6 ms·

Michel Foucault in Death Valley: A Boom Interview with Simeon Wade

57 points by samclemens 9y ago

Gargoyle 9y ago
"We went to Zabriskie Point to see Venus appear. Michael placed speakers all around us, as no one else was there, and we listened to Elisabeth Schwarzkopf sing Richard Strauss’s, Four Last Songs. I saw tears in Foucault’s eyes. We went into one of the hollows and laid on our backs, like James Turrell’s volcano,[1] and watched Venus come forth and the stars come out later. We stayed at Zabriskie Point for about ten hours. Michael also played Charles Ives’s, Three Places in New England, and Stockhausen’s Kontakte, along with some Chopin…." That sounds like a fantastic evening even without the LSD. The referenced [1] link to Roden Crater doesn't work for me, presumably due to the www. But http://rodencrater.com http://rodencrater.com works fine.
minitel 9y ago
Everyone should take time to read about Foucault's support for the Iranian revolution (publishing sympathetic articles about the rebels in the French press), and apologetics for Sharia law. He used to make regular trips to Iran before the revolution. Not after though of course, because he was an openly gay man and they would have had to serve him a death penalty. http://newpol.org/content/revisiting-foucault-and-iranian-revolution http://newpol.org/content/revisiting-foucault-and-iranian-re... He was the prototype for the sort moral compass-less creature of the void we see haunting university Philosophy departments today. Very tragic figure. If you find yourself being drawn in by some of his words I recommend listening to some Jordan Peterson lectures regarding postmodernism as a counterbalance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf2nqmQIfxc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf2nqmQIfxc
indescions_2017 9y ago
First hand account of that apocryphal story about Foucault dropping acid in the California desert. That first photograph, though. Looks like the cover of an Aldous Huxley novel or an issue of Omni Magazine ;) Here's the paragraph from Logigue de sens where extolls the virtues of a successful trip: "One can easily see how LSD inverts relations between ill humour, stupidity and thought; no sooner has it short-circuited the suzerainty of categories than it tears away the ground from its indifference and reduces to nothing the glum mimicry of stupidity; not only does it reveal this whole univocal and a-catagorical mass to be rainbow-coloured, mobile, asymmetrical, decentered, spiraloid and resonating; it makes it swarm constantly with event-fantasies; sliding across this surface, which is at once punctiform and immensely vibratory, thought, freed from its catatonic chrysalis, has always contemplated the infinite equivalence which has become an acute event and a sumptuously adorned repetition."
- rhizome 9y ago
  Well, when you put it that way..."
- dEnigma 9y ago
  That paragraph certainly is hard to read. Sounds like something a high school student with a thesaurus might produce.
  - fish_fan 9y ago
    Yea, but it's a decent pitch for the experience. LSD is sensual.
  - danharaj 9y ago
    Deleuze is certainly hard to read, much of that is on purpose. It's better in the original French though. I started reading him recently myself.
  - thanatropism 9y ago
    A lot of those terms read evocative, but are actually technical terms in Deleuze's philosophy (and that of his predecessors). Deleuze is hard to understand because joining his world takes work. He's very precise. I don't even know why Deleuze is being connected to Foucault here. Those two helped market each other and had one political project in common (something re: abuse of power in prisons; but even Sartre was involved in this cause celèbre). But Foucault was a globe-trotter pleasure-seeker who got AIDS in the saunas of San Francisco and supported the Ayatollah's revolution. Deleuze on the other hand came from an ultra-conservative catholic background, was married only once to the mom of his kids, hated travel and probably never left France, and by all accounts was a great dad and husband. Whenever Deleuze writes about drugs in extension, he preaches prudence -- it's a particular example in the wider concept framework of deterritorialization and the "body without organs". Hardcore masochists (yes, there's quite some sexual moralism in Deleuze) and drug addicts are those who do it too much, without the proper prudence and understanding.
    - jancsika 9y ago
Yetanfou 9y ago
There was a comment here by one 'minitel' (a new, probably throw-away account) on Foucault's support for the Iranian revolution and the fact that the post-modern movement - for whom Foucault is one of the prime thinkers - is currently making headway into academia, mostly within the humanities but their reach seems to be spreading. Given that this article deals with Foucault it is relevant to identify where Foucalt's work currently stands in society. The author pointed at Jordan Peterson - a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto who ended up as the focal point of a discussion on the use of 'gender-neutral' pronouns due to his refusal to use what he described as politically-motivated, state-mandated non-sensical words. Peterson has gone on a crusade against postmodernism which he claims to be an extension of Marxism. For those who want to inform themselves on the criticism against postmodernism Peterson's explanations are a good starting point. He gave a lecture at Harvard titled "Mask of Compassion, Post-modernism and neo-marxism" where he clearly sets out his criticism against this philosophy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urd0IK0WEWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urd0IK0WEWU
- throwawayknecht 9y ago
  > Jordan Peterson - a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto who ended up as the focal point of a discussion on the use of 'gender-neutral' pronouns due to his refusal to use what he described as politically-motivated, state-mandated non-sensical words. What he actually did was protest adding "gender identity or expression" to the CHRA. You can read the entire legislative change at http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-16/royal-assent http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-16/royal-as..., it's quite short, and completely unobjectionable to anyone who's not making a living protesting a "neo-Marxist" bogeyman.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    What does "gender identity or expression" even mean? Why not, I dunno, express oneself as a human being as opposed by their gender? Assuming equality is the end play of course and not some war of the genders...
    - 9y ago
edco 9y ago
whats with all these articles about post-modernist quackademics lately?
f00_ 9y ago
really wierd, most of my exposure to foucault is indirect. this debate with chomsky on human nature is interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8

