/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11265911]

Tell me the truth about Foucault, /lit/.
There has been so much rabble rousing around the "postmodernists" what with Peterson and the like blaming them for our collective wrong-think, which made me curious as to what those people were "actually" saying. Starting with Foucault (because he seems to be equally hated here)

So what was the point of his life's work?
Is there anything perennially relevant he came up with that everyone today should know?

4chan osmosis gives me the feeling that he's just a scam artist who's been sanctified as one of the pillars of modern thought by academia, but that is too easy, too reductive. I would really want to give this guy a genuine read but im constantly doubting if diving into his work is really worth it.

[Anonymous No.11265930]

>>11265911
get off the goddamn internet and READ THE TEXTS

[Anonymous No.11265938]

>>11265930
Yes, this is what i'm, planning on doing, friend. I'm just curious if there's someone on here who actually has a positive or interesting opinion on him, which would give me more incentive.

[Anonymous No.11265950]

>>11265911
His works are very interesting, especially his history of sexuality (of course don't expect a history book) and power. He's not hard to read so Idk why retards keep linking him to Derrida so much.

[Anonymous No.11265963]

>>11265911
>4chan osmosis gives me the feeling that he's just a scam artist who's been sanctified as one of the pillars of modern thought by academia
but that's just 4chan with everything they don't like in principle
also learn to separate the frogs from their american reception

[Anonymous No.11265980]

>>11265911
foucault is a modernist par excellence. he is only grouped in with pomoists because of the time in which he wrote. his method is basically empirical, ie the analysis of history to arrive at conclusions. his method is also basically nietzsche's genealogy applied to western history, with a focus on the history and development of the nation-state and the experience of the subject in relation to the state. you would think his work would be interesting to libertarians, and it actually is, but he is written off for being bald or gay or something

[Anonymous No.11265990]

>>11265911
Discipline and Punish is an easy read, a good historical survey, and gives as good an insight into his major themes as you will need to understand what people talk about when they discuss or cite Foucault

also I'm not sure where you get the idea that everyone hates him on here from.

>Is there anything perennially relevant he came up with that everyone today should know?
Social dynamics are best understood as power relationships that are expressed through social practices and language

which is ironically exactly what JBP believes and preaches but he wouldn't know as he admits to never having read Fookoh.

[Anonymous No.11266049]

If there is no objective truth then you can justify anything.

[Anonymous No.11266055]

>>11266049
>>>/r/eddit.com/r/jordanpeterson

[Anonymous No.11266057]

>>11265950
Well they linked themselves together. Literally.

[Anonymous No.11266060]

>>11265990
Thanks I'll start with Discipline and Punish

>I'm not sure where you get the idea that everyone hates him on here from.
I'm only irregularly on here, but in the threads i saw in the past few days, people were calling him along with Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari conmen, with very few defending them so I assumed most people dislike them.

>>11265990
>which is ironically exactly what JBP believes and preaches but he wouldn't know as he admits to never having read Fookoh.
This frustrates me to no end. Why the willful ignorance if he actually shares his views? All the professors i've had were extremely open to differing thought and cared about the thing they were critizicing. One guy who hated comic books even took recommendations from someone because he wanted to be proven wrong.

[Anonymous No.11266076]

>>11265911
>which made me curious as to what those people were "actually" saying
>So what was the point of his life's work?
You're fucking as dumb as they come m8

[Anonymous No.11266095]

>>11265911

He used to lash twinks in San Fran bath houses, spread AIDS by violently sodomizing said twinks, and wrote several unintelligible books that joyfully lash twinks of the intellect

[Anonymous No.11266105]

>>11266095
This
He died of AIDS he contracted in a San Francisco bath house.
A complete degenerate

[Anonymous No.11266107]

>>11266060
I'd say Foucault is much better liked than Derrida and D&G. Derrida is genuinely controversial and a lot of academia (far from being dominated by his ideas as JBP insinuates) actively condemns him as a plagiarist and an obscurantist hack. D&G is mixed, their work is notoriously obscurantist, but NRx has a lot of Deluezian influence

