivides the atomic structure of bodies of knowledge, language – masses that no individual can conceive of in totality.

Insert sci-fi script idea of future super-intelligent A.I. thinking Foucault was the hippest human ever. They resurrect him a la jurassic park. Rather than provide entertainment, he questions their logic. Mayhem. Nobody makes it off of the island in one piece.

One Reply

  • Thanks for this, Emil. I share your healthy theory skepticism! (You might appreciate this post I wrote a few years ago: http://wordsinspace.net/shannon/2012/05/07/theoretical-humility/ 🙂

    We’ll “unpack” (pardon my theory-speak) some of these confounding terms — a priori, positivities, etc. — in our discussion today. But yes, he is thinking about what “systems of statements” unify and govern what can be thought and said in particular times and places. And I totally appreciate that you’ve called out the paradox (?) of Foucault’s own project: that he, too, is structured by the archive of his own time — which undoubtedly informs the way he perceives all those other historical structures. And what will our Future Intelligences think of *our* archive — and of Foucault himself?

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