Sartre’a Karşı? Foucault ve Bourdieu’da Düşünme ve Entelektüelin Siyasal Sorumluluğu / Foucault and Bourdieu on the Intellectual contra Sartre: Thinking and Political Responsibility

Nazlı GÜLSOY

Article Details

Sartre’a Karşı? Foucault ve Bourdieu’da Düşünme ve Entelektüelin Siyasal Sorumluluğu / Foucault and Bourdieu on the Intellectual contra Sartre: Thinking and Political Responsibility

Authors:

Nazlı GÜLSOY

Publisher:

Mülkiye Alumni Association

Journal:

Mülkiye Dergisi 2014 Vol.38 Issue 2, pp.93-112

Document Type:

Article

Publication Date:

7/2014

Document Language:

Turkish

Document ID (Org No.):

2000605341

Frequency:

Quarterly

pISSN:

1305-9971

Abstract:

 

From the Dreyfus affair to the Algerian war, the intellectual is a central theme in public discussion in France. According to Alain Badiou, it is an important scholarly exercise to contrasting Sartre’s “total intellectual” with Foucault’s “specific intellectual” that will ultimately lead to Bourdieu’s vision of the “collective intellectual”. A genealogy of the concept seems to suggest more than a structuralist response to an existentialist individual responsibility. It is not a matter of individual choice but an epistemological point of view. Foucault situates Sartre in the context of French philosophy and the two philosophical traditions prevalent in France at the time. These are “a philosophy of experience, sense, and subject” in contrast with “a philosophy of knowledge, rationality, and concept”. Sartre is on the side of this philosophy of subject, which also critised by antropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.The place of the intellectual in a regime of truth regulating the production of knowledge is crucial for Foucault. In a regime of truth producing discourses that function as true in a given time and a given place, the complex relations between power and knowledge can be understood through the multiple facets of this regime. What makes an intellectual’s specificity is related to his position in this complex mechanism of knowledge production. It is not the role of the guardian of universal values but the one who has a specific point of view due to his specific place on the power/knowledge structure. Bourdieu in his positions during the Algerian War, Foucault in his philosophy of subject criticized Sartre very severely. Sartre speaks of Foucault’s The Order of the Things as “the last rampart that the bourgeoisie can still erect against Marx” while Foucault argues in The Critique of Dialectical Reason that Sartre’s work is “the magnificent and pathetic effort of a man from the nineteenth century to think the twentieth century”. Bourdieu does not only criticize Sartre on the grounds of intellectual irresponsibility but also argues that his “most reliable strategy for engagement is to set himself up as a transcendent consciousness”. Letting others “speak for themselves” is essential for Bourdieu as it is for Foucault. But despite the severe political accusations and theoretical conflicts Foucault and Sartre militated together and Bourdieu assumed the position of the most influential intellectual of his time, becoming “the intellectual” à la Sartre. For Bourdieu the enabling conditions for this total intellectual, “active on every front, as philosopher, critic, novelist and dramatist” are no more out there. Which means that another Sartre is impossible. But it is possible to have collective intellectuals acting within a series of networks that resist the imposition of a global neo-liberal doxa.

 


Özet:

Dreyfus davasından Cezayir Savaşı’na kadar entelektüeller Fransa’daki kamusal tartışmanın merkezine yerleşmişlerdir. Alain Badiou’ya göre Sartre’ın evrensel/bütünsel entelektüeliyle Foucault’nun özgül/spesifik entelektüelini karşılaştırmak çok alışılageldik bir yaklaşım olsa da Pierre Bourdieu’nün kolektif entelektüeline uzanan bir hat içinde değerlendirdiğimiz zaman, bu konudaki tartışmanın sadece belli bir kavramın içeriğinden fazlasına yöneldiğini görebiliriz. Bu kavramın soy zinciri varoluşçu bir bireysel sorumluluk düşüncesine karşı yapısalcı bir cevaptan ibaret olmadığına işaret etmektedir. Burada söz konusu olan bireysel bir seçim değil epistemolojik bir bakış açısıdır. Foucault, Sartre’ı dönemin Fransa’sında hakim olan iki felsefi akımdan, bir deneyim, duyu ve özne felsefesinin yanında değerlendirir: diğer yanda bir akılcılık, bilgi ve kavram felsefesi bulunmaktadır. Sartre’ın yaklaşımı daha önce de antropolog Lévi-Strauss tarafından eleştirilmiştir.

