Cf. Paul Berman, "Power and the Idealists, " on Kouchner, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and J. Fischer. Telos back in the mid-80's published a remarkable dialogue between Fischer and Danny The Red signalling a move away from their former positions. Berman has a few comments on Foucault and the, "New Philosophers, " whom he supported in their anti-Marxist-Leninist polemicizing.
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=k7jgcs3s0cv7rw48sr0hl65xzsnfvl7d
Foucault the Neohumanist?
By RICHARD WOLIN
>...But increasingly that perception seems wrong, or, at best, only
partially true. Considerable evidence suggests that, later in life,
Foucault himself became frustrated with the antihumanist credo. He
underwent what one might describe as a learning process. He came to
realize that much of what French structuralism had during the 1960s
rejected as humanist pap retained considerable ethical and political
value.
That re-evaluation of humanism redounds to his credit as a thinker. It stems from a profound and undeniable moral insight: If one wishes to become an effective critic of totalitarianism, as Foucault certainly did, the paradigm of "man" remains an indispensable ally. After all, it is the totalitarians themselves who seek to quash or eliminate man. As antitotalitarian political analysts and actors, our responsibility is to spare him that fate.
It would not be a misnomer to suggest that in fact the later Foucault became a human-rights activist, a political posture that stands in stark contrast with his North American canonization as the progenitor of "identity politics."
The major difference between the two standpoints may be explained as follows: Whereas human rights stress our formal and inviolable prerogatives as people (equality before the law, freedom of speech, habeas corpus, and so forth), identity politics emphasize the particularity of group belonging. The problem is that the two positions often conflict: Assertions of cultural particularism often view an orientation toward rights as an abstract, formalistic hindrance. Thus identity politics risks regressing to an ideology of "groupthink." Or, as a percipient German friend once observed with reference to the American culture wars, "Identity politics: That's what we had in Germany between 1933 and 1945." He correctly insinuated that unless multiculturalist allegiances are mediated by a fundamental respect for the rule of law and basic constitutional freedoms, the door will have been opened to fratricidal conflict.
In Discipline and Punish, Foucault embraced the thesis of "soft totalitarianism" to describe the carceral system of the modern West. To his credit, he would eventually criticize with equal vigor the post-Stalinist variant of totalitarianism predominant in Eastern Europe. (Among left-leaning French intellectuals, a veritable turning point and awakening came with the publication of Solzhenitsyn's magisterial Gulag Archipelago in 1974.) If, during the 1960s, the heroes of the French left had been developing-world revolutionaries such as Che, Fidel, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao, during the late 1970s dissidence was in vogue. Václav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Lech Walesa, and a cast of less-heralded oppositionists became the new standard-bearers for the figure of the engaged intellectual.
With acumen and enthusiasm, Foucault boarded the antitotalitarian bandwagon. Since his election to the prestigious Collège de France in 1970, he increasingly cultivated the persona of an intellectual activist. During the 1970s, Foucault justly inherited Sartre's mantle as the prototype of the intellectuel engagé. One of his first forays in this regard consisted of a vigorous defense of the so-called New Philosophers — ex-Maoists, such as André Glucksmann, Bernard-Henri Lévy, and Guy Lardreau, who had finally seen the light and reinvented themselves as un-relenting critics of left-wing political despotism. In many respects, the New Philosophers were Foucault's intellectual progeny. Using conceptual tools he had developed such as "power/knowledge" and disciplinary surveillance, they merely extended his critical position to encompass the Soviet-dominated lands of, in Rudolf Bahro's words, "really existing socialism."
In 1977 Foucault took to the pages of the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur to publish a ringing justification of Glucksmann's antitotalitarian screed, The Master Thinkers, for daring to speak truth to power. Undoubtedly, Foucault saw through much of New Philosophy's rhetorical histrionics and shallow posturing. In his view, what was primarily at stake was a larger political point: delivering a coup de grâce to the French left's naïve infatuation with Marxism. Previously, French intellectuals had developed a network of sophisticated rationalizations to justify left-wing dictatorships. However, in view of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Prague, the unspeakable depredations of Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and Pol Pot's gruesome reign of terror in Cambodia, such justifications were wearing increasingly thin. Wasn't a distinctly grisly and horrific political pattern beginning to emerge? In this way, Foucault sought to call the bluff of his fellow leftists. In his review-essay "The Great Rage of Facts," he pointedly mocked the idea, once popular among the left, that the historical necessity of socialism could ever trump basic human or moral concerns.
