
Foucault in California - flannery
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/michel-foucault-lsd-death-valley/
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pattusk
I always found it strange that Foucault has come to be identified, in the
mainstream view of his work but also in academic circles, with radical
leftism. It's hard to read Discipline and punish or any of his work on
biopolitics and not sense the underlying criticism of the welfare state and
"big government". His libertarianism made him at odds with many French Marxist
thinkers of his era and I suppose must have played a part in his relocation to
America.

I think that Foucault found capitalism and the freedom it granted absolutely
fascinating (just like Marx before him was fascinated with capitalism's
ability to increase wealth), which eventually led him to look into thinkers
like Hayek, Friedman and Say. Anedoctal but imo significant: his last partner
and the executor of his will now works for a neoliberal think tank.

The left-wing magazine Jacobin had ran an interesting inyerview on the subject
of Foucault's neoliberal inclinations some time back, worth a read if the
subject interests you: [https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/foucault-
interview/](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/foucault-interview/)

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woodandsteel
That's interesting, I wasn't aware that he had turned rather libertarian. But
I must ask, did he agree with everything in standard libertarianism, or did he
have some significant differences?

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justin66
> standard libertarianism

What's that?

~~~
woodandsteel
You are apparently aware of significant differences among libertarians, so why
don't you list some.

~~~
justin66
That's a baffling reply. I think the idea of there being a "standard
libertarianism" is quite odd but it's your phrase that could use some
clarification, not mine.

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freedomben
I'm by no means an expert on Foucault, but I highly recommend learning about
some of his ideas or even better, read some of writings. You may not come away
agreeing with him (especially right away) but his ideas on freedom deeply
impacted me.

You'll see him criticized and reviled in many philosophical circles as being
the epitome of post-modernism (which has (unfairly IMHO) become a bit of a
dirty word in some cultures), but don't let that scare you. I believe (mostly
from reading analysis from people much smarter than me, like Thaddeus Russell)
that Foucault is widely misunderstood.

~~~
keiferski
The overwhelming majority of people that criticize post-modernism have little-
or-no actual knowledge of it. Foucault can indeed be difficult to understand,
but make no mistake, he does have interesting things to say.

~~~
Veen
Many who criticize post-modernism (and Foucault) aren't really criticizing the
philosophy, but the understanding of that philosophy among groups who have
adopted it for political ends.

When people say "post-modernism sucks" they mean, for example, that moral
relativism sucks, or that it is stupid to view science as a grand narrative of
no more value than other narratives. When they say "Foucault sucks" they are
attacking the understanding among the "woke" of how power relations work in
society, an understanding that is drawn, however incompetently, from readings
of Foucault.

Leading post-modern philosophers didn't embrace those positions in an
uncomplicated way, but many influenced by them do, and they massively
outnumber the people who have actually bothered to read Derrida or
Baudrillard.

Furthermore, many post-modern philosophers were showboaters who enjoyed being
provocative, so you don't have to look hard to find justification for the
unnuanced understanding of their work.

~~~
pmoriarty
What do you mean by "woke"?

~~~
brohee
I would guess that meaning :
[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woke](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woke)

A word currently used to describe "consciousness" and being aware of the truth
behind things "the man" doesn't want you to know i.e. classism, racism...

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dlkf
Nobody has articulated my feelings about Foucault et al better than Chomsky:

> There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over
> whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was
> (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned
> two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to
> me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular
> difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I
> will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. ---
> even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from
> the rest --- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2)
> don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I
> haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one
> of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been
> made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of
> "theory" that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and
> profundity; or (b) ... I won't spell it out.

~~~
jorgesborges
That's an excellent observation. Those philosophers are deliberately ambiguous
for the sake of profundity. It's not unlike interpreting poetry or literature
-- they even built that into their tradition, like a preemptive defence
against their lack of clarity. The most honest way to approach Foucault and
others like him is to read them as thinkers and artists and to accept what
insights you can glean from it and disregard the rest and shake off its
overbearing seriousness.

~~~
raincom
Deliberately ambiguous sentences mean 1000 meanings to 1000 followers. Then
these 1000 postmodern intellectuals write treatises on the meaning of this, by
adding their own ambiguity. In the end, everything goes.

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dang
An article by Dundas and Wade was briefly discussed in 2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15260411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15260411)

One detail is that shortly before his death, Foucault sent a letter asking if
he could come to live with Wade and Stoneman. "I think he wanted to die like
Huxley. I said yes, of course."

~~~
justin66
This looks great and I missed it the first time. Thanks.

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bracobama
I find it interesting that many here reading these comments base their
professional lives within the STEM fields but yet are so ardent to support the
post-modernist philosophers who believe reason to be an absurd meta-physical
starting point. It's a little ironic to say the least.

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woodandsteel
Foucault's great focus on sexuality as central to happiness indicates that he
never escaped the influence of his Catholic upbringing.

Think of all the things that you care about, that make your life good or bad.
Sexuality is obviously one, but only one, and even it is intertwined with many
others, like health, child-rearing, companionship, and so on.

But with Catholicism, or at least a rigid version, life is all about fighting
sin, and central to sin is sexual desire, and hence fighting sexual desire is
central to living properly. Now stick with that sex-centered view of life and
just make sexual desire good instead of bad, and you have Foucault, or at
least a large part of his views.

You know, someone who follows exactly what his father tells him to be in life
is not free. But someone who spends his life doing the exact opposite, and
never discovers for himself what a good life would be, which might in some
ways agree with his father's vision, is still not really free.

No doubt some Foucault fans will claim, and perhaps properly, that I am
greatly distorting his views. But as a public intellectual, Foucault had a
responsibility to make his views clear enough that people could understand
them and decide if they are right or wrong, and if the latter put them into
practice in their lives and society as a whole. It is, for instance, pretty
clear what Marx thought should happen in the world, and likewise the American
founding fathers.

If it is the case that Foucault wrote in a way that predictably would lead to
his being misunderstood, then I say he was being irresponsible. If on the
other hand his views are not of any use to most people, then why do they
matter?

