Performative contradiction in gender studies

[DanielMuffinburg]

So I’m reading the gender studies section of my art history textbook, and I came about this passage:

Foucault asserts that all concepts are historically formed and contingent, and so are never universally true. Indeed, there is no sense in which a statement can be said to be true or false… There is no objective way one can speak of, say, sexuality.

Isn’t this a performative contradiction?

[Laughing_Man]

@Daniel

So I’m reading the gender studies section of my art history textbook, and I came about this passage:

Foucault asserts that all concepts are historically formed and contingent, and so are never universally true. Indeed, there is no sense in which a statement can be said to be true or false… There is no objective way one can speak of, say, sexuality.

Isn’t this a performative contradiction?

Not necessarily if one believes in polylogicism and or has a Nietzchen outlook. Perhaps a relativist fallacy. Depends on what the individual is trying to assert. When you get into history you get some monstrously asinine individuals who are known as ‘post-modernists.’ They postulate that history is indecipherable due to present day values. We cannot subsume the values and ideas of individuals not in this generation, therefore all history is a waste of time. I’m not surprised you found this in a book on art history. Such drivel still survives in the bizarre history of art.

[DanielMuffinburg]

@Laughing Man

@Daniel

So I’m reading the gender studies section of my art history textbook, and I came about this passage:

Foucault asserts that all concepts are historically formed and contingent, and so are never universally true. Indeed, there is no sense in which a statement can be said to be true or false… There is no objective way one can speak of, say, sexuality.

Isn’t this a performative contradiction?

Not necessarily if one believes in polylogicism and or has a Nietzchen outlook. Perhaps a relativist fallacy. Depends on what the individual is trying to assert. When you get into history you get some monstrously asinine individuals who are known as ‘post-modernists.’ They postulate that history is indecipherable due to present day values. We cannot subsume the values and ideas of individuals not in this generation, therefore all history is a waste of time. I’m not surprised you found this in a book on art history. Such drivel still survives in the bizarre history of art.

I think that is pretty much what Foucault was getting at: “That the truth 100 years ago is not the truth now.” But if that is true, how could he possibly know that? Furthermore, how could the author explaining Foucault in the text possibly know that what is true about Foucault’s theories/etc. is true?

[Jon_Irenicus]

Yes, Foucault is full of shit in that instance.