JBP did a lecture at the university of wisconsin on foucault and derrida which is worth watching just because of how low he is willing to sink for the sake of his stupid neo-marxist pomo narrative. fuck that guy

[Anonymous No.11266109]

>>11266095
>wrote several unintelligible books that joyfully lash twinks of the intellect
*while spreading intellectual AIDS ie critical theory

[Anonymous No.11266121]

>>11266105
*houseS

He was a notorious and frequent visitor of many, according to most sources, taking glee in sadistically beating effete men unconscious, or close to unconscious, then sodomizing them

[Anonymous No.11266122]

>>11266095
Mmmmm...

[Anonymous No.11266129]

His history of sexuality is still somewhat enlightening, Discipline and Punish is an interesting project but outdated

[Anonymous No.11266145]

>>11266121

[Anonymous No.11266146]

Foucault was a dumb obscurantist charlatan. He never once said anything that could be understood clearly.

[Anonymous No.11266169]

>>11266076
Hey, you can do both. Read his books and then examine his work on a metalevel. Or you could just quote hearsay and second hand sources and derive your opinion from that.

[Anonymous No.11266181]

>>11265911
>Dude schools are literally prisons

sounds like this guy never completed high school and just wanted to complain about authority.

[Anonymous No.11266187]

>>11266146
he said you were a faggot

[Anonymous No.11266197]

>>11265911
He's responsible for all the "bodies" and power shit sjws prattle on about.

[Anonymous No.11266211]

This guy was bullshit. He claims that being gay is just an invention of capitalism. How retarded do you have to be to think being able to own your own business makes other people turn gay.

[Anonymous No.11266224]

>>11266181
They're more like 18th century relics, sure you can mitigate some problems by dressing them in fancy tech or run four or so separate classes per subject to account for some of the variance in skill (for same aged) students but ultimately these don't solve the core problem that schools have in that they were not designed to run in the modern world, they were designed for the Prussian state some 300 years ago.

[Anonymous No.11266225]

>>11266129
outdated on what grounds?

[Anonymous No.11266231]

Even the brainlet Chomsky despised him. Just consider that.

[Anonymous No.11266235]

Postmodernists should never be taken seriously ever. This article generator can write more coherently than fouhack

http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/pomo/

[Anonymous No.11266241]

>>11266224
Were you born retarded or does it take effort?

[Anonymous No.11266246]

Sokal incident etc etc

[Anonymous No.11266252]

>>11266235
I found foucault to be pretty coherent, what have you read of his?

[Anonymous No.11266257]

>>11266231
Chomsky didn't have any quarrels with him. They got a long fine on a personal level.

[Anonymous No.11266258]

>>11266241
What's retarded about it?

[Anonymous No.11266271]

>>11266258
School are a natural part of modern society and educating people . Look at the disaster that happened when Mao abolished schools. Millions died. Even they admitted they were wrong and went back to them.

[Anonymous No.11266274]

>>11266224
have you been reading nick land's twitter account again

[Anonymous No.11266296]

>>11266107
>JBP did a lecture at the university of wisconsin on foucault and derrida which is worth watching just because of how low he is willing to sink for the sake of his stupid neo-marxist pomo narrative. fuck that guy

as a long as he fights social marxism, i don´t care, retarded left wing bitch

[Anonymous No.11266302]

>>11266271
I don't want to abolish schools, jesus Christ, i'm saying they need to be thoroughly modernised/reimagined, solutions deeper other than 'throw more money at it,' that is all we get to hear in the public discourse.
>>11266274
No, but maybe i may as well start at this rate. If the collapse happens accelerationism will save more than slow decay imo.

[Anonymous No.11266306]

He makes up historical sources and uses them to pretend homosexuality has always been the norm.

