Tavistock staff and Foucault

[MNadactyl]

In the Telegraph. A whistleblower is also quoted:

“The identity politics that is colonising our public services is only causing further division and distrust which I cannot condone.”

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/05/nhs-child-gender-clinic-forced-u-turn-bombardment-wokery/

"Another series of emails last year saw the Tavistock’s LGBTQI+ staff network write a glowing profile of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, whose theories have underpinned woke ideologies but who posthumously faced allegations he abused boys in Tunisia in the 1960s.
Appearing to dismiss these claims, the Tavistock staff email said: “After his death, Foucault’s life and work were subject to a series of salacious attacks that focused on his sexual preferences."
Queer theory
The group also encouraged Tavistock staff to embrace “queer theory”, including studying identities “in which gender does not follow from sex and those in which the practices of desire do not ‘follow’ from either sex or gender”, as well as “anti-porn politics” and “butch-femme erotics”.
Another profile by the staff group cited the queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s view that "‘many people have their richest mental/emotional involvement with sexual acts that they don't do, or even don't want to do”."

And are we to take it then that his depradations were research rather than his own peccadilloes?

No, they do have clear and distinct definitions, and they are not the same thing as each other

I didn't say they were the same.

Go on then. Explain post modernism without getting a crick in your neck!

The History of Sexuality is a three volume philosophical inquiry critiquing historical constructions of ideas of sexuality, and she’s taken an illustrative passage from the first few pages of the beginning of the introduction, that he’s using to critique historical ideas of sexuality, and claimed he’s advocating for it

It's also not difficult to read and understand and Vol 1 is really quite short.

@MNadactyl

Going back to the article:

"Another series of emails last year saw the Tavistock’s LGBTQI+ staff network write a glowing profile of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, whose theories have underpinned woke ideologies but who posthumously faced allegations he abused boys in Tunisia in the 1960s.
Appearing to dismiss these claims, the Tavistock staff email said: “After his death, Foucault’s life and work were subject to a series of salacious attacks that focused on his sexual preferences."

Why oh why has anyone in that place of work taken it upon themselves to write what they did, and to send it to others at work? There has to be more to this story.

The Tavistock is more like a postgraduate clinical university with multiple departments and clinics in the trust - it isn’t just GIDS. To think it is just the GIDS clinic is a major misunderstanding of what the Tavistock is.

The Tavistock is more like a postgraduate clinical university with multiple departments and clinics in the trust - it isn’t just GIDS. To think it is just the GIDS clinic is a major misunderstanding of what the Tavistock is.

So why is taking it upon yourself to email others to defend Foucault, a good thing? Or a necessary thing?

Also there has to be more to this. The actions of whoever the Foucault Fan is, seem unlikely (though not impossible) to have sprung from nothing.

There's more to this story. Has to be.

@SamphiretheStickerist

No, they do have clear and distinct definitions, and they are not the same thing as each other

I didn't say they were the same.

Go on then. Explain post modernism without getting a crick in your neck!

One useful definition of postmodernism might be something like:

It’s the period of history when stable understandings of modern life and the “grand narratives” of church, nation state, liberal values etc. have fractured under the economic pressures of late capitalism, so that they are replaced by competing different narratives of “truth” that can’t b measured against each other. A major part of this is the proliferation of narratives and screen media representations, so that society’s increasing inability to distinguish between representation and reality makes it impossible for us anymore to see and understand how we are manipulated by powerful economic forces and interests that we increasingly can’t free ourselves from.

Most “postmodern” philosophers were in fact warning of the state of the postmodern, and highly critical of it - which they saw as an impending nihilistic era of fake news, commodification and the death of authentic human experience in favour of simulations and commercial representations that made us all puppets to powerful capitalist interests.

Poststructuralism is something different.

@MNadactyl

The Tavistock is more like a postgraduate clinical university with multiple departments and clinics in the trust - it isn’t just GIDS. To think it is just the GIDS clinic is a major misunderstanding of what the Tavistock is.

So why is taking it upon yourself to email others to defend Foucault, a good thing? Or a necessary thing?

Also there has to be more to this. The actions of whoever the Foucault Fan is, seem unlikely (though not impossible) to have sprung from nothing.

There's more to this story. Has to be.

Christ, I’m just trying to explain something that has been misunderstood - no fandom required. It’s important to actually know what things are and what they mean!

I’m not emailing you either, I’m posting on a bloody message board!

Now do it without the c+p from Wikipedia!

