I have read Baudrillard, Foucault, and Derrida, and in the original. And yes, I think this about them. Do I dismiss EVERYTHING they say? No. I remember there was some stuff in Baudrillard's critique of Marx's concept of use value that was interesting. Derrida never struck me as anything other than a very long-winded belle-lettrist with just a little frisson of Marxist analysis. I was impressed by "Discipline and Punish" when I was 23. I re-read it about ten years ago and was struck mostly by its very sloppy thinking. The thing is, there is such a thing as good scholarship and such a thing as creative intelligence and I don't think these men have either....though I admit they were wildly successful intellectual poseurs.
This xmas a friend gave me a video of Stevie Ray Vaughn and told me to watch it cause Vaughn was much better than Hendrix. Ha! Ha! Ha! Hendrix was a live, creative, explosive musical intelligence; Vaughn, though perfectly good technically (better than Clapton for example), is a completely derivative musician. Same analogy holds for Marx and the post toasties.
Joanna B.