Critiques of Foucault, postmodernism, poststructuralism, etc

[Teacher]

Anyone want to point me in some good directions of critiques of all this academic nonsense? I have quite a bit of stuff but I'm currently in a class in which this stuff figured prominently and I want to be as prepared as possible when the inevitable discussion with my professor happens.

[The Feral Underclass]

Presumably you would first need to understand the "nonsense" before forming a critique of it.

[TheEmancipator]

Not sure what is nonsensical about it. French thought is a tough cookie to crack but I get the impression once you understand it it offers a more global, philosophical aspect to our ideology than most of the ML dictators 20th century theory, which is just a pack of excuses for their bourgeois nationalism and evident authoritarian Bonapartist small-man complex.

[Nevsky]

Not sure what is nonsensical about it. French thought is a tough cookie to crack but I get the impression once you understand it it offers a more global, philosophical aspect to our ideology than most of the ML dictators 20th century theory, which is just a pack of excuses for their bourgeois nationalism and evident authoritarian Bonapartist small-man complex.

Halfway through the sentence I was with you but then came too much crazily deviated historical reductionism for me to abide.

[TheEmancipator]

Halfway through the sentence I was with you but then came too much crazily deviated historical reductionism for me to abide.

I must admit I got carried away, but the OP struck me as another annoying Marxist-Leninist who was going to drag us all into a debate about some fact about Mao's dog, ergo we should have a picture of Stalin and Mao on our bedroom walls that we can masturbate to at any time.

EDIT : you do realise reductionism is a complement, right? As a Stalinist I presume you meant "revisionism" but your auto-correct on your *insert expensive device here* corrected you.

[Hiero]

Focault is great theorist for understanding power and institutions. I will be using it in my thesis to explore people living on welfare.

[Nevsky]

I must admit I got carried away, but the OP struck me as another annoying Marxist-Leninist who was going to drag us all into a debate about some fact about Mao's dog, ergo we should have a picture of Stalin and Mao on our bedroom walls that we can masturbate to at any time.

EDIT : you do realise reductionism is a complement, right? As a Stalinist I presume you meant "revisionism" but your auto-correct on your *insert expensive device here* corrected you.

Sorry, english is not my first language and sometimes I fall into false friend traps... I tried to avoid revisionism on purpose. Revisionism isn't even the correct term as it refers to revision of marxist theory and not to denigrations of 20th century marxist leaders.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Focault is great theorist for understanding power and institutions. I will be using it in my thesis to explore people living on welfare.In what ways?


Presumably you would first need to understand the "nonsense" before forming a critique of it.I think they were asking for other people's critiques of these ideas to help in their understanding. And I wouldn't presume that someone needs to have a fully developed understanding of something to have a basic opinion on it. Without studying theology, I can tell pretty much from the broad strokes that the Bible is probably "nonsense" when it comes to being any sort of accurate historical picture of past events.

[The Feral Underclass]

Jimmy, please stop talking to me.

[Hit The North]

To the OP:

You could do worse than finding a copy of this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Against-Postmodernism-A-Marxist-Critique/dp/0745606148/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373975648&sr=8-1&keywords=against+postmodernism+a+marxist+critique) .



EDIT : you do realise reductionism is a complement, right?

How is 'reductionism' a compliment? It signifies over-simplification of cause and effect.

[TheEmancipator]

Sorry, english is not my first language and sometimes I fall into false friend traps... I tried to avoid revisionism on purpose. Revisionism isn't even the correct term as it refers to revision of marxist theory and not to denigrations of 20th century marxist leaders.

Sure, although I equate Stalinist historical revisionism with that of neo-Nazis and what have you.

Also, Stalin, an Orthodox Marxist? :lol:

Bigger revisionist than Mao in terms of practice.





How is 'reductionism' a compliment? It signifies over-simplification of cause and effect.

No it isn't. It's not saying that you're oversimplifying something, its saying that you can explain a complex situation by assembling simple concepts that are part of it together.

Here's a famous reductionist for you :

http://critical-theory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/marx-racist1.jpg

[TheEmancipator]

del

[Hit The North]

"Reductionism" has been a charge levelled at "vulgar Marxism" by those Marxists who insist that Marxism is a holistic theory which seeks to demonstrate the unity of social life as a dialectical totality in which the material relations predominate. This isn't the same as reductionism which argues that superstructural factors can be described as mere epiphenomenal representations of the economic. I'm not familiar with any Marxists who argue that the cultural and political realms of society can be reduced down to some fundamental laws located in the economic. Marx and Engels certainly didn't so this when they wrote about politics.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Have you read Discipline and Punish? Why the hell would you want to dismiss a brilliant materialist investigation of "the birth of the prison" as "nonsense"?

