I'm very much enjoying jcj's dissertation piece linked above.
It is inevitably more theory heavy than other stuff on her blog/twitter. I have looked up four terms already (qua, post-structuralism, effacement, actus reus).
Here is jane clare Jones kicking great lumps out of Foucault's exceptionally dodgy thinking. First passage is this Foucault fellow, the second JCJ:
One day in 1867, a farm hand from the village of Lapcourt, who was somewhat simple-minded, employed here then there, depending on the season, living handto-mouth from a little charity or in exchange for the worst sort of labor, sleeping in barns and stables, was turned in to the authorities. At the border of a field, he had obtained a few caresses from a little girl, just as he had done before and seen done by the village urchins round about him; for, at the edge of the wood, or in the ditch by the road leading to Saint-Nicolas, they would play the familiar game called ‘curdled milk.’ So he was pointed out by the girl's parents to the mayor of the village, reported by the mayor to the gendarmes, led by the gendarmes to the judge, who indicted him and turned him over first to a doctor, then to two other experts who not only wrote their report but also had it published. What is the significant thing about this story? The pettiness of it all; the fact that this everyday occurrence in the life of village sexuality, these inconsequential bucolic pleasures, could become, from a certain time, the object not only of a collective intolerance but of a judicial action, a medical intervention, a careful clinical examination, and an entire theoretical elaboration (Foucault 1978:31)
JCJ: In case is not abundantly clear what’s wrong here, allow me to enumerate: 1. The detailed attention given to establishing the person of the farm hand, intended to elicit sympathy for his hardship. 2. The absence of any similar personification of the victim, a mere ‘little girl’ without history. 3. The obfuscatory use of the passive to avoid naming the farm hand as the agent of the action, and deflect attention from how the non-specific ‘caresses’ were ‘obtained.’ 4. The exculpation of this action by appeal to its normality, noting that it had been done before and that other ‘urchins’ had also done it. 5. The attempt to make the action picaresque by relaying a purportedly charming pastoral term for that type of caress that produces ‘curdled milk.’ 6. The further exculpation of the action by noting that this purportedly charming pastoral activity was ‘familiar’ and a ‘game.’ 7. The inattention to the fact that the parents’ reporting of the incident might suggest that it was more than just that. 8. The attention given to the disciplinary response aimed at the farm hand. 9. The total absence of concern for the consequences for the victim. 10. The claim that the story’s significance is its ‘pettiness.’ 11. The minimization of sexual abuse as an “everyday occurrence in the life of village sexuality.” 12. The claim that such acts are “inconsequential.” 13. The claim that they are “bucolic.” 14. The suggestion that what is most outrageous about this story is the “collective intolerance” directed at the poor unfortunate farm hand as opposed to the apologia for the molestation of children.
BRAVA
