2 hours ago
(This post was last modified: 2 hours ago by C C.)
https://www.loureedsnephew.com/p/remembr...hings-post
EXCERPTS: Like Emily Eakin, author of The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory, I came of intellectual age in the late heyday of French theory, though from a slightly different vantage point.
[...] The picture that emerges is one of seductive ideas proposed by flawed men—the book dedicates significant attention to Barthes, Lacan, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, and de Man—that gained purchase in young minds (Eakin’s included), peaked, faded, and have gone on to have ambiguous afterlives in American culture. Eakin’s tone is abashed—how foolish we were!—apologetic, but in the end hopeful that theory contributed something positive to the world.
Theory certainly had its excesses. Decades later, I admit that reading a Foucault paper in a writers’ group is pretentious and that I have very little idea what Baudrillard is talking about.
But I would argue that what the French theorists were getting at was both “real” and—perhaps more importantly—not theirs alone. The French theorists didn’t destroy stability, nor were they the first to describe its loss. They offered a description of an instability that was being independently verified elsewhere.
[...] Whatever the cause—epistemic evolution, economic and social development, or the natural demise of empires—foundationalism unraveled throughout the twentieth century in a way the French theorists could not have caused, but for which they became easy scapegoats... (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: Like Emily Eakin, author of The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory, I came of intellectual age in the late heyday of French theory, though from a slightly different vantage point.
[...] The picture that emerges is one of seductive ideas proposed by flawed men—the book dedicates significant attention to Barthes, Lacan, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, and de Man—that gained purchase in young minds (Eakin’s included), peaked, faded, and have gone on to have ambiguous afterlives in American culture. Eakin’s tone is abashed—how foolish we were!—apologetic, but in the end hopeful that theory contributed something positive to the world.
Theory certainly had its excesses. Decades later, I admit that reading a Foucault paper in a writers’ group is pretentious and that I have very little idea what Baudrillard is talking about.
But I would argue that what the French theorists were getting at was both “real” and—perhaps more importantly—not theirs alone. The French theorists didn’t destroy stability, nor were they the first to describe its loss. They offered a description of an instability that was being independently verified elsewhere.
[...] Whatever the cause—epistemic evolution, economic and social development, or the natural demise of empires—foundationalism unraveled throughout the twentieth century in a way the French theorists could not have caused, but for which they became easy scapegoats... (MORE - details)