[The Feral Underclass]

Have you read Discipline and Punish? Why the hell would you want to dismiss a brilliant materialist investigation of "the birth of the prison" as "nonsense"?

Probably because they have no idea what it is.

[Lord Hargreaves]

Terry Eagleton and Alex Callinicos both wrote short books critiquing "postmodernism"

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I think they were asking for other people's critiques of these ideas to help in their understanding. And I wouldn't presume that someone needs to have a fully developed understanding of something to have a basic opinion on it. Without studying theology, I can tell pretty much from the broad strokes that the Bible is probably "nonsense" when it comes to being any sort of accurate historical picture of past events.

I don't really think this is the best way to look at it. Because in a certain sense, a Marxist critique of Post-Modernism is quite simple. In fact I can summarize what I bet the IMT will spend writting on post modernism. Whatever it is, it will be based on this simple premise:

"Post Modernism comes from bourgeois institutions, therefore it is bourgeois."

Now, I'm sure most of this thread will revolve around that basic premise. But there is a problem with this, first of all, although the concept of bourgeois ideology as a general category of ideologies is valid, I don't really think that labeling it's class origin or declaring something nonsense really gets to the matter. There is a Gramsci quote in my notebooks that I don't feel like getting up to post here (but I can if need be), but it goes something like "ideologies do not represent mere regurgitations of class society, they represent real social forces". Actually I know that isn't the quote, but it is a good paraphrase and it gets to the meat of the matter.

In anaysising an ideology, we really can't just label it as bourgeois. Because when we talk about a specific, particular ideology, we are talking about something that forms either when the superstructure and the base are in unity and within the "historical bloc" to use Sorel's phrase, or we are talking about something that is the result of disunity between the base and superstructure. Additionally, we are dealing with an ideology with specific historical origins. We can not understand history without understanding the social forces that form it, and we can not understand history without understanding these social forces. So yes, we must take up the work of studying Foucault and the specific historical, social, economic, and material context in which his thought arised.

So in this sense, my idea of what a critique of ideology would mean is an immaculate critique, less a critique of an individual aspect of an ideology but rather an understanding of the system of a particular ideology and understanding this within the context of the historical bloc in which it was formulated. Sure, we could do a "simple" critique but the argument I am trying to present here is that such a critique has no intrinsic value.

Is that difficult? Yes, but many things will be difficult on the road ahead, but alas, heavy is the burden of the revolutionary and long is the path which zhe walks.

[savage anomaly]

Foucault exposes a lot of the nonsense in a lot of Marxist theories. I wrote an essay last year that incorporated Foucault's understanding of power in international relations theory, and contrasted it with Gramsci's theory of hegemony, and talked about some of the fundamental problems with Marxism in IR theory. Foucault's method offers potent critiques of institutions and systems of ideas in plenty of other subjects. Knowledge itself is recast as a function of power. Contrast Foucault with Marxist Alexandre Kojeve - the master/slave dialectic as the metaphysical "engine of history" is the real nonsense!

[Lord Hargreaves]

No it isn't. It's not saying that you're oversimplifying something, its saying that you can explain a complex situation by assembling simple concepts that are part of it together.

Here's a famous reductionist for you :



I would say something being described as reductionism is nearly always meant as a criticism. Reductionism... like its a formula you've applied to a particular case without understanding the context.

I get where you are coming from. In a "postmodernism" that fetishises complexity, you might be made to feel that any talk of causality (or of any functional relationships working within society at all) is to commit something of a faux pas. This has to be fought against.

But this applies only to the lazy reception of these ideas within the humanities. Foucault, it is true, renounces the study of history per se, but he continues to trace the genealogy of particular historical institutions, such as the prison.

[Teacher]

I have the book by Alex Callinicos as well as the stuff by Eagleton et al and a book by Marxist historian Bryan Palmer called "Descent into Discourse" that is pretty good. Was just wondering if people had anything in mind that I wasn't aware of.

[Teacher]

Presumably you would first need to understand the "nonsense" before forming a critique of it.

