ITT : best faggots

>Postmodern neo-marxists
I bet your sister is into scat, seeing how she's fucking someone spewing so much shit

Can someone *actually* explain why this guy is so profound?

I found both Discipline and Punish and Madness and Civilization tremendously self-evident, and brought literally nothing new to tree of human knowledge.

Very good strawman friendo. Comeback when you actually got some arguments :^).

Oh, and by the way, here is a source if you want one. I know it's hard to figure out facts, instead of throwing a tantrum and relying on ad hominems

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault

>i have never read a book in my life that was not on my High Schools reading list

Philosophy is bourgeois. They all belong in the rock quarries.

>I found both Discipline and Punish and Madness and Civilization tremendously self-evident, and brought literally nothing new to tree of human knowledge.
That's probably you received some previous education (at a college). I felt the same about Bourdieu cause both of them are so fucking cannon right now.
Mate, especially in classics doing this is great fun. And on a side not you will probably be able to debunk some retarded Veeky Forums memes about race in antiquity.
>Sartre
>post-modern
Luhmann and Bourdieu were both chilly cool dudes and far from being "sex crazed".

>thinking wiki counts as a source
Here. lemme quote your "source":
>Foucault retaliated against their Marxist beliefs by proclaiming that "Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought as a fish exists in water; that is, it ceases to breathe anywhere else.
>In 1976, Gallimard published Foucault's Histoire de la sexualité: la volonté de savoir (The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge), a short book exploring what Foucault called the "repressive hypothesis". It revolved largely around the concept of power, rejecting both Marxist and Freudian theory.
> Foucault did so in 1950, but never became particularly active in its activities, and never adopted an orthodox Marxist viewpoint, refuting core Marxist tenets such as class struggle.
So can we all agree now that you are fucking a fucking uneducated /pol/tard?

Read a few of his works, most of them are as points out kind of selv-evident. Some of them simply doesn't have the empiric evidence to back up the extreme claims he make. I guess my problem isn't as much with Foucault as with those who use his work as some kind of scientific basis.

>Some of them simply doesn't have the empiric evidence to back up the extreme claims he make.
Oh come one now. Of course he makes some extreme claims, he is not really a historian. For a sociologist or whateverthefuck he backs up his claims with an impressive amount of sources in like six languages. If you only read the introductory stuff (which are lectures mostly) the lack footnotes. His "big works" are backed up fairly well.
As for the self-evidence: As I said. It's hard to imagine humanities before Foucault. Literally all your college professors and all the books you read past 1980s are somewhat influenced by Foucault and post-modern theory.
>I guess my problem isn't as much with Foucault as with those who use his work as some kind of scientific basis.
Yeah, I agree. Like Marx he should never be used to back something up but as a mere starting point for thoughts and research.
In my (history) department no one could smuggle Foucault in to back a historical claim. I sincerely hope we are past that point.

I think you didn't actually read my argument, sweetie. He might not have been a classic marxist per say, but he was deeply inspired by it, and his works are heavily influenced by it

A little qoute from our souce:
> in which he exhibited his influence from both Marxist and Heideggerian thought
>Politically, Foucault was a leftist through much of his life,

Again, the entire foundation of his theory is based on the marxist idea of opressed and opressor groups.

But again, if you're a redditor who takes everything his Womens Studies professor say as fact, I guess actually having a debate about subject matter and not just resorting to name calling, is an unknown concept for you.

If you want to actually debate, fine lets do it. Otherwise I think it is better to go back to the echo chamber from whench you came

I like him, but I have sort of the same feeling about a lot of his stuff.

The self-evidence of his ideas might have something to do with their influence, similar to someone like Freud or Marx. It ebbs into everyday language and thought until ideas like the unconscious, class, power>language or modern disciplinary control are no longer connected to their specific origin.

>in which he exhibited his influence from both Marxist and Heideggerian thought
Do you even know who Heidegger is? And both Carl Schmitt and Max Weber were influenced by Marxist thought. That doesn't make them "neo-marxist" (a term that doesn't even show up in your "source). You are literally a /pol/tard whose highest form of education were macros. Try harder.
>f you're a redditor who takes everything his Womens Studies professor say as fact
I am a PhD student of history who has been on Veeky Forums since 2005. Come at me loser.

Do you even have a claim left at this point? I am not sure cause you didn't address anything I said really.

>In my (history) department no one could smuggle Foucault in to back a historical claim. I sincerely hope we are past that point.

Saddly not. I've had this exact experience at my history department.

I guess by sources, I mean like scientific date (psychological, biological etc). Again, as a philosophy, that's one thing, but when you see it pop up as the main-frame for a historical thesis, that's where it becomes a problem.

I also fundamentally disagree with the basic concept of his extreme relativism.

>spend your entire academic life to refute Marxist theory
>40 years later some idiot on a Bulgarian chess forum calls you a neo-Marxist cause you went to some rallies
>mfw

Nice digits. Just out of curiosity where are you doing your studies? Where I am people are sort of bored by Foucault stuff since 5-10 years.

