Of all of Foucault’s claims that Zamora criticizes, it is this last one he believes poses the most danger. As long as the left continues to favor fights against marginality over fights against exploitation, it will remain, as Foucault did, a hopeless pawn in neoliberalism’s advance. Zamora is not alone in making this argument. Indeed, his is part of a larger view of the last 40 years that sees the rise of late-20th-century capitalism as being integrally linked with a loss of the left’s critical edge, either through the process of co-optation by the status quo, or isolation into provincial academic circles. It is this view of recent history that motivates Zamora’s attempt to Criticize Foucault. In order to break out of the left’s spiral downward, he believes, it is important to pinpoint the moment at which the left took a wrong turn so as to reverse that turn’s catastrophic effects.

symbolic exchange / forget foucault
- bill 3-22-2015 2:29 am

Foucault, in these 1979 lectures, undoubtedly found neoliberalism interesting and worthy of his devoting substantial attention. But aside for historical and contextual reasons for why this might be the case (which I cannot address here) this was a very early ‘neoliberalism’ – the lectures were delivered before Reagan or Thatcher were elected. And this course is unusual in being the only one of the Paris courses that was directed toward the twentieth-century. Foucault’s mode of reading texts often makes it look like he is agreeing with arguments, when he is really trying to reconstruct them, to understand their logic, and so on. To suggest there is some sympathy to neoliberalism is one thing, to claim he was a neoliberal/libertarian or other labels is quite another. Compare these lectures’ tone to those on early Christianity and late antiquity in the next two courses – does this mean Foucault was also a Christian and a stoic?

and on.
- bill 3-22-2015 3:30 am

as with college this is really cutting into my backgammon time. my nap time remains unperturbed.
- dave 3-22-2015 5:19 pm