Can We Criticize Foucault?
Late in life, Michel Foucault developed a curious sympathy for neoliberalism.
Since his death in 1984, Michel Foucault’s work has become a touchstone for the academic left worldwide. But in a provocative new book published in Belgium last month, a team of scholars led by sociologist Daniel Zamora raises probing questions about Foucault’s relationship with the neoliberal revolution that was just getting started in his last years.
In an interview this month with the new French journal Ballast, Zamora discusses the book’s fascinating findings and what they mean for radical thought today. Below is the text of the interview, translated from French by Seth Ackerman.
In his book Foucault, Sa Pensée, Sa Personne, Foucault’s friend Paul Veyne writes that he was unclassifiable, politically and philosophically: “He believed in neither Marx nor Freud, nor in the Revolution nor in Mao, in private he snickered at fine progressive sentiments, and I knew of no principled position of his on the vast problems of the Third World, consumerism, capitalism, American imperialism.”
Daniel Zamora
Sorry, but this article is available to active subscribers only. Please log in or become a subscriber.