The enduring legacy of Michel Foucault
by Helen Pluckrose, The Critic:
How the French philosopher founded today’s social justice movement.
Occasionally, throughout history, there has existed a single individual who has a profound impact on the way society thinks, speaks and understands itself. In the West, the most influential thinker of all time is probably St Augustine of Hippo, bringing together, as he did, Christianity with Ancient Greek philosophy. More than that, his thought was sufficiently flexible to adapt with the times and changing social mores to remain ever relevant. If I were now to ask any stranger on a Western street a few select questions, I would almost certainly detect the influence of Augustine. And yet, if I asked them if they’d ever read Augustine, they would probably tell me they had not.
Other individuals who have significantly influenced the way society thinks and speaks range from William Shakespeare to Karl Marx and their influence is widely acknowledged. The influence of the postmodernists, probably largely due to their incomprehensibility, is not so widely recognized. But for those of us who are concerned about this, that Michel Foucault is in fact by far the most cited scholar to date comes as no surprise.
Conventional wisdom has it that postmodernism is dead. It is true that the first burst of highly prolific postmodern writing burnt itself out by the end of the 1980s: but the idea that postmodernism died is simply false. A second wave of postmodernism emerged at the end of the 1980s – one that made it more intelligible and actionable. Postcolonial theory, queer theory, critical race theory, intersectional feminism all gained prominence at this time. They drew explicitly from postmodernist ideas and the go-to philosopher of choice was Michel Foucault.
Please right-click links to open in a new window.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