Foucault için bilgi üretimini düzenleyen hakikat rejimi içinde entelektüelin yeri çok önemlidir. Belli bir yer ve zamanda hakikat olarak iş gören söylemler üreten bir hakikat rejiminde bilgi ve iktidar arasındaki karmaşık ilişkiyi ancak rejimin çoğul yüzleri aracılığıyla anlayabiliriz. Bu, evrensel değerlerin bekçisi değil, bilgi/iktidar yapısında özgül bir yer kapladığı için belli bir bakış açısına sahip olan bir kişidir. Bourdieu Cezayir Savaşı sırasındaki kimi yazıları nedeniyle Foucault da özne felsefesi açısında Sartre’ı sert bir biçimde eleştirmiştir. Sartre Foucault’yu Kelimeler ve Şeyler’in başarısından sonra, düşüncesinin “burjuvazinin Marx’a karşı diktiği son baraj” derken Foucault da Diyalektik Aklın Eleştirisi’ni “bir ondokuzuncu yüzyıl insanının yirminci yüzyılı düşünmek için harcadığı muhteşem ve hastalıklı çaba” olarak nitelemiştir. Bourdieu Sartre’ı sadece entelektüel olarak sorumsuz olmakla eleştirmemiş, aynı zamanda Sartre’ın kendisini “aşkın bilinç” olarak tanımlamasını bir “ilhak stratejisi” olarak tanımlamıştır. Foucault gibi Bourdieu için de insanların “kendileri adına konuşmaları” izin vermek esastır. Ama tüm sert siyasi suçlamalara ve teorik çatışmalara karşın Foucault ve Sartre birlikte eylemlere katılmış ve Bourdieu Sartre usulü tavırdan kaçınsa da zamanının en etkili entelektüeli olarak onun yerini almış gibidir. Bourdieu’ye göre felsefe, sanat, edebiyat, her alanda etkin bir filozof modeli artık mümkün değildir. Yani başka bir Sartre mümkün değildir. Ancak neoliberal doxa’nın küresel düzlemde dayatılmasına direnen bir dizi şebeke içinde etkin bir entelektüel mümkündür.

Abstract:

From the Dreyfus affair to the Algerian war, the intellectual is a central theme in public discussion in France. According to Alain Badiou, it is an important scholarly exercise to contrasting Sartre’s “total intellectual” with Foucault’s “specific intellectual” that will ultimately lead to Bourdieu’s vision of the “collective intellectual”. A genealogy of the concept seems to suggest more than a structuralist response to an existentialist individual responsibility. It is not a matter of individual choice but an epistemological point of view. Foucault situates Sartre in the context of French philosophy and the two philosophical traditions prevalent in France at the time. These are “a philosophy of experience, sense, and subject” in contrast with “a philosophy of knowledge, rationality, and concept”. Sartre is on the side of this philosophy of subject, which also critised by antropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.

The place of the intellectual in a regime of truth regulating the production of knowledge is crucial for Foucault. In a regime of truth producing discourses that function as true in a given time and a given place, the complex relations between power and knowledge can be understood through the multiple facets of this regime. What makes an intellectual’s specificity is related to his position in this complex mechanism of knowledge production. It is not the role of the guardian of universal values but the one who has a specific point of view due to his specific place on the power/knowledge structure. Bourdieu in his positions during the Algerian War, Foucault in his philosophy of subject criticized Sartre very severely. Sartre speaks of Foucault’s The Order of the Things as “the last rampart that the bourgeoisie can still erect against Marx” while Foucault argues in The Critique of Dialectical Reason that Sartre’s work is “the magnificent and pathetic effort of a man from the nineteenth century to think the twentieth century”. Bourdieu does not only criticize Sartre on the grounds of intellectual irresponsibility but also argues that his “most reliable strategy for engagement is to set himself up as a transcendent consciousness”. Letting others “speak for themselves” is essential for Bourdieu as it is for Foucault. But despite the severe political accusations and theoretical conflicts Foucault and Sartre militated together and Bourdieu assumed the position of the most influential intellectual of his time, becoming “the intellectual” à la Sartre. For Bourdieu the enabling conditions for this total intellectual, “active on every front, as philosopher, critic, novelist and dramatist” are no more out there. Which means that another Sartre is impossible. But it is possible to have collective intellectuals acting within a series of networks that resist the imposition of a global neo-liberal doxa.

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Article Details

Sartre’a Karşı? Foucault ve Bourdieu’da Düşünme ve Entelektüelin Siyasal Sorumluluğu / Foucault and Bourdieu on the Intellectual contra Sartre: Thinking and Political Responsibility

Authors: Nazlı GÜLSOY

Publisher: Mülkiye Alumni Association

Journal: Mülkiye Dergisi 2014 Vol.38 Issue 2, pp.93-112

Document Type: Article

Publication Date: 7/2014

Document Language: Turkish

Document ID (Org No.): 2000605341

Frequency: Quarterly

pISSN: 1305-9971

Issues

Authors:

Nazlı GÜLSOY

Publisher:

Mülkiye Alumni Association

Journal:

Mülkiye Dergisi 2014 Vol.38 Issue 2, pp.93-112

Document Type:

Article

Publication Date:

7/2014

Document Language:

Turkish

Document ID (Org No.):

2000605341

Frequency:

Quarterly

pISSN:

1305-9971