Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

gracklegrackle wrote

Absolutely, as you said it's a very delicate topic (for most) and full of complexities. It's hard to discuss, in my experience, as I feel like a majority of anarchists and leftists I've spoken with are engaged in an intense, rigid binary of "If you call people out then you're no different than the police!" or "You deserved to be called out and socially ostracized!". I'm excited to see a growing number of anarchists walking away from something so harshly axiomatic.

What parts of the debate specifically? I've never really watched it all the way through, maybe it's about time. I think it's hilarious that Foucault was baked out of his mind during it. Also, I just read the other, I've been on a big Enzo Martucci kick lately! I've actually preparing to record readings of four pieces by him for a newer anarchist/post-left theory/writing youtube channel. He's great

5

Passive_Nihlist OP wrote

I would suggest reading or listening to the whole of the debate, the second half of the debate deals with the question of justice though. Here is a quote:

FOUCAULT: So it is in the name of a purer justice that you criticise the functioning of justice ?

There is an important question for us here. It is true that in all social struggles, there is a question of “justice”. To put it more precisely, the fight against class justice, against its injustice, is always part of the social struggle : to dismiss the judges, to change the tribunals, to amnesty the condemned, to open the prisons, has always been part of social transformations as soon as they become slightly violent. At the present time in France the function of justice and the police is the target of many attacks from those whom we call the “gauchistes”. But if justice is at stake in a struggle, then it is as an instrument of power; it is not in the hope that finally one day, in this or another society, people will be rewarded according to their merits, or punished according to their faults. Rather than thinking of the social struggle in terms of “justice”, one has to emphasise justice in terms of the social struggle.

In this way I perhaps find myself more on the "If you call people out then you're no different than the police!" side of your dichotomy. As to me Foucault’s point, which is tied to the discussion of human nature that starts this section is that any justice we seek, whether formally through the prisons or informally through canceling, is informed by a d reproduces Bourgeois notions of justice.

Connecting this to the piece "Neither Prison Nor Policemen" I think the idea of generalized values (morals), which are used to judge actions on their own, not in relation to our selves, is the problem of justice. And this leaves me with the conclusion that it is justice itself that is Bourgeois, which is to say political.

3