Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy, Second Edition

thing other than his ovvn beliefs yet not be about an objective reality hecannot invoke,Deleuze makes the suggestive comment that ""every point of view is apoint of view on variadon,""qt is not my intention to further expoundBdeuae" work. What I take from him is the idea that points of view mayhe interpretations of more than things and events. Perspectives may betaken on discursiw cornponeMS that are frequently used and referred to explicitlyor implicitly. Through constant employment, these componentsgain a measure of autonomy in a discourse and come to constitute ifltersubjectiveobjects of belief and attitudes. An example is stereotypes. S~ereotypesare ""wariatians" that are neither objects nor events, but they are notsimply reducible to beliefs held by individuals. For one thing, stcreoqpesare present in books, plays, films, and art; for another, they Ggure promi-nently in discourse. Stereo~pes are cultural camponents that in part definean ethos. A racial stereotype, for instance, is an intersubjective componentof a culture to the extent that is can elicit differem interpretive responses. hnegative racial stereotype can provoke amused contempt on the part ofsome individuals or virulent antipathy on the part of others. The stereotypeis not identical with the conternpc felt by one individual and the antipathyfelt by another.36Foucauft9s and Deleuze" notion of intersubjective cultural componentsor objects of interpretation has a parallel in North American philosophicaldebate. Ricbard Dawkins facilitates a Darwinian account of culture by introducingthe concept of "a new kind of replicator," Dawkins thinks thereare cultural artifacts that are int.erstlhjective and capable of cultural transmissioncomparable to genetic transmission. These ideational gene-likeitems contribute to the content of a culture and survive independently ofparticular individuals%eliefs and attitudes. Dawkins calls these cultural artifacts'kmees," "playing on the Creek -mimesis (imitation), Examples ofmemes are ""ideas, catch-phrases, [and] fasl-rions," as well as practices suchas "ways of making pots or of brlilding arches.""3 Dlgawkins's contention isthat ""as genes propagate themselves . . . via sperm or eggs, so memes propagatethemselves . . . via a process which, in the broad sense, can be calledimitation,"38 Bawkins offers the example of how a scientist who has orhears a good idea passes the idea on to colleagues and students, The ideathen is used in articles and lectures and "if the idea catches on, it can hesaid to propagate itself,"" "This "catchiw on'ys Rorty's notion of "uptake'>on a new metaphor or vocabulary and is analagous to natural selection-"lRorty maintains that "[mlemes are things like turns of speech, termsof aesthetic or moral praise, political slogans, proverbs . . . stereotypicalicons, and the like,'" Mernes ""compete with one another . . . as genes cornpete"with one another, and different ""batches of both genes and memesare carried by di&reat human social gra~tps.~41