Far from being a one-time gambit, Foucault's spirited endorsement of the antitotalitarian ethos set the tone for many of his later intellectual and political involvements. In 1978, Bernard Kouchner, the human-rights activist and Doctors Without Borders founder, contacted Foucault to support the plight of the Vietnamese "boat people," who were fleeing persecution by the recently installed Communist government. As a result, the group "A Boat for Vietnam" was founded, with Foucault as one of its leading activists. Along with Glucksmann, Kouchner, Sartre, and Raymond Aron, the organization successfully lobbied President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing to increase France's quota for Vietnamese refugees.
The alliance with Kouchner and Glucksmann transformed Foucault into a passionate advocate of humanitarian intervention, or le droit d'ingérance: the moral imperative to intervene in the domestic affairs of a nation where human rights are being systematically violated. In 1981, Foucault addressed a major conference held at U.N. headquarters in Geneva where these themes were debated and discussed. In his speech, Foucault eloquently praised the responsibilities of"international citizenship," which, he claimed, "implies a commitment to rise up against any abuse of power, whoever its author, whoever its victims." "Amnesty International, Terre des Hommes, and Médecins du Monde," he continued, "are the initiatives which have created this new right; the right of private individuals to intervene effectively in the order of international policies and strategies." If Foucault retained aspects of his earlier, antihumanist worldview, they were certainly undetectable in his moving Geneva speech.
Later that year, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law in Poland, brutally suppressing Solidarity, Eastern Europe's first independent trade union. The response by most Western European statesmen was a deafening silence. They judged the matter to be a purely "internal" Polish affair. They feared fanning the flames of the cold war. (Ronald Reagan's presidency had begun earlier that year.) So much for international solidarity. Better that the civilian populations of Eastern Europe passively endure the yoke of authoritarian rule. The recently elected French Socialist government had an additional, domestic political motivation to look the other way. It had come to power in an alliance with the French Communists. A rift over the "Polish question" risked fracturing the alliance.
At the behest of Pierre Bourdieu, Foucault once again sprang into action. The two intellectual luminaries jointly drafted an impassioned statement urging the Socialists not to repeat the ignominious blunders of 1936 — refusing to come to the aid of the embattled Spanish Republic — and 1956 — countenancing the Warsaw Pact's brutal invasion of Budapest. The statement was broadcast on French radio. Among its signatories were Glucksmann, Kouchner, Yves Montand, and Simone Signoret. Thereafter, the French government enacted a sudden volte-face, vigorously protesting the declaration of martial law. President François Mitterrand released a statement in support of the oppressed Poles. Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy abruptly canceled a forthcoming diplomatic visit to Warsaw. Led by Foucault, French intellectuals had risen to the occasion. It was not quite the Dreyfus affair. But it was a worthy performance nevertheless.
During the late 1970s, Foucault became acquainted with Robert Badinter, an influential jurist who was an avowed admirer of the philosopher's work on prisons and punishment. In 1981, Badinter became Mitterrand's minister of justice. One of his first official acts was to abolish the death penalty. Other progressive legislative measures followed: A draconian 1970 anti-riot act was invalidated, police surveillance of homosexuals was forbidden, and the dreaded maximum-security wings of French prisons were shut down. Badinter and Foucault developed a deep friendship. Undoubtedly, many of the minister's ideas on progressive penal reform had been inspired by Foucault's teachings and doctrines.
But did Foucault's new political self-understanding as a human-rights activist have any repercussions on his philosophical views? Emphatically so. This theme is the centerpiece of Eric Paras's provocative new book, Foucault 2.0: Beyond Power and Knowledge (Other Press). Paras deftly and painstakingly culls his evidence from Foucault's later Collège de France lectures, most of which remain unpublished. If his insights are correct, his study portends a veritable sea change in Foucault scholarship.
As Paras shows, in his later years Foucault had clearly become disenchanted with the research program he had honed during the mid-1970s in Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality. The treatment of "power" in these works proved too suffocating and monolithic. The idea of resistance to power seemed all but ruled out. <SNIP>