[Anonymous No.11266308]

>>11266231
Chomsky got butthurt and called Foucault “totally amoral” because he didn’t take his shitty mutt spooks as a priori revelation truth

[Anonymous No.11266316]

>>11266302
he's been tweeting a lot about schools recently voicing a similar opinion

[Anonymous No.11266317]

>>11266296
>intellectual honesty does not matter
>as long as he fights my boogyman
by social marxism do you mean cultural marxism?

[Anonymous No.11266320]

>>11266302
So you want them to be modernised but you can't actually claim how to do so. Figurues. You are the same as slaphead Foucault. Not once does he propose when we will do when we get rid of all of science, medicine, school, prisons etc. His dreamworld is one where gay people have orgies all day and don't think about how they will survive in the long term.

[Anonymous No.11266326]

>>11266241
>>11266271
It sounds like considering, analysing and evaluating recent phenomena in a light that doesn’t take them totally for granted offends you. Sorry anon but you’re a brainlet. You’re the one with the actual attitude of a high schooler, the credulous child who thinks the world - the same since his birth, always in front of his eyes - is “just so”, and nothing more.

[Anonymous No.11266330]

>>11266320
it's time you actually read foucault, dr peterson

[Anonymous No.11266333]

>>11266317
it´s not a boogeyman because it´s real, the whole liberal society is supporting that toxic and retarded ideology, you can´t fight marxism with truth because they would always have the upper hand in the argument with their retarded victim complex they have

[Anonymous No.11266337]

>>11266326
not an argument. We use schools because it better prepared children to mature in to society. Its worked for ages and still works today.

[Anonymous No.11266341]

>>11266271
I thought millions died because he killed a bunch of birds and destroyed the ecosystem

[Anonymous No.11266348]

>>11266317
Cultural bolchevism.

[Anonymous No.11266349]

>>11266330
I read a large part of the into to a couple of his works and he just rambles on about torture and the insane. Its all just "Dude we should go back to being clinically insane, create death cults, torture, being gay and stop going to school"

[Anonymous No.11266350]

>>11266333
>waaaah all of society is conspiring against me to enforce communism
>calls out SJWs for victim complex
you're a bona fide dumbass my dude

[Anonymous No.11266352]

>>11265911
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU1LhcEh8Ms

[Anonymous No.11266358]

>>11266341
That was a seperate thing. Mao started to become popular with the youth in the late 60s when he initiated the cult rev culling all schools and sending the students out into literal fields to stand around.

[Anonymous No.11266363]

>>11266352
You don't have to know post-modernism to know its all bullshit

[Anonymous No.11266366]

>>11266349
If you can't understand D&P, which is an easy text, you're probably just an idiot. If you read D&P and got the impression that Foucault calls for the abolition of schools, you're probably just an idiot. If you haven't read D&P but you're happy to pretend you have, you're probably just an idiot.

[Anonymous No.11266375]

>>11266320
I mean I have some ideas, I didn't realise I had to lay out all of my plans (none of which are practically useful since I'm not an elected official) for you to critique. I, along with other parents, already convinced my local primary school head teacher to put more low-tier philosophy into RE classes, but that's a catholic school that isn't government funded.

>He actually thinks I agree with Foucalt.
As if re-inventing schools means I universally agree with all aspects post-modernism. Come on.

>>11266337
But it doesn't work today, children leave school with barely any marketable skills and no knowledge of the wider world and no curiosity either. College degrees are polluted to the point where most coffee makers need one.

>>11266316
Genuinely mate I haven't looked at my twitter in months. I'll go check it out.

