Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault

January 23, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: sociology

WikiMedia Foundation, UNESCO, COL, OER all come to mind when Foucault finishes up with a caution on that we must not reinvent oppressive institutions. Such eloquence. Where did all that go?

Thanks for the pointer Peter 🙂

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January 23, 2009 at 7:13 pm

Sean FitzGerald

Falling on deaf ears I’m afraid, Leigh. Those in power in the institutions are always blind to their own power, no matter how progressive they think they are.

January 27, 2009 at 10:58 am

Scott Leslie

“WikiMedia Foundation, UNESCO, COL, OER all come to mind when Foucault finishes up with a caution on that we must not reinvent oppressive institutions.”

Wow, “oppressive?” Really? I am more than willing to accept that each of these groups unintentionally excludes or ignores concerns, perspectives, people, groups, etc, but “oppressive?” That would stike me as also including not just the willingness to do so, but the unwillingness to even contend that this might be the case. Do you have examples of specifics here?

I think I understand what Foucault is describing here, and any progressive movement would seem to do well to contain critical faculties directed also at itself. But I wonder if there are not more obvious offenders to point fingers and energy at than the efforts you’ve named.

January 27, 2009 at 11:49 am

leighblackall

I’m surprised you find it hard to imagine, or that “unintentionally excluding or ignoring concerns, perspectives, people, groups, etc,” is not leading to oppression if not opressive already. I didn’t say these examples ARE opressive – but that by becoming institutions, they should be cautious of becoming so.

Examples for Wikimedia Foundation… zealous editors and deletion policies, copyright inflexibility, hegenomy, political cliques, a class of volunteer with more status over another…

UNESCO, COL and OER, hegenomy in terms of globilisation and neo colonialism; an us and them, north and south, developed and undeveloped perspective.. capitalist values.. etc

What Foucault (and Chomsky) describes, is what Chomsky offers a suggested solution to.. “federated networks and association” and what Downes reiterated with his Groups and Networks work back in 2006.

January 27, 2009 at 12:13 pm

Scott Leslie

Is it your experience that the groups you cite aren’t conscious of these issues, or trying to negotiate or mitigate them? That’s what I meant by “critical faculties directed towards themselves.” My experience is that while the specifics you describe exist, they don’t do so either in the absence of constructive critique nor through active efforts to be ‘oppressive’ – there is room for change. Is it inherent to the nature of their structures? Maybe. Perhaps ‘federated networks and association’ will prove different, we’ll see as those efforts emerge, but you know as well (your last post on Gatto would seem to indicate this) that this is also too glib by half. There’s a lot to be said for adopting structures and practices that are designed for inclusion, but there’s also much to be said for the difficult work of negotiating, and my experience (and maybe it differs with yours) is that in the orgs you reference there is room for that, not so much where real ‘oppression’ is concerned. I guess I just bristled a bit at that term, it seemed pretty loaded, but I’ll alllow that I’m not taking the violence done by wikiemdia’s editing policies seriously enough.

January 27, 2009 at 12:24 pm

leighblackall

I think they are concious in as much as they can be with the people they have involved. That means it is western centric, technocentric, and ameri-centric. Are there conversations being had about neo colonialism and power distribution in wiki and UN circles? I don’t encounter it. I have raised it once or twice in the Wikieducator project.. and a few people relate – usually people from countries that are sensitive to colonialism in their past – and others react rather passionately at the possible question of not-doing-good.. but the thing that struck me when I started working in wiki projects like Wikiversity and Wikieducator is just how much I had to leave behind just to work in with and agree to that group. Where as, in a wider web2 context there is more freedom in being associated by virtue of networked connectedness.

Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault

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