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18 Foucault's Discourse<br />

In <strong>the</strong> original preface to Madness <strong>and</strong> Civilization (1961), however, Foucault<br />

criticized notions of <strong>the</strong> East as <strong>the</strong> aosolute "o<strong>the</strong>r" of <strong>the</strong> expansionist<br />

rational West:<br />

In <strong>the</strong> universality of <strong>the</strong> Western ratio, <strong>the</strong>re is this divide that is <strong>the</strong> East; <strong>the</strong><br />

East thought of as <strong>the</strong> origin, dreamt of as <strong>the</strong> dizzy point that is <strong>the</strong> place of<br />

birth, of nostalgia <strong>and</strong> promises of return, <strong>the</strong> East which offers itself to <strong>the</strong><br />

colonizing reason of <strong>the</strong> West but is indefinitely inaccessible, for it remains<br />

always as a boundary, <strong>the</strong> night of beginning in which <strong>the</strong> West was formed<br />

but where it drew a dividing line, <strong>the</strong> East is for <strong>the</strong> West everything which <strong>the</strong><br />

West is not, yet it is here that it has to seek whatever might be .its originating<br />

truth. It is necessary to do a history ofthis great divide. (Foucault 1961, iv)<br />

None<strong>the</strong>less, Foucault's own work suffers from a similar type of dualism.<br />

In an unusual turn, however, Foucault's "Orient" seems to include <strong>the</strong><br />

Greco-Roman world as well as <strong>the</strong> modern Eastern one, since <strong>the</strong> contrast<br />

he draws is primarily between tradition <strong>and</strong> modernity ra<strong>the</strong>r than East <strong>and</strong><br />

West as such. A somewhat related taxonomy appears in Nietzsche's Genealogy<br />

of Morals, where he includes in his category of "noble races" -<strong>and</strong> in his description<br />

of necessary manifestations of violence-a number of quite diverse<br />

premodern societies: "One cannot fail to see at <strong>the</strong> bottom of all <strong>the</strong>se noble<br />

races <strong>the</strong> beast of prey, <strong>the</strong> splendid blond beast prowling about avidly in<br />

search of spoil <strong>and</strong> victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time,<br />

<strong>the</strong> animal has to get out again <strong>and</strong> go back to <strong>the</strong> wilderness: <strong>the</strong> Roman,<br />

Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, <strong>the</strong> Homeric heroes, <strong>the</strong> Sc<strong>and</strong>inavian<br />

Vikings all shared this need" (1967, 40-41).<br />

In Foucault, a dualism emerges in which <strong>the</strong> premodern social order (assumed<br />

also to operate in many Middle Eastern, Mrican, <strong>and</strong> Asian societies<br />

oftoday) is privileged over <strong>the</strong> modern Western one. This notion is problematic,<br />

not only because Foucault assumes a pristine, idyllic East, as against a<br />

"rational" West, but also because Foucault's subjectless historiography <strong>and</strong><br />

idealized East reproduces <strong>and</strong>rocentric patterns of discourse. In a 1982 interview,<br />

for example, Foucault combined an admiration for <strong>the</strong> Orient with<br />

a certain nostalgia for <strong>the</strong> aristocratic, ostensibly paternalistic system of taking<br />

care of one's subordinates, which modernity had replaced with a callous<br />

form of individualism. Such hierarchical traditions regulated relations between<br />

adults <strong>and</strong> youths, men <strong>and</strong> women, <strong>and</strong> upper <strong>and</strong> lower classes in<br />

premodern societies, something of which Foucault seems blissfully unaware<br />

in <strong>the</strong> following encomium to silence:

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