Why I'm a Foucauldian (Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida's Works‪)‬

The differences between Mr Curaming and myself can begin to be seen more clearly if we avoid the generic term "poststructuralism" and instead focus on the work of the theorists that he and I, respectively, draw upon. In my recent work on religion, gender, and sexuality in Thailand, and in the articles that Mr Curaming critiques, I have been interested in developing Michel Foucault's ideas on the productivity of power and historical ruptures in forms of discourse to understand modern Thai cultural history. In contrast, Mr Curaming's main interest is the work of Jacques Derrida. While both Foucault and Derrida are commonly called poststructuralists, this label obscures important differences between their approaches and overlooks the fact that the two men fell out over theoretical issues. Many of the errors that Mr Curaming says that he finds in my work emerge from the fact that he draws upon his understanding of Derrida in order to critique my understanding of Foucault. The supposed faults that Mr Curaming outlines in fact mirror issues that Foucault and Derrida failed to agree on. I do not suggest that my work is error-free or that I have understood Foucault's ideas perfectly. However, Mr Curaming's critique does not so much reflect the particular failings of my studies as it replays general tensions within the variegated body of poststructuralist thought. Foucault insisted that it is possible to analyse the power structures that underpin a body of discourse, and given that the pattern of power in any historical situation has a characteristic form then the discourses produced under that regime will also have specifiable features. In contrast, Derrida insisted that any given text is open to a range of possible interpretations and has no single authoritative reading. This difference of opinion has produced a significant split within poststructuralism between those who, like myself, explore the historical relations between power and discourse, and those who, like Mr Curaming, challenge established interpretations of texts by means of deconstructive readings.