What is it in real terms, in every day life, philosophy? What does it mean, how does it frame thoughts, explanations etc?

And again, I didn't say they were the same!

I certainly haven’t cut and pasted from Wikipedia - in fact the Wikipedia entry for postmodernism is extremely bad.

It doesn’t “frame thoughts and expectations” - it’s diagnostic. It points to what happens when populations are no longer able to distinguish effectively between truth and lies, and suggests that when that process is complete, we won’t ever be able to free ourselves from the economic forces of capitalism. Basically in a nutshell it predicts Donald Trump!

Start with Lyotard’s “The Postmodern Condition”; or even his “The Postmodern Explained to Children” - both should be easily found online.

It doesn’t “frame thoughts and expectations” - it’s diagnostic. It points to what happens when populations are no longer able to distinguish effectively between truth and lies, and suggests that when that process is complete, we won’t ever be able to free ourselves from the economic forces of capitalism. Basically in a nutshell it predicts Donald Trump!

I do get this ... kind of. I think, though, that many have used postmodernism rather badly and as a result, it has degenerated into a rather crude advocacy for relativism.

Oh, I know what wiki says and much of it is word for word what you posted. Ideas presented in the same order, etc.

I suspect I was lecturing about postmodernism and it's probable effects on sport, sport history (a la Booth etc) way before you could spell it.

As I said, hubris! Not pretty.

Yes, though there aren’t many philosophers of any philosophical discipline who have actually advocated for relativism. It’s more often the case that those who have used it as a form of diagnostic or thought experiment get misunderstood as being for it rather than critiquing it. Postmodernism has its artistic styles as well, which, because they are often kitsch or ironic, get mistaken for some kind of advocacy for the postmodern. In fact much “postmodernism” in critical theory is unutterably bleak and terrifying, like a nihilist warning of the extremes of capitalist power. When Baudrillard writes about how the first gulf war has become a form of video game or power simulation for the West, he isn’t arguing that this is a good thing - far from it.

@SamphiretheStickerist

Oh, I know what wiki says and much of it is word for word what you posted. Ideas presented in the same order, etc.

I suspect I was lecturing about postmodernism and it's probable effects on sport, sport history (a la Booth etc) way before you could spell it.

As I said, hubris! Not pretty.

Can you show me how the Wikipedia entry is “word for word” what I’ve just written myself? You won’t be able to, because it’s not true.

Claiming random shit on internet message boards and expecting that you can bend the truth just because you say it’s so, is, I’m afraid, pretty much a living definition of the postmodern.

It’s more often the case that those who have used it as a form of diagnostic or thought experiment get misunderstood as being for it rather than critiquing it

To be fair, those misunderstanding it are (many) academics.

Claiming random shit on internet message boards and expecting that you can bend the truth just because you say it’s so, is, I’m afraid, pretty much a living definition of the postmodern

🤣

In fact Foucault’s work is actually far closer to a gender critical understanding of the trans phenomenon than anything else. A Foucauldian study of gender ideology would see it as a transient historical phenomenon produced by the medical establishment and social contagion, rather than the reverse.

Agree @nightwakingmoon - there's a really good Savage Minds podcast with Julian Vigo and Heather Brunskell-Evans on a feminist understanding of Foucault.

I do think that there's a separate question here about how we deal with artists, writers, philosophers etc fr the past, whose behaviour we now judge to be reprehensible. Marx was pretty awful to his wife; Picasso was pretty awful to every woman in his life ...

If we start winnowing out people of the past in this way then we're probably just left with William Godwin (an extraordinary man, Mary Wollstonecraft's partner).

Yes, there is an analytical, scholarly, careful conversation to have about links between Foucault's notion of a "heterotopia" and his pederasty/paedophilia. But rejecting out of hand possibly really interesting & liberating ideas because of the amorality of their thinker isn't that.

I don't like feeling like I need to excuse male sexually abusive behaviour. It's a horribly paradoxical situation to have to think in.

But as I say (a lot) to my students, thinking in this way isn't black and white. It's the shades of grey which are interesting & where we can prod and explore and investigate.

@SamphiretheStickerist

Now do it without the c+p from Wikipedia!

What is it in real terms, in every day life, philosophy? What does it mean, how does it frame thoughts, explanations etc?

And again, I didn't say they were the same!

This is so rude. I think night’s posts are really clear and useful and I neither know much nor give much of a shit about these disciplines in my day to day life.

You’re coming across like you just want to pick a fight.

