Derrida and Foucault were equal opportunity skeptics. Their form of Critical Theory was never intended to be a movement or a cudgel. They valorized the periphery but were mostly not in the business of changing policy or grabbing power, beyond their own opportunism.
Cultural conservatives are wrong to blame them for “woke-ism” and the activist class are wrong to see them as ancestors.
Both were boogie dudes who found opportunity in vice signaling their hostility to being bourgeoisie. Their ideas have use, but are not as dangerous as people think.
Chomsky signed the Harpers letter. Foucault would not have signed it, but also would not have signed a counter-letter. The hill on which he wanted to die was not free speech but the “death of the author.”
Derrida and Foucault are not alone, but their contribution is in questioning the extent to which we are agents. Their claim that agency is a product of systems outside us is, these days, rather banal, and shared across a political spectrum.
Ultimately, they can't reject some concept of agency without falling into self-contradiction. But is their conceit any different than that of Buddhists, mystics, Bayesians, or materialist neuroscientists?
Whatever you think of the critique of agency, it is patently at odds with both activism and institution building.
Dislike the postmodernists for their anthropology, but don't blame them for college campus culture, which is mostly likely nostalgia for the 60s coupled with elite overproduction.
The rise of postmodernist thought in the 70s and 80s has nothing to do with the 60s--it's actually a return to cynicism, a retreat from New Age buoyancy into self criticism.
When Bob Dylan met Foucault, both were confused. They had nothing in common. I dislike Foucault for a lot of reasons, but mainly because he was a dower misanthrope. His thought is still worth engaging.
The assumption, though, that it leads in one direction is short-sighted. To philosophize is to play with fire, not underwrite beliefs one already has. Fin.
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