{"id":4176,"date":"2019-01-03T13:12:04","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T17:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/?p=4176"},"modified":"2021-03-12T16:28:36","modified_gmt":"2021-03-12T20:28:36","slug":"generalized-claim-meaning-worthiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2019\/01\/03\/generalized-claim-meaning-worthiness\/","title":{"rendered":"Generalized classification of claims’ meaningworthiness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Generalizing a Foucault comment from 1970 on accepted shared knowledge, truth, and power<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The system of [assigning value<\/strong> to statements] is\u00a0essential to the structure and functioning of our society<\/strong>.\u00a0 There is a constant battle around this – the ensemble of rules according to which [valued and devalued statements] are separated and specific effects of power are attached to the former.\u00a0 This is a battle about the status of truth and the practical and political role it plays. It is necessary to think of these political problems not in terms of science\u00a0<\/em>and ideology<\/em>, but in terms of accepted knowledge<\/em> and\u00a0power<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Here are a few propositions, to be further tested and evaluated:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Let\u00a0\u03c4<\/strong><\/code>\u00a0be a\u00a0system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, [evaluation], and operation of statements.\u00a0 A system linked in a circular way with systems of power that produce and sustain it, and with the effects of power which it induces and which extend it.\u00a0 A regime<\/em> of systems.\u00a0 Such a regime is not merely ideological or superstructural; its [early stage] was a condition of the formation and development of its environment.<\/li>\n
  2. The essential [social, political] problem for designers and maintainers of \u03c4<\/code>\u00a0<\/strong>is not to criticize its ideology or [relation] to science, or to ensure a particular scientific practice is [correct], but to ascertain how to constitute new politics of knowledge. The problem is not changing people’s beliefs,\u00a0but the political, practical, institutional regime<\/em> of producing and evaluating statements about the world.<\/li>\n
  3. This is not a matter of emancipating \u03c4<\/code>\u00a0<\/strong>from systems of power (which would be an illusion, for it is already power<\/em>) but of detaching its power from the forms of hegemony [social, economic, cultural], within which it operated [when it was designed].<\/li>\n
  4. These [political, social, economic, cultural, semantic] questions are not error, illusion, ideology, or distraction: they illuminate truth itself.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \n

    I have been thinking about this in the context of recent work with the Knowledge Futures Group<\/a> and the Truth & Trust coalition gathered around TED.<\/p>\n

    (from an interview<\/a>\u00a0with Foucault first published in L’Arc 70.)<\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Generalizing a Foucault comment from 1970 on accepted shared knowledge, truth, and power: The system of [assigning value to statements] is\u00a0essential to the structure and functioning of our society.\u00a0 There is a constant battle around this – the ensemble of rules according to which [valued and devalued statements] are separated and specific effects of power […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1657,210,78829,14968,6034,709],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogroll","category-chain-gang","category-ideonomy","category-knowledge","category-meta","category-wikipedia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-15m","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4176"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4421,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4176\/revisions\/4421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}