57 points by samclemens 9y ago

"We went to Zabriskie Point to see Venus appear. Michael placed speakers all around us, as no one else was there, and we listened to Elisabeth Schwarzkopf sing Richard Strauss’s, Four Last Songs. I saw tears in Foucault’s eyes. We went into one of the hollows and laid on our backs, like James Turrell’s volcano,[1] and watched Venus come forth and the stars come out later. We stayed at Zabriskie Point for about ten hours. Michael also played Charles Ives’s, Three Places in New England, and Stockhausen’s Kontakte, along with some Chopin…." That sounds like a fantastic evening even without the LSD. The referenced [1] link to Roden Crater doesn't work for me, presumably due to the www. But http://rodencrater.com http://rodencrater.com works fine.

minitel 9y ago

Everyone should take time to read about Foucault's support for the Iranian revolution (publishing sympathetic articles about the rebels in the French press), and apologetics for Sharia law. He used to make regular trips to Iran before the revolution. Not after though of course, because he was an openly gay man and they would have had to serve him a death penalty. http://newpol.org/content/revisiting-foucault-and-iranian-revolution http://newpol.org/content/revisiting-foucault-and-iranian-re... He was the prototype for the sort moral compass-less creature of the void we see haunting university Philosophy departments today. Very tragic figure. If you find yourself being drawn in by some of his words I recommend listening to some Jordan Peterson lectures regarding postmodernism as a counterbalance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf2nqmQIfxc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf2nqmQIfxc

indescions_2017 9y ago

First hand account of that apocryphal story about Foucault dropping acid in the California desert. That first photograph, though. Looks like the cover of an Aldous Huxley novel or an issue of Omni Magazine ;) Here's the paragraph from Logigue de sens where extolls the virtues of a successful trip: "One can easily see how LSD inverts relations between ill humour, stupidity and thought; no sooner has it short-circuited the suzerainty of categories than it tears away the ground from its indifference and reduces to nothing the glum mimicry of stupidity; not only does it reveal this whole univocal and a-catagorical mass to be rainbow-coloured, mobile, asymmetrical, decentered, spiraloid and resonating; it makes it swarm constantly with event-fantasies; sliding across this surface, which is at once punctiform and immensely vibratory, thought, freed from its catatonic chrysalis, has always contemplated the infinite equivalence which has become an acute event and a sumptuously adorned repetition."

rhizome 9y ago
Well, when you put it that way..."
dEnigma 9y ago
That paragraph certainly is hard to read. Sounds like something a high school student with a thesaurus might produce.
- fish_fan 9y ago
  Yea, but it's a decent pitch for the experience. LSD is sensual.
- danharaj 9y ago
  Deleuze is certainly hard to read, much of that is on purpose. It's better in the original French though. I started reading him recently myself.
- thanatropism 9y ago
  A lot of those terms read evocative, but are actually technical terms in Deleuze's philosophy (and that of his predecessors). Deleuze is hard to understand because joining his world takes work. He's very precise. I don't even know why Deleuze is being connected to Foucault here. Those two helped market each other and had one political project in common (something re: abuse of power in prisons; but even Sartre was involved in this cause celèbre). But Foucault was a globe-trotter pleasure-seeker who got AIDS in the saunas of San Francisco and supported the Ayatollah's revolution. Deleuze on the other hand came from an ultra-conservative catholic background, was married only once to the mom of his kids, hated travel and probably never left France, and by all accounts was a great dad and husband. Whenever Deleuze writes about drugs in extension, he preaches prudence -- it's a particular example in the wider concept framework of deterritorialization and the "body without organs". Hardcore masochists (yes, there's quite some sexual moralism in Deleuze) and drug addicts are those who do it too much, without the proper prudence and understanding.
  - jancsika 9y ago

Yetanfou 9y ago

There was a comment here by one 'minitel' (a new, probably throw-away account) on Foucault's support for the Iranian revolution and the fact that the post-modern movement - for whom Foucault is one of the prime thinkers - is currently making headway into academia, mostly within the humanities but their reach seems to be spreading. Given that this article deals with Foucault it is relevant to identify where Foucalt's work currently stands in society. The author pointed at Jordan Peterson - a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto who ended up as the focal point of a discussion on the use of 'gender-neutral' pronouns due to his refusal to use what he described as politically-motivated, state-mandated non-sensical words. Peterson has gone on a crusade against postmodernism which he claims to be an extension of Marxism. For those who want to inform themselves on the criticism against postmodernism Peterson's explanations are a good starting point. He gave a lecture at Harvard titled "Mask of Compassion, Post-modernism and neo-marxism" where he clearly sets out his criticism against this philosophy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urd0IK0WEWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urd0IK0WEWU

throwawayknecht 9y ago
> Jordan Peterson - a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto who ended up as the focal point of a discussion on the use of 'gender-neutral' pronouns due to his refusal to use what he described as politically-motivated, state-mandated non-sensical words. What he actually did was protest adding "gender identity or expression" to the CHRA. You can read the entire legislative change at http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-16/royal-assent http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-16/royal-as..., it's quite short, and completely unobjectionable to anyone who's not making a living protesting a "neo-Marxist" bogeyman.
- coldtea 9y ago
  What does "gender identity or expression" even mean? Why not, I dunno, express oneself as a human being as opposed by their gender? Assuming equality is the end play of course and not some war of the genders...
  - 9y ago

edco 9y ago

whats with all these articles about post-modernist quackademics lately?

f00_ 9y ago

really wierd, most of my exposure to foucault is indirect. this debate with chomsky on human nature is interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8