I understand it just fine. You can't get a graduate degree in the humanities without being subjected to an onslaught of Foucault, PoMo, Subaltern crap, poststructuralism, etc. Just because I did not feel the need to write an essay about why I disagree with the stuff in the OP doesn't mean I don't know what I am talking about.

[Hit The North]

I understand it just fine. You can't get a graduate degree in the humanities without being subjected to an onslaught of Foucault, PoMo, Subaltern crap, poststructuralism, etc. Just because I did not feel the need to write an essay about why I disagree with the stuff in the OP doesn't mean I don't know what I am talking about.

So when the inevitable debate happens, what is going to be your line of attack?

[The Feral Underclass]

I understand it just fine.

I really doubt that.


You can't get a graduate degree in the humanities without being subjected to an onslaught of Foucault, PoMo, Subaltern crap, poststructuralism, etc. Just because I did not feel the need to write an essay about why I disagree with the stuff in the OP doesn't mean I don't know what I am talking about.

What specifically is it about post-structuralism and Foucault that you think is nonsense?

[Jimmie Higgins]

I don't really think this is the best way to look at it. Because in a certain sense, a Marxist critique of Post-Modernism is quite simple. In fact I can summarize what I bet the IMT will spend writting on post modernism. Whatever it is, it will be based on this simple premise:

"Post Modernism comes from bourgeois institutions, therefore it is bourgeois."Well yes, but that would be a essentially useless critique. I'm a bit skeptical about any argument made by Callinicos these days but his book and about postmodernism and Eagleton's, while necissarilly general, certaintly don't argue that. In fact if I remember correctly, Callinicos basically argues that Post-modernism just doesn't exist as a distinct "era" and is better understood as a phase of modernism, developing critiques from there, but in a context of the cold-war: Stalinism and "Labor-Peace".

As I understood the OP, they were asking for a more detailed critique, i.e. counter-arguments to what is being presented in their classes. What I was responding to was the ridicioulous and elitist suggestion that if someone disagrees with something, they "don't understand it". It's basically what every pro-capitalist or snotty econ student tells workers on picket lines or anti-capitalists.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I think the issue is that any Marxist approach that doesn't seriously engage with "post-modern" methods and critiques is necessarily out of date. While certainly there are liberal currents among "post-[fuckingeverything]" writers and theorists, I'm inclined to be deeply suspicious of the implicit conservatism of "Marxists" that write off the last 40 years of radical critical thought as "academic nonsense" (as though the classics of Marxism were pop. lit.).

[blake 3:17]

That Callinicos book is terrible. I haven't read Palmer's. He's a good guy, and have much more time for him than Callinicos. His work alternates between history from below and cultural studies work which does employ some of the fancy French stuff.

One of the very very best things I've read on the topic is French Theory
How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States by François Cusset. It's not so much a particular critique of any set of ideas -- they are far too varied and it is stupid to make them into a "thing", but the book provides a very well informed social and historically informed account of how French "postmodern" thought took hold in the US through literary studies academia and got all messed up. In large part it had to do with what was translated and when.

I'd agree with VMC about Foucault's Discipline and Punish -- it's essential reading.

I've had some interest in Derrida, mostly on aesthetic related issues and on some political issues in later works. His project is a largely negative one, but he's got a good sense of humour.

I'm very keen on Deleuze and Guattari. Deleuze was a philosopher. Guattari wasn't. While many here consider them "postmodernists", they didn't, and weren't considered so in France. They were seen as reckless Marxists. Ian Buchanan's book on Anti Oedipus is quite good, situating as a revolutionary book, though he discounts A Thousand Plateaus which I think is much stronger, and stranger.

There's was a positive project (or bunch of projects) -- they wanted to create ideas that MIGHT work. They were inventing and improvising and risking failure. There's a lot of garbage written on them -- it's an academic gangster industry -- but there is some good stuff. Maybe two things I like best are from Semiotexte, a book of interviews and bits and pieces from each. Two Regimes of Madness with Deleuze and Soft Subversions with Guattari.

[G-Dogg]

Anyone want to point me in some good directions of critiques of all this academic nonsense? I have quite a bit of stuff but I'm currently in a class in which this stuff figured prominently and I want to be as prepared as possible when the inevitable discussion with my professor happens.

Does it have to be a Marxist critique? If not, look up "Fashionable Nonsense" by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont or "The Social Construction of What?" by Ian Hacking.