I've been chuckling, guffawing and spit-flecked raging for years about the relentless misunderstandings of Foucault being promoted by both sides in the culture war.
As someone who got Fouc-ed and Derr-ided as an undergrad in the early '80s, and went on to do deconstructions of deconstructive primers in grad school, I've found the whole multi-decade harangue from the right about postmodernism to be idiotic in the extreme.
It was clear to anyone at the time with a deep background in socialist/leftist traditions that the PoMo insurgency was, if not in intention at least in effect, reactionary.
Foucault's "project" was as much an attack on Marxism as on post-Enlightenment liberalism, so when so-called conservatives rail on about "Foucault the Marxist/Commie/Leftist" it just reinforces the common supposition that the right is essentially ignorant.
Nice to see this come up.
I've been chuckling, guffawing and spit-flecked raging for years about the relentless misunderstandings of Foucault being promoted by both sides in the culture war.
As someone who got Fouc-ed and Derr-ided as an undergrad in the early '80s, and went on to do deconstructions of deconstructive primers in grad school, I've found the whole multi-decade harangue from the right about postmodernism to be idiotic in the extreme.
It was clear to anyone at the time with a deep background in socialist/leftist traditions that the PoMo insurgency was, if not in intention at least in effect, reactionary.
Foucault's "project" was as much an attack on Marxism as on post-Enlightenment liberalism, so when so-called conservatives rail on about "Foucault the Marxist/Commie/Leftist" it just reinforces the common supposition that the right is essentially ignorant.