>I am a PhD student of history who has been on Veeky Forums since 2005. Come at me loser.

Sure thing, kiddo. Pretty sure you'd have to gradute from high school to get a PhD :)

Again, you have still to adress my central point. I'll wait for you

Copenhage University. It's pretty good all around, not complaining. It all depends on the professor. Most of them are reasonable enough, but I've had a few courses were stuff like Foucult was taken as God-given fact.

Univeristy of Copenhagen*

I asked you what your point was. You didn't answer. The only thing you stated was that Foucault was influenced by Marxist thought. I explained to you that this is not the same as being a neo-marxist.
Also here is my final grade. Post yours.

Kys

Also, Fooly Cooly is post structuralism, not pomo you mouthbreather

I don't think Foucault is anywhere near as influential as Freud or Marx. It's almost impossible to talk about political economy and capitalism without mentioning Marx, and it's almost impossible to talk about the unconscious and psychology in general without mentioning Freud.

Foucault on the other hand? Most people with even surface level knowledge of psychiatry or the penal system knows that it has a heavy element of social construction in it, and that it has been used for social control of people who were deemed undesirable by greater society.

The problem is that his conclusions are dangerous to my eyes. Just because there's a heavy element of social construction in schizophrenia, doesn't mean that we should just leave schizophrenic people to their demonic hallucinations on the street, and excuse it as individual idiosyncrasy and eccentricity.

Hey Bro thats a great Uni

Was wanting to do a history MA there, would you recommend?

Gib mal Details

I've posted it a few times
My central point is that his work is build around the idea of opressors and opressed. Marxism moved away from class struggle when the horrors of the soviet union became apparent and capitalism, in all its many forms, made the working class richer. While Foucault might not have been a fan of class struggle from the beginning, he among others adopted a critique of Western knowledge systems and other central institution build upon the marxist tradition of opressors and opressed. Truth is opressive, thus it cannot exist, it's all based on how we talk about it. A claim that needs some serious, scientific backing if to be taken seriously. But, I guess postmodernist would deem science as "racist" or "transphobic" or whatever new buzzword, they've invented. This is why I see Foucult as profoundly Marxist in his outset.

As I've pointed out a few times in this thread, my main gripe is not with Foucault per say, but with those who take him and others as God-given facts. His work should be taken as a curiosity, not as fact.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean everything there is pretty dire except the professors and the variety of subject they tackle and to me that was all that counts. Just avoid Gabi Metzler and Helmrath and you'll be fine. You should probably have a decent grasp on system-theory (especially for antiquities). I really felt and still feel that the training there put me at a huge advantage over alumni from pretty much every other German uni except maybe Göttingen and Munich.
Best thing is your get 30 or so credits for your final thesis with a long runway up to it.
Be aware that some things just don't happen at Humboldt, like India, Persia etc. All that oriental stuff is at Freie Universität.

If you think about going there go. For some weird reasons no enough people are applying so you will probably get in.

>My central point is that his work is build around the idea of opressors and opressed.
This is literally the case for every social theorist ever. In fact Foucault in that regard might be the most "anti-Marxist" of the left since he essentially denied the prospect of liberation which is the core element of Marxist ideology (not theory).

>my main gripe is not with Foucault per say, but with those who take him and others as God-given facts.
see >Yeah, I agree. Like Marx he should never be used to back something up but as a mere starting point for thoughts and research.
>In my (history) department no one could smuggle Foucault in to back a historical claim. I sincerely hope we are past that point.

Your initial claim was that he is neo-marxist which is plain and simple wrong.

mah KUA-bro

>This is literally the case for every social theorist ever

Should have specified, that this is seen as a problem in society. Sure everybody can agree that there's a hierarchy , but the emancipatory aspect is what makes it marxist. It's not a class struggle it's a struggle between the disadvantaged group and the advantagous group where the righteouss must stand on the side of the opressed.

Kek

You're definition of Marxist is way too broad. There any many things not-Marxist that would fit your definition. It's like saying every continental philosopher living today is a Kantian or Hegelian.

>People talking about Marxism and Post-Modernism

Lot of folks in here need some self-crit -_-

Thanks my man! Much appreciated

If I didnt like my anonimity as much.. Anyway you seemlike a cool dude

>French intelligentsia unanimously support Stalin, the Soviet Union and the Communist Party until the 1950s
>Khruschev shows Stalin was shit, de Gaulle proves that you didn't need communism to make France great
>"what can we do now? If we admit we were wrong about communism, our intellectual prestige will crumble and we will lose political and cultural power"
>"I know, let's just write that objective reality doesn't exist, that way no one can accuse us of being wrong about communism"

And that's how post-structuralism was born.

No, it came from linguistics.

