>From a recent article by Roger Scruton, an ... interesting description of
Les Mots et les choses:
the bible of the soixante-huitards, the text which seemed to justify every
form of transgression, by showing that obedience is merely defeat. It is
an artful book, composed with a satanic mendacity, selectively
appropriating facts in order to show that culture and knowledge are
nothing but the discourses of power. The book is not a work of philosophy
but an exercise in rhetoric. Its goal is subversion, not truth, and it is
careful to argue--by the old nominalist sleight of hand that was surely
invented by the Father of Lies--that truth requires inverted commas, that
it changes from epoch to epoch, and is tied to the form of consciousness,
the episteme, imposed by the class which profits from its propagation. The
revolutionary spirit, which searches the world for things to hate, has
found in Foucault a new literary formula. Look everywhere for power, he
tells his readers, and you will find it. Where there is power there is
oppression. And where there is oppression there is the right to destroy.
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/feb03/burke.htm
Matthew
Les Mots et les choses:
the bible of the soixante-huitards, the text which seemed to justify every
form of transgression, by showing that obedience is merely defeat. It is
an artful book, composed with a satanic mendacity, selectively
appropriating facts in order to show that culture and knowledge are
nothing but the discourses of power. The book is not a work of philosophy
but an exercise in rhetoric. Its goal is subversion, not truth, and it is
careful to argue--by the old nominalist sleight of hand that was surely
invented by the Father of Lies--that truth requires inverted commas, that
it changes from epoch to epoch, and is tied to the form of consciousness,
the episteme, imposed by the class which profits from its propagation. The
revolutionary spirit, which searches the world for things to hate, has
found in Foucault a new literary formula. Look everywhere for power, he
tells his readers, and you will find it. Where there is power there is
oppression. And where there is oppression there is the right to destroy.
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/feb03/burke.htm
Matthew