Foucault
J. G. Merquior | 1987-04-23 00:00:00 | University of California Press | 188 | Scientists
In this concise, witty critical study, Merquior examines Foucault's work on madness, sexuality, and power and offers a provocative assessment of Foucault as a "neo-anarchist." Merquior brings an astonishing breadth of scholarship to bear on his subject as he explores Foucault using insights from a range of fields including philosophy, sociology, and history.
Reviews
A must-read for any humanities graduate student, Merquior's book picks apart the major works of Foucault and finds, lo and behold, that the theorist failed in every major intellectual inquiry he ever made. Merquior does indeed "have an agenda"; to wit, he was asked to consider Foucault's writings in depth and write an analysis of them. He did exactly that and found an abundant amount of circular logic, shoddy history, and major concepts cribbed from Saussure, Nietzsche, Bachelard, and various other writers. Quite amusingly, Merquior begins every chapter with a few perfunctory words of praise and a thorough summary of a different book, and then explains in great detail why Foucault's arguments don't hold water. Merquior does not, in fact, have an agenda, nor is he in any sense a cultural conservative, but he does recognize the problems with nihilism as a pose, and he can smell a fraud when he sees one.
Reviews
I chose to read this book precisely because it did not include an extensive biography. In this book, Merquior traces the major developments in Foucault's thought, offering critical commentary and the opinions of many other historians, philosophers, and sociologists. In places, I was surprised by Merquior's frank wit, and at other times I was annoyed by the abundance of untranslated titles and quotations. All in all I would say that I benefited from reading this book, even though I would never say that it was all that insightful or well written. It is clear that Merquior is not all that sympathetic to Foucault's program, and he managed to convince me that Foucault is largely undeserving of the fame that his name has received. From what Merquior has said, it sounds like Foucault's adaptation of Nietzsche's will to power is an interesting idea. Though Merquior constantly points out that Foucault offers no argument for the idea that the will to truth is only thinly veiled will to power, I could not help but notice that Foucault's incessant reliance on his provocative reinterpretations of history were a case in point. As Merquior proceeded to point out error after error in Foucault's history, I could not help but think of the Orwell slogan "he who controls the present controls the past." It seems that Foucault has abandoned the correspondence theory of truth (as has most of modern philosophy) and the coherence theory as well. What he seems to end up with is an odd sort of will to power pragmatism where truth is simply what can get you the most followers. This idea is very close to what Merquior calls "intellectual machismo". He explains the phrase on p.157:
In intellectual machismo, the strength of one's argument is not propped up by logical quality-rather, it is conveyed by the unflinching self-confidence of one's tone. Impressiveness, not cogency, is the thing. So it is with Shaw; so with Sartre-and so, too, with Foucault.
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