By Mark G. E. Kelly · Monday, May 10, 2021 Michel Foucault’s name has never been far from scandal. Indeed, he has proven to be a perennially controversial figure. He rose to prominence in controversy, his ponderously scholarly 1966 book The Order of Things becoming a bestseller because marginal denunciations of humanism and Marxism therein brought it massive publicity in the form of shrill denunciations by elements of the French intellectual establishment. As Foucault himself wryly noted, he has been denounced by conservatives as an agent of the KGB and by communists as an agent of the CIA. I would suggest that this phenomenon is related to the disturbingness of Foucault’s analyses: as long as Foucault’s conclusions remain difficult for people to cognize, there will always be an attempt to dismiss them for ad hominem reasons.
Since one cannot libel the dead, there has effectively been open slather for accusations against Foucault, no matter how baseless, for almost four decades. After his death, it was alleged that Foucault had deliberately spread the virus, HIV, that had killed him, an accusation that hardly made sense given the state of knowledge about the virus at the time he died. In the opening two decades of the third millennium, the period of my career as a Foucault scholar, the dominant scandal narrative around Foucault has shifted twice. During the first decade, the period of the War on Terror, the great scandal was Foucault’s support for the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which was always interpreted baselessly to mean Foucault had endorsed the theocratic regime that was its ultimate result. During this period any public seminar or event on Foucault would seem to be attended by an audience member who would rise to denounce Foucault’s supposed sympathy for Islamism. The great scandal for the following decade was Foucault’s alleged support of neoliberalism, provoked by the publication of Foucault’s lectures on this topic, The Birth of Biopolitics, in English in 2008. The coordinates of this controversy were quite different from the others in that a number of serious Foucault scholars agreed with the allegations from a sympathetic standpoint, though I nonetheless maintain they were ultimately without foundation.
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By Telos Press · Tuesday, May 4, 2021 In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Rabab Kamal about her article “The Curious Case of Islamic Reform: Why the Concept of Holy Violence Remains Disputed and How Nonviolent Islamism Is More Than Problematic,” from Telos 194 (Spring 2021). An excerpt of the article appears here. This article was part of a group of essays in Telos 194 that discussed Elham Manea’s new book The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism, available here for 20% off the list price. To learn how your university can subscribe to Telos, visit our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 194 are available for purchase in our store.
Listen to the podcast here.
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By Russell A. Berman · Wednesday, April 28, 2021 Criticism of identity politics is hardly new. The insistence on—or “celebration” of—fractional community identities rather than a common good was presented as an explanation for Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 presidential election. No coalition of separate groups will ever be able to muster the political magnetism of an inclusive rhetoric of national solidarity. That is the first problem: how identity politics divides, rather than unites.
However in addition to the problems of fragmentation and exclusion, the very focus on “identity,” a cultural and psychological concept, has always distracted from material issues of political economy, redirecting debate toward symbols and selfhood. Christopher Lasch labeled this a Culture of Narcissism as early as 1979. At stake is both a tendency toward subjectification within contemporary society and a transformation of the—often primarily academic—discussion about this society, as critical attention shifted toward subjective elements rather than discriminatory conditions and economic processes. If you want to hide class difference, identity politics is just what you need.
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By Peter Brandt · Wednesday, April 28, 2021 This is a more extensive version of an essay by Peter Brandt that appeared in Neue Gesellschaft/Frankfurter Hefte in March 2021. Brandt comments on identity politics here. Translated by Russell A. Berman, with comments here.
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and the United Kingdom, growing numbers of statues of historical figures have been toppled, beheaded, or turned upside down. It has been a matter primarily of figures charged with participation in the extermination, oppression, and enslavement of non-white ethnic groups, such as the famous generals of the Confederacy during the American Civil War of 1861–65. The matter gets complicated because not a few of these targets of symbolic attacks or executions embody quite different qualities. Several of the American founding fathers, the first constitutional state, were slaveowners, for example, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and later third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, a figure of the Enlightenment and a wide-ranging intellectual. Although never a rigorous defender of slavery, he viewed blacks—in contrast to Native Americans—as inferior.
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By Peter Brandt · Wednesday, April 28, 2021 The following blog post originally appeared at Blog politische Ökonomie. Peter Brandt is commenting on the controversy surrounding an essay by Wolfgang Thierse, translated here. See the related position paper here and a separate article by Brandt here. Translated by Russell A. Berman, with comments here.
During the past few weeks the debate over identity politics and viewpoint diversity in Germany has been unfolding. The starting point was an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine by Wolfgang Thierse, not known for eccentric positions, concerning the conduct of the debate around the themes of racism, postcolonialism, and gender.
In his opinion piece, Thierse criticizes the claim by sexual and other minorities to define their own collective identity (hence “identity politics”), and what is right and tolerable or intolerable for them, rather than engaging in an open and controversial debate. The accusation that something is hurtful therefore, Thierse argues, often displaces an argumentative response.
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By Position Paper · Wednesday, April 28, 2021 The following position paper circulated in Germany in late March here. It is part of a wider discussion of identity politics, especially the opinion piece by Wolfgang Thierse, translated in TelosScope here. See also the comments by one of the signators, Peter Brandt, here and here, and comments by the translator, Russell A. Berman, here.
We, the undersigned of this position paper, understand ourselves to be critical, progressive, open-minded, and ecologically oriented. We support deep ecological and social changes in our society. However we want to do this without identitarian fundamentalism! With this position paper we want to . . .
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