A debate against and for Foucault.
Familiar charges of Foucault as an obscurantist, impractical intellectual are aired in the first post and the second is a defence of Foucault.
Jerome Roos Foucault and the revolutionary self-castration of the Left, Roar Magazine Blog, Dec 2011.
Far from posing a counter-hegemonic challenge to the dominant powers in the world, Foucault’s armchair philosophy simply made resistance impossible.
Simon Thorpe, In Defence of Foucault: The Incessancy of Resistance, Critical Legal Thinking Blog, 7 Feb 2012
I admire the noble activist intent of Roos’ article, and I thank him for sparking this vital debate on Left intellectual strategy and its varied implications for praxis. However, I fundamentally disagree with his interpretation of what is possible within the theory of Michel Foucault, and I will argue, in the most comradely spirit, that Foucault in fact provides priceless insights for resistance.
Foucault News 