In any event, I think it is time for an obituary and general appraisal. By that I mean, what do people think in general terms of these intellectual movements. And further, did they have much effect on their primary target, the life of the mind and its relation to the human world. What was changed and what hasn't?
......
The argument has moved on.
These complaints -- or perhaps we should call them laments -- are no longer state of the art. Since I was knee high to Skaky 444, the lovable bomb defusing robot, people who're concerned with such things have howled at the moon about the supposed failures of postmodernism.
* Not serious enough!
* Inferior to Marx, Nietzsche, etc!
* The plaything of de-politicized poseurs!
* Didn't get me laid!
And so on.
Usually the criticism, explicitly declared or implied, is that Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Virilio and co. wasted a tender generation's precious time. How dare they fool us with their seductively distracting French-ness! We have movements to build and a world to win. We were busy reading De la grammatologie when we should have been occupying factories!
Meanwhile, more useful questions have gone unanswered.
Questions such as: how did it come to pass that a group of French thinkers -- who, at home, were not considered part of a movement -- were adopted by Americans (and not just academics, but all sorts of people looking for...something) becoming the unwitting parents of a completely *American* thing called 'French Theory'?
The real argument -- the state of the art investigation -- isn't focused on the content of the actual works of mid to late 20th century French philosophers and social critics but rather, deconstructs(!)the house of mirrors reflections within reflections these works were subjected to in the United States (and probably Britain too, which never seems far behind, and is often a bit ahead, of the goofiest American enthusiasms).
Here's something to think about because it offers a larger lesson than what's apparent at first look; why does our own Chris Doss, who has repeatedly admitted to not reading very much Foucault, confidently assert the uncanny (uncanny!) parallels between Foucault's output and the horror fiction of Clive Barker? (Which is hilariously like saying, 'I really don't know what makes the sun hot, but I'm 100 percent sure it's a giant ball of coal.)
I think the answer's simple: we *think* we know because the name Foucault, along with select and apparently supportive quotations, have been routinely deployed by various people -- members of this synthetic thing called 'postmodernism' which proudly takes its cues from the American creation, 'French Theory'.
Above, I wrote that these kinds of questions have languished, unaddressed while yet another 'Forget Foucault' essay or Post Mortem on Postmodernism flies off someone's word processor.
That's no longer true.
Several months ago, shag posted about Francois Cusset's book, _French Theory_:
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2008/2008-September/015553.html>
As usual, this was greeted with either silence or misunderstanding (the misunderstanding taking the form of a few list members thinking Cusset was performing, well, another Yet Another Post Mortem on Postmodernism instead of the very interesting thing he actually does do: explain how it came to pass that Americans adopted a disparate group of French thinkers, declaring them to be the leaders of a movement).
Let's quote shag here (from the link above):
<snip>
So much of the early rise of French theory had to do with the co-mingling between scholars of French literature and language, artists, writers, activists, musicians, and various academic types from the humanities, mostly English, who would stumble over some translation in a dog-eared mimeographed copy that was passed from person to person, "Here, check this out," or left about at clubs, coffee houses, communal storefronts, anarchist spaces, etc.
But I should repeat here that what is key for Cusset is the way French theory was taken up in the United States. (with the amusing fact that when the Sokal affair hit the pages of major Fr. newspapers, the French were bemused as the way the ideas had been taken up... wazzah? Or, that anyone cared about these debates anymore since the french had disposed of them a decade before. WTF was their response.
[...]
Once again...
"But I should repeat here that what is key for Cusset is the way French theory was taken up in the United States."
That's the argument's cutting edge. Not, 'what's wrong with Foucault?' but, what the hell happened to Foucault's words in the United States? (That kingdom of instrumentality.)
The thorough Scott McLemee on Cusset:
<http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/015_02/2489>
The book, from U of Minnesota Press:
<http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/C/cusset_french.html>
.d.