Here's Dr Brunskell-Evans' website - I think there are links to various of her talks & interviews about Foucault. Foucault's work is a tough read (I remember hacking away at the Archaeology of Knowledge as a 2nd Year History student, back in the late 1970s, and finding it sooo frustrating & difficult!)

www.heather-brunskell-evans.co.uk/category/philosophy/

Most “postmodern” philosophers were in fact warning of the state of the postmodern, and highly critical of it - which they saw as an impending nihilistic era of fake news, commodification and the death of authentic human experience in favour of simulations and commercial representations that made us all puppets to powerful capitalist interests.

I'd add two things
Small thing: Fredric Jameson links postmodernism explicitly with late capitalism. And not in a good way, (although Jameson himself might say he's working within pomo ... )

It’s the period of history when stable understandings of modern life and the “grand narratives” of church, nation state, liberal values etc. have fractured under the economic pressures of late capitalism

Bigger thing: various lines of scholarly enquiry across the first half of the 20th century converge in a fundamental questioning & interrogation of the Enlightenment grand narratives - grand narratives such as the primacy and [ideological] neutrality of reason.

I think the one grand narrative we're still stuck with is that of progress ...

I am but a mere undergrad and nowhere near as intelligent as the academics here, but I am deeeep into Foucault for my extended study and agree that whilst, as a person, he was problematic, the work is certainly more aligned with GC views than the trans ideology.

Particularly 'group think' and governmentality and the power/knowledge relation.

Also slightly baffled that somebody would start a thread to complain about an email that badly interpreted Foucault and then become confused when people discuss Foucault. What response were you expecting?!

@nightscrollingdoom

In a nutshell, her statements on Foucault are wrong because she misrepresents Foucault’s analysis of sexuality as advocating it instead of critiquing it.

The History of Sexuality is a three volume philosophical inquiry critiquing historical constructions of ideas of sexuality, and she’s taken an illustrative passage from the first few pages of the beginning of the introduction, that he’s using to critique historical ideas of sexuality, and claimed he’s advocating for it.

Thanks for your interesting comments on Foucault. It's really useful to hear more on the theory from someone who's read it.

And while I appreciate arguments separating art from the artist etc I find I am very wary about listening to arguments on sexuality from someone who allegedly abused 9 year old boys. Whether he was critiquing or advocating sexuality - how do we place faith in a teacher who has something so badly wrongly skewed?

Lastly, and I'm not trying to be pedantic, you did say 'the actual theory - which takes a decade or more of study to read and understand' - most people are not going to dedicate a decade to read and understand Foucault when we are concerned with the safety of children.

This is maybe where some of the tension in this conversation is coming from? Some of us are approaching it as theory, some are more concerned with pragmatic application.

Are GCs concerned with removing the "incest taboo"?

And the email is but a window into what has to be much more of a story, as I've said. It's very unclear why someone would seemingly take it upon themselves to email out defending his reported actions and not his theory (if the theory is so unproblematic). Still no answers on that point.

@LaChanticleer

Most “postmodern” philosophers were in fact warning of the state of the postmodern, and highly critical of it - which they saw as an impending nihilistic era of fake news, commodification and the death of authentic human experience in favour of simulations and commercial representations that made us all puppets to powerful capitalist interests.

I'd add two things
Small thing: Fredric Jameson links postmodernism explicitly with late capitalism. And not in a good way, (although Jameson himself might say he's working within pomo ... )

It’s the period of history when stable understandings of modern life and the “grand narratives” of church, nation state, liberal values etc. have fractured under the economic pressures of late capitalism

Bigger thing: various lines of scholarly enquiry across the first half of the 20th century converge in a fundamental questioning & interrogation of the Enlightenment grand narratives - grand narratives such as the primacy and [ideological] neutrality of reason.

I think the one grand narrative we're still stuck with is that of progress ...

Yes exactly - well, Jameson derives his argument on this ultimately from Adorno, so his focus on the transition from modernity to late capitalism in Postmodernism is explicitly a critique of Enlightenment though, but an ambivalent one, since he suggests that Enlightenment modernity allows for the entry of critical amticapitalist thought in a way that postmodernism no longer does.

@DomesticatedZombie - but none of his theory actually says anything like that, and staff at the Tavistock is not the same as the staff of GIDS.

This thread has actually given me a fantastic idea for a book though - so for that many thanks! Maybe it’s time for a new Lyotardian “Report on the Condition of Knowledge”….