Tag Archives: Politics & Society

Almost anyone can see what a reductive view this is of modern society, even without having read their Rousseau or Rawls. We must not be taken in by the fact that this is called “critical,” that it’s about race, and that it’s titled a “theory.” It is a fragile, performative ideology, one that goes beyond the passages above to explicitly reject linear reasoning, traditional legal theorizing, and even Enlightenment rationalism. We are to favor an idea that an oppressed race’s...

The problem with Foucault My problem with Michel Foucault, then, is not that he seeks to “move beyond” the welfare state, but that he actively contributed to its destruction, and that he did so in a way that was entirely in step with the neoliberal critiques of the moment. His objective was not to move towards “socialism,” but to be rid of it … In addition to the “dependency” it supposedly creates, Foucault believes that social security ultimately serves...

It is not difficult to discern Foucault’s animosity toward the post-war left project. Obviously he was very hostile to Marxism … For Foucault in 1977, “the return of the revolution, that’s our problem (…) You know it very well: it’s the desire itself of the revolution that is a problem” … Foucault’s non-vote for Mitterrand in 1981 was about more than just a vote; it revealed his deep suspicion of the whole project of the left after 1945, with its strong state, universal...

Although somewhat critical of its reductive elements, Foucault found certain attractive features in the ideal or programmatic form imagined by American neoliberalism, namely, that it envisages a kind of regulation outside sovereign, disciplinary, and biopolitical forms, that it regulates without the fabrication of subjectivities and in a manner that optimizes difference and tolerates minority groups and practices. Second, from a policy perspective, Foucault showed a certain...

It’s now an article of faith that universalism, like other Enlightenment ideas, is a sham that was invented to disguise Eurocentric views that supported colonialism. When I first heard such claims some fifteen years ago, I thought they were so flimsy they’d soon disappear. For the claims are not simply ungrounded: they turn Enlightenment upside down. Enlightenment thinkers invented the critique of Eurocentrism and were the first to attack colonialism, on the basis of...

Wokeism and the commodified academic industry .[embedded content]

The problem with identity politics and wokeism .[embedded content]

Postcolonial theory in perspective Many of the theoretical assumptions which support the most admirable impulses of the woke come from the intellectual movement they most despise. The best tenets of woke, such as the insistence on viewing the world from more than one geographical perspective, come straight from the Enlightenment. Contemporary rejections of this period usually go hand in hand with not much knowledge of it. But you can’t hope to make progress...

[embedded content] Jean-Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir, Gilles et Fanny Deleuze … Jack Lang … André Glucksmann, et bien d’autres encore; tous font partie des 69 intellectuels français qui, aux côtés de l’écrivain Gabriel Matzneff … ont signé une tribune publiée le 26 janvier 1977. D’abord dans Le Monde puis dans Libération pour défendre trois hommes incarcérés depuis plus de trois ans pour avoir abusé sexuellement de mineurs de moins de 15 ans. ‘Trois...

Få lobbyorganisationer i landet är mäktigare än Svenska Bankföreningen, som satt i system att rekrytera ex-politiker till vd-posten. Denna organisation och dess inhyrda lakejer har systematiskt motarbetat alla försök till ökade krav på branschen, inte sällan med hjälp av domedagsscenarier där Sverige påstås regrediera till bronsåldern om inte samhället värnar storbankernas lönsamhet. Det är en pr-kampanj som rönt lysande framgångar. Sedan millennieskiftet har de sammanlagda...