No one has silenced Lynn Cheney as far as I can tell. What lies behind
this eagerness to defend her? Is it just a libertarian sense of fair play
that says everyone should have the right to speak? Surely her defenders
on this list are trying to accomplish more. Her book has been published,
she holds a prominent place in the public eye. If she has critics who
challenge her with the same rhetoric of extermination that she apparently
deploys on Foucualt and others, does that necessarily put them both in the
same mud bath? WHy do Cheney's defenders on this list insist on a higher
standard from all of her critics? Are these writers trying to establish
some higher standard of public debate? Or are they trying to revive that
ancient grievance of the right-wing in America--that they are unfairly
maligned by a conspiratorial liberal press? And why start this debate on
the topic of Foucault, who never to my knowledge advocated an emancipatory
politics and who had little regard for the hyperbolic polemics of the
French left? Are we having a debate on this list simply because little
has been written lately about Foucault? Or are we trying indirectly to
address the question of how to carry on a public debate in the US about
post-structuralist theory?
Daniel Purdy