[HN Gopher] The Bleak Genius of Michel Foucault
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The Bleak Genius of Michel Foucault
Author : Caiero
Score : 35 points
Date : 2024-06-27 17:36 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.compactmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.compactmag.com)
| janice1999 wrote:
| > In practical terms, Foucault's and his followers' assault
| against sexual normalization has helped bring about institutions
| that disavow normativity at every turn.
|
| I assume this is an oblique defense of Foucault's lifelong and
| vocal campaign to remove the age of consent so adults could have
| sex with children. Foucault was also recently accused of having
| purchased boys for sex by his friend Guy Sorman.
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/4/16/reckoning-with-...
| dralley wrote:
| Aside from this, the pretension is literally dripping from that
| sentence, my god.
|
| It's difficult to value the "genius" of people (and frankly
| entire fields) who seem to apply most of their cleverness
| towards being inscrutable for no good reason.
| prewett wrote:
| I think the purpose of the inscrutability serves is to "idea
| launder" obvious falsehoods into something believable, much
| like the convoluted path one takes to convert stolen money
| into believably-legal money.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Well to be fair there are two arguments, one is that you
| can't use normal commonplace phrasing to describe something
| that's at odds with the 'normal'; the other is that in a
| publish-or-perish academic world each new generation of
| thinkers invents a new jargon to differentiate themselves
| from their predecessors (and keep their jobs). Not that
| both couldn't be simultaneously true, but I think it's a
| little too cheeky to say they're making it up for no reason
| at all.
| bitwize wrote:
| "Idea laundering". You've neatly summarized what I believe
| Curtis Yarvin to have been doing, both with his political
| writing and his computational silliness like Urbit.
| hackandthink wrote:
| The article about Foucault's pedophilia is worth reading. I'm
| not really surprised. When I read the piece on Pierre Riviere
| decades ago, it creeped me out.
|
| https://markkukoivusalo.org/thinkers/foucault/cp/pierre-rivi...
| pasabagi wrote:
| Apparently bullshit, though: https://www.lexpress.fr/idees-et-
| debats/michel-foucault-et-l...
|
| Guy Sorman wasn't Foucault's friend, and later said (about his
| statement) that he never actually saw anything he described,
| but just a 'convergence of disturbing clues'. You have to bear
| in mind that accusing gay people of pedophilia is pretty
| standard fare for homophobes up and to this day.
| complaintdept wrote:
| IIRC Focault still signed a petition to legalize sex with
| children. Not sure why, but it wasn't an entirely unpopular
| opinion among (often) leftist intellectuals in Europe at the
| time.
| pasabagi wrote:
| I mean, it seems a bit unclear _what_ his political
| positions actually were, but it does seem they were just
| opinions. As philosophers go, that 's pretty small beer:
| Thales used to roast people alive in a brass container,
| Marcus Aurelius was responsible for numerous genocides, and
| Heidegger was a card-carrying Nazi.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >Thales used to roast people alive in a brass container
|
| Source?
| teractiveodular wrote:
| That would be Phalaris of brazen bull fame, not Thales.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalaris
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Jacques
| Derrida signed a petition to decriminalise pedophilia [0].
| The age of consent at that time in France was 15.
|
| "In a sense, all the rest of my life I've been trying to do
| intellectual things that would attract beautiful boys."
|
| [0] https://x.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1806019580315463689
| Amezarak wrote:
| That article says they were probably teenagers, not young
| children.
|
| > After interviewing residents of Sidi Bou Said who had known
| the philosopher, his report concluded: "Michel Foucault was
| not a paedophile, but he was seduced by the young Ephebes."
|
| Not exactly _vindicating_ , but not the same level of horror,
| I suppose. It's not exactly a crazy idea given Foucault's own
| words quoted elsewhere in this thread.
| slibhb wrote:
| The author is a social conservative. He's by no means defending
| Foucault's "assault against sexual normalization".
|
| My sense is that, by "recognizing Foucault's bleak genius," the
| subtext is "we need God because otherwise there's nothing but
| depravity".
| slowhadoken wrote:
| Noam Chomsky called Foucault a morally bankrupt phony. I think
| Chomsky was being kind.
| idontknowtech wrote:
| Foucault is the primary intellectual force behind the
| contemporary social science trend of seeing everything through
| a power relationships lens. His influence cannot be overstated,
| at least in the American academy. It's bizarre.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| I've read Foucault. I'm familiar with western and continental
| philosophy. I studied psychology, sociology, and political
| science too. Foucault's influence, as well as French
| existentialism and post-structuralism in general, are to
| blame for the current state of social science. Boiling
| everything down to a cultural power struggle is a pyramid
| scheme, a cult that infiltrated American academia. It's
| certainly not a moral philosophy and Foucault's life reflects
| that.
| vinteruggla wrote:
| Why? Any context or reference?
| dcre wrote:
| You can watch Foucault and Chomsky debate!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8
| slowhadoken wrote:
| Foucault was a degenerate. He espoused a belief in moral
| relativism to conceal the fact that he was a monster. In
| reality he was at best a pedophile and at worst a culture
| destroying sociopath.
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i63_kAw3WmE
| slowhadoken wrote:
| What's funny is people down voted this comment even though it's
| true. What does that say about the voting system on this site?
| lol
| viccis wrote:
| Was that before or after Foucault cooked him in the debate?
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