[Anonymous No.11266381]

>>11266363
postmodernism=marxism=cultural marxism=feminism=stalinism=critical theory=bad
Foucault=Derrida
evolution=good
hyerarchy=necessary
women=chaos
people=lobsters
God=Goedel proved He exists
Jung=very smart great guy
Dostoyevsky=very smart great guy
Nietzsche=evolutionary Christian

[Anonymous No.11266382]

>>11266333
nice digits, man. I agree a victim complex is a serious problem of our time's psychology, but to say that the problem is marxist ideology is to blame a boogeyman. The problems run much deeper than that, and if it is a toxic ideology, it is only a symptom of a much deeper underlying problem. My personal opinions on marxism play no deliberate role in this argument, but of course they are irrepressible, and you may take this into account. I think to fight Marxism with lies contributes as much to the collapse of western society as does the honest discussion of it, if not more. For this anyone who is blatantly intellectually dishonest is as much an enemy as the proponent of (choose your most hated) ideology. Humans will never be free,

[Anonymous No.11266386]

>>11266381
Goedel did no such thing.

[Anonymous No.11266388]

>>11266381
whoa...
*donates NEETbux to JBP patreon*

[Anonymous No.11266397]

>>11266386
bugs... easy on the carrots..

[Anonymous No.11266398]

>>11266386
that's the joke

[Anonymous No.11266407]

>>11266382
Foucault was right about Marxism.

[Anonymous No.11266413]

>>11266398
>Proof itself, of any sort, is impossible
isnt this denial of being able to access the world fundamental to postmodern thought?

[Anonymous No.11266430]

>>11266375
Foucault isn't a post-modernist

[Anonymous No.11266431]

>>11266337
Are you fucking dumb? Of course we use schools for teach children a bunch of know-how, but it is also true that the disciplinary model of schools are based on the prison system.
And no, it didn't work at all ages because modern school system didn't exist at all ages, geez did you even read Foucault, or anything at all for that matter?

[Anonymous No.11266461]

>>11266413
>Proof itself, of any sort, is impossible, without an axiom
Don't change what he wrote. By erasing "without an axiom", it starts to sound like what uneducated cucks think is postmodernism (senseless screaming), even though that's not what it is. Sure, they doubt beliefs, but not without a good cause. Axioms are literally made up and unprovable by definition. It's not like someone found the language of the universe concluded that those are what we call axioms. It's made up.

Peterson equates God with all axioms somehow. Even though that doesn't make sense since God isn't well defined.

It'd be correct to say that what he's trying to say is that you can't operate without some sort of assumption or belief. His error is assuming that this is necessarily God.

All in all, the guy is a brainlet that doesn't read original texts and uses false equivalence often since everything he says isn't at all well defined. Hell, I'd say that he's more of a what he calls a "postmodernist" than any actual postmodern philosopher.

[Anonymous No.11266486]

>>11265990
>>11266060


Peterson is against the idea of visualising social relationship as a power game.

If you're going to shit on him for strawmaning Foucault, tgen at least don't strawman JP in the very same sentence.

I swear you trannies are absolutly retarded.

[Anonymous No.11266490]

>>11266430
He was a modernist in his own words, although most now recognised as postmodernist didn't consider themselves as such.

[Anonymous No.11266522]

>>11265911
He wasn’t a post-structuralist. He just analyses how the systems that exist now come to be. Not that they’re bad or that we should get rid of them. Correct me if I’m wrong, but he was a neo-liberal.

[Anonymous No.11266555]

>>11266522
He didn't want to become personally attached to any political position especially since stuff like that constantly changes to suit the times.

[Anonymous No.11266949]

>>11266486
>Peterson is against the idea of visualising social relationship as a power game
Except that's exactly what his claim to fame is and how he became famous, by criticising the way that state institutions and social movements were seeking to assert control by regulating speech

That's the delicious irony of Memerson, who, no matter how much he chimps out about him, has been profoundly influenced by Foucault.

[Anonymous No.11266974]

>>11266949
How does it go against what he said ? He's doesn't want compeled speech, yeah.

This doesn't support your point unless you're, again, projecting your hormonal delusion.

[Anonymous No.11266986]

>>11265980
Wrong.

He openly rejects classical modernist thinking. While he uses geneology to get to his point, the point still ultimately is to reject modernity

[Anonymous No.11266988]

>>11266949
that would imply Foucault was the origin of those ideas, which he is not

[Anonymous No.11267019]

>>11266974
>How does it go against what he said?
It doesn't. That's the point. JBP uses Foucault's points to critique SJWs and their desire to control language. Foucault and Peterson would have been in agreement over whatever clause it was in that Canadian law that made Peterson famous in the first place

[Anonymous No.11267354]

>>11266381
>>11266388
fucking transphobic big chuds= le epic satirized by sedentary pasty left wing shut ins

[Anonymous No.11267361]

>>11267019
>Foucault thinks social dynamics are power relationship
>>11265990
>Peterson disagree with that
>they agree with each other!

[Anonymous No.11267442]

>>11267361
I'm not sure what you mean by this post?
I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that Peterson and Foucault both raise salient points about the utility of language as a tool of social engineering for political purposes

Gramsci, a fullblown commie, was the most important influence on the New Right, and the situationist Debord and the postmodernist Deleuze are big influences on today's accelerationists, traditionalists, and neoreactionaries. Foucault and JBP probably wouldn't agree with much politically (except on modern SJWs) but JBP's ideas still show his influence whether he and you like it or not.

[Anonymous No.11267475]

>>11266049
Has nobody told Peterson about pragmatism or positivism? Maybe he would give Putnam, Rorty, or Dewey a shake if (1) he was able to engage in good faith with a single work of non-mystical literature (2) he could point to them on a cultural Marxism flowchart.

What a crock. I can't believe this board is still clamped to culture war shit.

[Anonymous No.11267538]

>>11265930
>reading primary texts
Fucking wanker, I bet you've never even written so much as an essay.

[Anonymous No.11267551]

>>11265911
PETERSON HATES HIM BECAUSE HE WAS AN INSANE FASCIST GENIUS AND LOW T BETA MALES LIKE PETERSON FEAR NOTHING MORE THAN REVOLUTION

[Anonymous No.11267564]

>>11266095
>>11266105
A true fascist in the spirit of D'Annunzio

[Anonymous No.11267568]

>>11267475

wish i couldve given rorty a shake, right into crib-death

[Anonymous No.11267696]

>>11267442
GO
AWAY
DISCORD
LEFTYPOL
TRANNY

[Anonymous No.11267755]

>>11267696
nice hot take you titanic faggot

[Anonymous No.11267781]

>>11267551
>Foucault
>fascist

i keep hearing this surprisingly often and no one has ever been able to explain why Foucault has anything to do with fascism.

[Anonymous No.11268074]

>>11267442
>the utility of language as tool of social engineering

Of course it's a tool of social engineering. That's a terrible basic idea. This doesn't mean JP and Foucault see that as the same kind of tool- or set of tools. What the fuck are you trying to say.

>>11267696
Thanks

[Anonymous No.11268137]

>>11265911
He's like Nietzsche but instead of humanity being a stepping stone the Overman it's a stepping stone to mediocre yolo aids trannies.

[Anonymous No.11268247]

>>11268137
I thought he only really took his epistemology and methodology from Nietzsche, and not really his ethics.

Like so many other people...

[Anonymous No.11268334]

>>11265911
>There has been so much rabble rousing around the "postmodernists" what with Peterson and the like blaming them for our collective wrong-

Because conservatives like to paint all post modernist as anti Christian morals liberals. That and conservatives believe there is only one truth and one moral code and that it is written in a 1300 year old book because they are "objectively" right.

[Anonymous No.11270016]

>>11267781
I’m pretty sure that it comes from the gay leather bondage scene’s stereotypical association with nazism.

Nothing in Foucault is particularly fascist though.

[Anonymous No.11270254]

Read The Ideology of Tyranny by Preparta.

Goes into detail about his plagiarism, how he was ostracized by the French and fled to Berkeley because circles in France saw through his lack of any historical backing, and his 'neoliberal turn' towards his death where he declared Hayek the most important philosopher of our time.

A hit piece from the left on Foucault, so it's an interesting read.