Thursday, June 18, 2009
Dialectical logic versus Strategic logic
Dialectical logic puts to work contradictory terms within the homogeneous. I suggest replacing this dialectical logic with what I would call strategic logic. A logic of strategy does not stress contradictory terms within a homogeneity that promises their resolution in a unity. The function of strategic logic is to establish the possible connections between disparate terms which remain disparate. The logic of strategy is the logic of connections between the heterogeneous and not the logic of the homogenization of the contradictory. (TBoBP, p. 42).
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Zizek observes, in some footnote in In Praise of Lost Causes, that one often finds people attacking straw-man versions of Hegel, only to argue for their "better" idea, which ends up being what Hegel really said. Whether or not one can read it back into Hegel (and certainly, I'd say there's at least room to argue that one could...), it's interesting to see that the Althusserians attacked 'Hegelianism' in the '60s as teleological, and offered up in its place a genuinely Marxist dialectic: the thinking of true contradiction, a totality that was not a unity, a process without a subject...And here we have Foucault, in the late '70s, apparently attacking the Marxist idea of dialectic as being teleological, and offering us in its place a "strategic logic": the thinking of true contradiction, a totality that is not a unity...
I don't think Foucault is attacking Hegel or Marx here. The context doesn't indicate any such intention. He is more interested in defining the concept of strategic logic rather than attacking dialectical logic.
If I recall this passage correctly, he's explaining why he's not interested in using a dialectical logic. As you quote yourself, he's suggesting that we replace dialectical logic with strategic logic. It's not an explicit swipe at Marx or Hegel in this passage, but we can hardly read his account of "dialectical logic" as being neutral...
Sure, Foucault's account of dialectical logic is not neutral, but I would have thought that it doesn't necessarily correspond to Marx's and Hegel's accounts either. What I want to claim is that Foucault is much more respectful to Marx and Hegel than is normally thought. Would you dispute this claim?
Aha! That claim I absolutely agree with! And, in fact, that's one of the things I like best about the lectures that are being translated and published these days; BoBP specifically is an excellent resource for rethinking the all-too-common story about the relationship between Foucault and Marx, Hegel, etc.
I really like this quote from Foucault and find it quite liberating. The ensuing conversation is edifying.
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