tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3483274485929133507.post4239740099866513431..comments2023-09-02T06:15:58.305-05:00Comments on Under A Chindolea: The Nostos and the CorporationNathan O'Halloran, SJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08672001160647592501noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3483274485929133507.post-66512755392722895182009-02-26T12:12:00.000-06:002009-02-26T12:12:00.000-06:00I was recently contacted about this post by someon...I was recently contacted about this post by someone who asked: <BR/><BR/>"I didn't understand your allusion to Judith Butler and Foucault in your piece about the market and human nature. Could you state your proposition again?"<BR/><BR/>Here is an excerpt of something I have written elsewhere:<BR/><BR/>"Butler cannot, however, simply wish away body and soul. She attempts to re-categorize them under Aristotelian/Foucauldian terminology. According to Aristotle, prime matter can never appear except as informed or schematized. Butler takes up this notion of form in Aristotle and historicizes it through Foucault, understanding the “schema of bodies as a historically contingent nexus of power/discourse.” However, Foucault reverses the Aristotelian formulation, placing the soul outside the body rather than within it. The soul actualizes the body, but the schema that is the soul now does so by virtue of historical discourse that bring bodies into subjection, not presuming ontological status, but conferring it. <BR/> Precisely in invoking Aristotle, albeit through Faucault, Butler cannot, however, be truly rid of bodies. She claims that “the soul described by Foucault as an instrument of power, forms and frames the body, stamps it, and in stamping it brings it into being.” Such a claim is no different than that of Aristotle, i.e., that prime matter is only to the extent that it is in-formed. What Butler seems to be claiming is that, though there must be some proto-bodily material that is informed through cultural discourses, the agency is on the part of the discourse." <BR/><BR/>My point in the post is that mega-corporations have attempted in the same way to form a discourse. They operate under the implicit or explicit understanding that the soul is not primarily internal but rather external and malleable; as Foucault would say, something created by a particular Discourse or Episteme. Corporations, via advertising, attempt to create their subjects of consumption, turning Aristotelian proto-matter into consuming subjects. <BR/><BR/>Nathan O'Halloran, SJNathan O'Halloran, SJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08672001160647592501noreply@blogger.com