The post-modernists were against Stalin and authoritarian leftism you bimbo. And consumer society isn't the culmination of Western rationalism. The post-modernists were showing the limitations of that system and the reality of political power so it could overcome them for the good of its own intentions (liberty). The value in debate around truth is keeping in mind that while socially constructed truths are functional, there may be facets of that truth left uncovered, and that leveraging political control to make that socially constructed truth 'true' does not work. Postmodernism is literally the most advanced Western rationalism and humanism we have.

W O A H there

Crit urself b4 u trick urself :/

14th post best post

This, also no postmodernist disputed the idea of 'reality'

>The post-modernists were against Stalin and authoritarian leftism you bimbo.

They "opposed" Stalin because after the Secret Speech only dogmatic fools did otherwise, and they had to maintain the aura of intellectual superiority somehow.

They still fell for the Mao meme, and some, like Alain Badiou, never left Maoism. In Latin America, post-modernist intellectuals overwhelmingly supported Hugo Chávez.

Their modus operandi is supporting left-wing radicalism while it's still infant, and supporting every policy they implement, and then denouncing it only after the disastrous results are known.

Again, they dissociated language from reality because they didn't want to admit they were wrong about communism. This is an historical fact.

>every policy they implement, and then denouncing it only after the disastrous results are known.

See:
>The value in debate around truth is keeping in mind that while socially constructed truths are functional, there may be facets of that truth left uncovered, and that leveraging political control to make that socially constructed truth 'true' does not work.

i.e. policy

The point is that the modernist, Enlightenment model of 'everything can be known through the conscious/rational' is inadequate and that even the smartest man can be fallible. Knowledge is preserved in text, and text can be misread -- there are too many variables. This is why there is the postmodern claim that reality can't be known. We are subject to reality/systems/language and never in control of them.

And sure the fallible postmodernist might fall for Mao or Chavez but does that refute their own ideas? Do you hold modernist ideas to the same standard?

Language dissociates itself from reality. They were there to pick up on that. Also Wittgenstein.

>The point is that the modernist, Enlightenment model of 'everything can be known through the conscious/rational' is inadequate and that even the smartest man can be fallible. Knowledge is preserved in text, and text can be misread -- there are too many variables. This is why there is the postmodern claim that reality can't be known. We are subject to reality/systems/language and never in control of them.

They don't sincerely believed that. They just said that to escape the blame of communism.

If Foucault lived and worked nowadays, he would be a Enlightenment shill, because this is the way the intelligentsia can hold power in the present. The work of post-structuralists was extremely influenced by the historical context of a France ruled by a Gaullist conservative establishment.

These guys were commies that read Carl Schmitt, the friend–enemy distinction was the only thing that mattered. Ideas were used to defeat their enemies, not valued by themselves. Post-structuralism was useful to destroy the conservative establishment, but it is not useful anymore, which is why we have things like this.

jacobinmag.com/2017/03/jason-reza-jorjani-stony-brook-alt-right-arktos-continental-philosophy-modernity-enlightenment/

Ironically, post-structuralism is more useful today to far-right critics of the Enlightenment.

So which is it: the ideas aren't useful anymore, or they are useful?

Baron von Steuben and Hadrian

They aren't useful anymore to left-wing intellectuals, who were the ones who created them, but they could be useful to far-right activists.

>>Politically, Foucault was a leftist through much of his life

Ahh /pol/ where being on the left at all makes you a "neo-marxist"

If your ideas directly lead to "[insert fact] is a social construct", then you're shit.

Sure they can be useful to left-wing intellectuals. The establishment is centrist.

In any case you don't account for the American context which was already 'post-modern' before the continental texts were even translated. It's the same concerns: people and systems, because these were based on philosophical precedent. The 'Neo-Marxists' like Clement Greenberg were the modernist intelligentsia, and the post-modernists a response to the finality of formalism.

And yeah sure Foucault (especially) would be an Enlightenment shill, because like I suggested earlier, it's a refinement of Enlightenment ideas. Post-modernism is Marxist is classical liberalist.

>Best
>A guy that consciously spread AIDS to other gays

seriously, faggot?

>doesn't mean that we should just leave schizophrenic people to their demonic hallucinations on the street

That's a bit of a straw man, and a unsympathetic way of reading theory. I think his critique of clinical psychology is very good, and that history has and will continue to be on his side. In hindsight much of 60s psychology can be placed on the same historical line he traces from renaissance>enlightenment>modernity. Even though you might think he's too radical, he pointed out a very real and important tendency of regarding psychology as too much of natural science, overlooking the normative aspects of psychology, and of using 'scientific knowledge' to disguise execution of power.

The point is not to completely throw out our scientific models for understanding reality: We should of course use our scientific knowledge to cure diseases or whatever, but we should also critique and scrutinise these models, because there's more to it. Even scientific objects have a history, and there are important perspectives that are lost in blindly accepting science as a perfect way of producing knowledge, and more importantly in accepting the way that knowledge is used.

I'm so fucking sick of seing this retarded argument. Social constructivism doesn't mean it's not real. Money is a social construct, but it's nonetheless pretty fucking real.