In regards to O J M and the post-structuralists

[David Christensen]

The point of a Foucauldian discourse analysis and one that informs aspects of Actor Network Theory is simply that "it could have been otherwise".
Foucault was in many ways essentially an historian. 
He showed how discursive "facts" about mental illness and criminality led to certain institutions being established.
That's the point. Any social theorist  with any intelligence who adopts a non generalising framework to truth does not say its all reducible to the text. 
Institutional Economics and Economic sociology takes economic rationality as a powerful force for example but goes to show that people are not rational  utility maximising beings though they maybe at times, but are deeply affected by cultural, social and institutional rule structures.  
There are many truths that are always in the process of emergence. Some become established facts through a process of selection, mutation and evolution.
To always go back to the example of the holocaust or quote Baudrillard ":And the Gulf War Never Happened" is to miss most of the thrust of rational and informed post-structuralist theory.
Truth forms a hierarchy based on power, the institutional rules of socio-economic activities, cultural settings and yes basic economic forces such as supply and demand.  These are articulated through technologies, social interaction and yes texts. 
Sleep for example as a biological instinct seems outside the deconstructive zone of text. But Sex is both a biological function and obviously one that is deeply influenced by text, cultural differences, religious beliefs etc and yes actual physical experience. To ignore discursive influences on this fundamental human activity is well missing a pretty big part of the story. 
In my research I am studying the economic decision making of actors in a commercial property market but adding the layer of how this market activity is socially constructed, influenced by technology and institutionalised practices.
Neo-classical economics with its primacy of the market is a classic example of a discursive truth having profound effects for not only developed nations such as the US, Europe or Australia (where I live) but for developing nations where the economic model is generalised and utilised with sometimes devastating effects. 
Discourse matters and of course its not everything. But to treat it as the straw man as you say Post-structuralism does to truth and objectivity you commit the same mistake.

Regards, David.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20041028/7ebfae3a/attachment.html>