#criticalphilosophy

[markblasini]

"Most people expect that the magic formula, just to use the sounds, "You should do this," might have an actual effect on reality.

- Bruce Lee

[markblasini]

3 questions of critical philosophy

How do we (society, current institutions, philosophers) currently understand or interpret “x” (i.e. a problematic concept, such as justice, sexuality, desire, power, gender, etc.)?

In what ways does our current interpretation of “x” limit, hinder, or restrict our ability to produce an affirmative understanding of “x” in our discourse and social practices? (By affirmative, I mean that the understanding allows for new interpretations to be possible.)

In what ways can we transform our current interpretation of “x” so that we are better able to enact an affirmative understanding of it?  

[markblasini]

The real is not impossible; on the contrary, within the real everything is possible, everything becomes possible. Desire does not express a molar lack within the subject; rather, the molar organization deprives desire of its objective being.

Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus

[markblasini]

Critique...doesn't have to lay down the law for the law. It isn't a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is.

Michel Foucault, “Questions of Method”

[markblasini]

I don't write for an audience. I write for users, not readers.

Michel Foucault

[markblasini]

My problem...is in understanding how truth games are set up and how they are connected with power relations.

Michel Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom”

[markblasini]

I refuse to reply to the question I am sometimes asked: 'But if power is everywhere, there is no freedom.' I answer that if there are relations of power in every social field, this is because there is freedom everywhere.

Michel Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom”

[markblasini]

When one speaks of power, people immediately think of a political structure, a government, a dominant social class, the master and the slave, and so on. I am not thinking of this at all when I speak of relations of power. I mean that in human relationships, whether they involve verbal communication such as we are engaged in at this moment, or amorous, institutional, or economic relationships, power is always present: I mean a relationship in which one person tries to control the conduct of the other.

Michel Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom”