Foucault - the intellectual godfather of "Woke" was an abuser.

silverharp

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

Same with Gaugain, all those beautiful paintings and in my innocence I never saw the dark side of it. I wad quite sad finding out years later he was a scumbag.

as in there is a dark side to his paintings ?

jam_mac_jam

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

Yeah, I do take your point. And it is probably much more important in the case of a philosopher then a fiction writer for example and probably influenced his philosophical analysis.

Just to give an example to show my thoughts on the "work" being intimately connected to the "life", and in the process somewhat ironically using a philosopher for back up - Nietzsche, of whom Foucault was a big fan, dismissed philosophy (again, ironically, being a philosopher) as merely the personal confessions of their authors and the convoluted attempts to rationalise their own prejudices, even pathologies.
As one is so one philosophises, in short.

Not saying I am a Nietzsche fan girl either, just that my idea on the matter is / has been voiced by people who one suspects might know.

Wibbs

silverharp wrote: »

as in there is a dark side to his paintings ?

Certainly a dark side to him, even for the mores of his time. He fecked off to Tahiti because he was typical of the very common and longstanding orientalist European mindset of looking for some primitive eden unsullied by the modern age and modern mores. Though in theory the age of consent in European cultures(where present in law) was very young by our standards, wider society would have taken a very dim view of a bloke in his 40's having affairs with 14 year old girls. Far away exotic Tahiti on the other hand was at some remove and the locals weren't Europeans so... He himself considered a girl a woman at 13. Well so long as she wasn't French.

Now that wasn't all of Gauguin, not even close. He was an artist of incredible talent, invention and merit who influenced many aspects of modernism and many artists of modernism in a way his one time friend Van Gogh arguably didn't, but in today's terms we would have almost certainly called him some sort of abuser and no gallery or dealer would represent him if it came to light.

Wibbs

Deleted User wrote: »

Nietzsche, of whom Foucault was a big fan, dismissed philosophy (again, ironically, being a philosopher) as merely the personal confessions of their authors and the convoluted attempts to rationalise their own prejudices, even pathologies.
As one is so one philosophises, in short..

Well Nietzsche was a complete self obsessed nutter, so he would think that. I could never see the appeal of him, beyond a diverting sideline in modern thought(and the other nutters he influenced).

Wibbs

Wibbs wrote: »

Well Nietzsche was a complete self obsessed nutter, so he would think that. I could never see the appeal of him, beyond a diverting sideline in modern thought(and the other nutters he influenced).

His point being they are all nutters. With which point I agree.

Some of the nutters are very influential though.

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/erotism-death-and-sensuality-review-cogent-thoughts-of-a-sick-mind-1.3883714%3fmode=amp

A short review in the Irish Times of a book by Georges Bataille - Eroticism. Batailles was a really big influence on Foucault. Batailles big project, I have seen it described, was to weaken the bonds of compassion between humans. Which is an interesting thought, given how things are evolving presently..

It is also interesting to see of late how people like Macron in France are rejecting the identity politics that is influencing his country as an import from the US, especially given that it is essentially processed goods the raw materials for which France had exported in the 50s and 60s to the US. I think other places like our own country could do with a more serious examination of what theories we import casually from the US also.

Wibbs

Deleted User wrote: »

I think other places like our own country could do with a more serious examination of what theories we import casually from the US also.

This I would most certainly agree with. While postmodernism has most of its origins in France(just like the far more useful modernism before it), American college campuses took what was a largely niche philosophical stance and weaponised it in the 90's and has spread it through American culture and beyond since.

jam_mac_jam

[Deleted User] wrote: »

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/erotism-death-and-sensuality-review-cogent-thoughts-of-a-sick-mind-1.3883714%3fmode=amp

A short review in the Irish Times of a book by Georges Bataille - Eroticism. Batailles was a really big influence on Foucault. Batailles big project, I have seen it described, was to weaken the bonds of compassion between humans. Which is an interesting thought, given how things are evolving presently..

It is also interesting to see of late how people like Macron in France are rejecting the identity politics that is influencing his country as an import from the US, especially given that it is essentially processed goods the raw materials for which France had exported in the 50s and 60s to the US. I think other places like our own country could do with a more serious examination of what theories we import casually from the US also.

I think also something which has value for examining society or power dynamics in theory may be completely useless in practise or ignores other important influences.

It may be a useful way of understanding society but doesn't explain everything, it doesn't mean that power dynamics explain every aspect of life for example.

It reminds me of Marx in a way, a valid analysis of capital and labour at the time. When used to govern a society or explain historal progress completely insane.

Hande hoche!

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

Also, are all french men perverts? Did anyone not campaign for the lowering of the age of consent in the 70s.

It's all very depressing.

Same with Gaugain, all those beautiful paintings and in my innocence I never saw the dark side of it. I wad quite sad finding out years later he was a scumbag.

Don't forget Pepe Le Pew.

donaghs

silverharp wrote: »

If the contribution was Science or Music then one can distance the person from their output. Philosophy or Politics less so, a deeply morally debauched individual isnt likely to develop the perfect system to advance mankind, probably the opposite it will be a system that excuses their behavior in some fashion. A child rapist writing about power dynamics.......

It think it just adds to an impression of him as a morally bankrupt hypocrite. As well as what we already know about him.

His deliberately obscurantist writing style:
https://www.openculture.com/2013/07/jean_searle_on_foucault_and_the_obscurantism_in_french_philosophy.html
" Searle translates Foucault’s admission to him this way: “In France, you gotta have ten percent incomprehensible, otherwise people won’t think it’s deep–they won’t think you’re a profound thinker.”"

His enthusiastic support for the Iranian Revolution in 1979. in which a conservative cleric took power and persecuted Foucault fellow homosexuals and left-wingers.
https://www.philosophersmag.com/opinion/80-michel-foucault-s-iranian-folly

wes wrote: »

The term work was is an AAVE (African American Vernacular English) term, and Foucault is not the intellectual godfather of it ffs:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/woke-meaning-origin

Honestly, these "woke" boogie man thread are getting dumber and dumber. It seem we have people just trying to shoe horn the word "woke" into anything and everything for some bizarre reason.

That's the origin, but the word has gone mainstream and people use it in different ways now. John McWhorter: "Woke, in essence, serves a function that those of a certain age will recall the phrase “politically correct” once did."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/09/black-lives-matter-and-the-limits-of-being-woke/

Deleted User wrote: »

Sartre also signed a petition to decriminalise sex with children, and he’s considered second only to Marx for many socialist theorists.

Sartre was fond of teenage girls. De Beauvoir as their teacher used to groom/procure them for him.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/simone-de-beauvoir-as-a-role-model-1.3650458

[Deleted User]

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Yes, that is the biggest problem with this story. Now that it has been brought to my attention, frankly I am appalled by the egregious use of the word woke, it is vile and disgusting and truly troublesome.
Phew, at least I have that out of my system. Now what was the other thing..?

That Foucault raped young Tunisian boys on euro-colonial sex tours?

The most thanked post on this thread isn’t a condemnation of that activity but the misapplication of the use of the term woke.

As for his philosophy, from anything I’ve read directly it was mostly bunk. During his day he would dabble in historical narratives and claims and be often debunked, but the debunkers are all dead now and Foucault still sells.

[Deleted User]

[Deleted User] wrote: »

That Foucault raped young Tunisian boys on euro-colonial sex tours?

The most thanked post on this thread isn’t a condemnation of that activity but the misapplication of the use of the term woke.

As for his philosophy, from anything I’ve read directly it was mostly bunk. During his day he would dabble in historical narratives and claims and be often debunked, but the debunkers are all dead now and Foucault still sells.

Woke-iness triumphed in the thank-iness

jam_mac_jam

Somebody needs to make up a new word to describe the phenomenon as I am also sick of the term woke. Using it makes you sound like a right wing lunatic.

donaghs

donaghs wrote: »

Sartre was fond of teenage girls. De Beauvoir as their teacher used to groom/procure them for him.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/simone-de-beauvoir-as-a-role-model-1.3650458

I'm not sure of how seriously I'd take that claim, that de Beauvoir initiated lesbian affairs just to procure women for Sartre, seems far-fetched. I've read a biography of Sartre and that was never mentioned.

Certainly Sartre often surrounded himself with young female college students. So did Camus and de Beauvoir. There was a sexual element to some of these relationships, but the group seemed genuinely interested in mentoring young people to take forward their new philosophy in a country that was wrecked with war and failed ideas.

[Deleted User]

[Deleted User] wrote: »

That Foucault raped young Tunisian boys on euro-colonial sex tours?

The most thanked post on this thread isn’t a condemnation of that activity but the misapplication of the use of the term woke.

As for his philosophy, from anything I’ve read directly it was mostly bunk. During his day he would dabble in historical narratives and claims and be often debunked, but the debunkers are all dead now and Foucault still sells.

Really a brilliant book about all this area is Guido Preparata's The Ideology of Tyranny. I am re reading it at the minute - and I rarely re read anything due to a low boredom threshold. It is fascinating to look at the roots of Foucaults ideas basically in the inverted metaphysics of the failed seminarian Bataille who was disappointed that he did not find God and so like many thwarted mystics invented an anti -God theology of sorts. Which might in a weird way explain the notable religiosity of much present thought.

donaghs

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

I'm not sure of how seriously I'd take that claim, that de Beauvoir initiated lesbian affairs just to procure women for Sartre, seems far-fetched. I've read a biography of Sartre and that was never mentioned.

Certainly Sartre often surrounded himself with young female college students. So did Camus and de Beauvoir. There was a sexual element to some of these relationships, but the group seemed genuinely interested in mentoring young people to take forward their new philosophy in a country that was wrecked with war and failed ideas.

Its getting off-topic but worth addressing the point. I wouldn't simplify their relationship/lives down to "de Beauvoir initiated lesbian affairs just to procure women for Sartre". But I've read about it in various points at this stage
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/2005/10/16/the-existential-lives-and-loves-of-simone-de-beauvoir-and-jean-paul-sartre/f2d91f10-5f97-4038-a479-916fb998280e/

One of them wrote a book about it. She was also "put out" as she felt they abandoned her when the Nazis conquered France, despite her Jewishness.
https://www.amazon.com/Disgraceful-Affair-Beauvoir-Jean-Paul-Lamblin/dp/1555532519

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

His point being they are all nutters. With which point I agree.

Some of the nutters are very influential though.

Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

IIRC, Nietzsche framed the relationship the philosophy and the person in terms of the former being an 'involuntary and unconscious autobiography', so, as is often the case in Nietzsche, he was pointing towards what is going on beneath the surface.

Agree w/ poster that doesn't regard N as a philosopher. I see N as a literary figure, lacking in the systemic capabilities of the philosophical greats, but a dab hand at the aul aphorisms. Exciting, but people should, in the normal course of events, grow out of his work, just as they should grow out of the work of similar quasi-philosophers like Marx and Rand.

As for Foucault, there is massive hypocrisy going on... the type that likes Foucault probably approves of the fact that Heidegger has more or less been canceled.

tl;dr.. yes they are mostly freaks, but freakish pathologies stir great debates. The trick, IMO, is not to attach oneself too fiercely to their ideas either way.

mariaalice

I would have thought Jacques Derrida was much more influential in what is being discussed here?

When even fee-paying schools come up on boards inevitably some poster will bring up some repressible behavior student from said school got up to, indicating that poster has internalised a belief that the student's transgression is greater than any other teenager because of some ideas about moral superiority being attached to wealth, society should ask why value and especially moral value is attached to things like skin color or wealth or similar because the convers is that lesser value is attached to someone with a disability for example.

How does the hierarchy of value arise in society?

mariaalice

mariaalice wrote: »

How does the hierarchy of value arise in society?

We are hierarchical pack animals, like chimpanzees and dogs. So, in the first place, hierarchy arises out of biology. Even the most ostensibly egalitarian socio-political arrangements use hierarchies.

Back OT, I think we can separate the person and the work; but the latter can act as a clue indicating possible criminality, and no amount of excellent work should excuse criminality.



There's a good argument to be made that if someone's work indicates possible criminal tendencies it should be investigated by police: so, go ahead and sign a petition to lower the age of consent, but don't be surprised if you are investigated because of it, no matter how important you are.

mariaalice

Anyone notice the contradiction in the poster who says we should question what we are told to believe while assigning negative moral value to the philosopher who did exactly that.

As for Foucault himself, that's easy he use his intellectual superiority combined with his secure sense of entitlement that came from his upper-middle-class french background to justify his beliefs.

In other words, he never allowed his ego to experience shame.

mariaalice

mariaalice wrote: »

As for Foucault himself, that's easy he use his intellectual superiority combined with his secure sense of entitlement that came from his upper-middle-class french background to justify his beliefs.

In other words, he never allowed his ego to experience shame.

Hard to disagree with the spirit of your post! But perhaps all of his writings were an attempt to assuage or work out a deep sense of shame. Maybe he felt guilty as fook (as he should have, assuming the stories are true), but he tried to dress it up in fancy language. Either way, for me, he now goes into the William Burroughs Box of Pricks.



Funny enough, even dogs and chimps display 'shame' and guilt.. it's part of being a hierarchical pack animal. Sociopaths and psychopaths (e.g. chihuahuas ) being the outliers.

Junkyard Tom

MeepMeep2021 wrote: »

Even the most ostensibly egalitarian socio-political arrangements use hierarchies

Democratic and meritocratic societies attempt to counter hierarchy based on violence/power/superstition.