4 ms·

> In practical terms, Foucault’s and his followers’ assault against sexual normalization has helped bring about institutions that disavow normativity at every

by janice1999 2y ago

> In practical terms, Foucault’s and his followers’ assault against sexual normalization has helped bring about institutions that disavow normativity at every turn. I assume this is an oblique defense of Foucault's lifelong and vocal campaign to remove the age of consent so adults could have sex with children. Foucault was also recently accused of having purchased boys for sex by his friend Guy Sorman. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/4/16/reckoning-with-foucaults-sexual-abuse-of-boys-in-tunisia https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/4/16/reckoning-with-...

dralley 2y ago
Aside from this, the pretension is literally dripping from that sentence, my god. It's difficult to value the "genius" of people (and frankly entire fields) who seem to apply most of their cleverness towards being inscrutable for no good reason.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- prewett 2y ago
  I think the purpose of the inscrutability serves is to "idea launder" obvious falsehoods into something believable, much like the convoluted path one takes to convert stolen money into believably-legal money.
  - blacksmith_tb 2y ago
    Well to be fair there are two arguments, one is that you can't use normal commonplace phrasing to describe something that's at odds with the 'normal'; the other is that in a publish-or-perish academic world each new generation of thinkers invents a new jargon to differentiate themselves from their predecessors (and keep their jobs). Not that both couldn't be simultaneously true, but I think it's a little too cheeky to say they're making it up for no reason at all.
  - bitwize 2y ago
    "Idea laundering". You've neatly summarized what I believe Curtis Yarvin to have been doing, both with his political writing and his computational silliness like Urbit.
hackandthink 2y ago
The article about Foucault's pedophilia is worth reading. I'm not really surprised. When I read the piece on Pierre Riviere decades ago, it creeped me out. https://markkukoivusalo.org/thinkers/foucault/cp/pierre-riviere/ https://markkukoivusalo.org/thinkers/foucault/cp/pierre-rivi...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- lores 2y ago
  I don't think you copied the right link.
  - hackandthink 2y ago
    I no longer have the book. Unfortunately, I can't find a corresponding quote online that I seem to remember. I mostly remember the feeling there is something wrong with this guy.
pasabagi 2y ago
Apparently bullshit, though: https://www.lexpress.fr/idees-et-debats/michel-foucault-et-la-pedophilie-enquete-sur-un-emballement-mediatique_2148517.html https://www.lexpress.fr/idees-et-debats/michel-foucault-et-l... Guy Sorman wasn't Foucault's friend, and later said (about his statement) that he never actually saw anything he described, but just a 'convergence of disturbing clues'. You have to bear in mind that accusing gay people of pedophilia is pretty standard fare for homophobes up and to this day.
- complaintdept 2y ago
  IIRC Focault still signed a petition to legalize sex with children. Not sure why, but it wasn't an entirely unpopular opinion among (often) leftist intellectuals in Europe at the time.
  - pasabagi 2y ago
    I mean, it seems a bit unclear what his political positions actually were, but it does seem they were just opinions. As philosophers go, that's pretty small beer: Thales used to roast people alive in a brass container, Marcus Aurelius was responsible for numerous genocides, and Heidegger was a card-carrying Nazi.
    - rcMgD2BwE72F 2y ago
      >Thales used to roast people alive in a brass container Source?
      - teractiveodular 2y ago
        That would be Phalaris of brazen bull fame, not Thales. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalaris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalaris
  - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Jacques Derrida signed a petition to decriminalise pedophilia [0]. The age of consent at that time in France was 15. "In a sense, all the rest of my life I've been trying to do intellectual things that would attract beautiful boys." [0] https://x.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1806019580315463689 https://x.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1806019580315463689
slibhb 2y ago
The author is a social conservative. He's by no means defending Foucault's "assault against sexual normalization". My sense is that, by "recognizing Foucault's bleak genius," the subtext is "we need God because otherwise there's nothing but depravity".

dralley 2y ago

Aside from this, the pretension is literally dripping from that sentence, my god. It's difficult to value the "genius" of people (and frankly entire fields) who seem to apply most of their cleverness towards being inscrutable for no good reason.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
prewett 2y ago
I think the purpose of the inscrutability serves is to "idea launder" obvious falsehoods into something believable, much like the convoluted path one takes to convert stolen money into believably-legal money.
- blacksmith_tb 2y ago
  Well to be fair there are two arguments, one is that you can't use normal commonplace phrasing to describe something that's at odds with the 'normal'; the other is that in a publish-or-perish academic world each new generation of thinkers invents a new jargon to differentiate themselves from their predecessors (and keep their jobs). Not that both couldn't be simultaneously true, but I think it's a little too cheeky to say they're making it up for no reason at all.
- bitwize 2y ago
  "Idea laundering". You've neatly summarized what I believe Curtis Yarvin to have been doing, both with his political writing and his computational silliness like Urbit.

hackandthink 2y ago

The article about Foucault's pedophilia is worth reading. I'm not really surprised. When I read the piece on Pierre Riviere decades ago, it creeped me out. https://markkukoivusalo.org/thinkers/foucault/cp/pierre-riviere/ https://markkukoivusalo.org/thinkers/foucault/cp/pierre-rivi...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
lores 2y ago
I don't think you copied the right link.
- hackandthink 2y ago
  I no longer have the book. Unfortunately, I can't find a corresponding quote online that I seem to remember. I mostly remember the feeling there is something wrong with this guy.

pasabagi 2y ago

Apparently bullshit, though: https://www.lexpress.fr/idees-et-debats/michel-foucault-et-la-pedophilie-enquete-sur-un-emballement-mediatique_2148517.html https://www.lexpress.fr/idees-et-debats/michel-foucault-et-l... Guy Sorman wasn't Foucault's friend, and later said (about his statement) that he never actually saw anything he described, but just a 'convergence of disturbing clues'. You have to bear in mind that accusing gay people of pedophilia is pretty standard fare for homophobes up and to this day.

complaintdept 2y ago
IIRC Focault still signed a petition to legalize sex with children. Not sure why, but it wasn't an entirely unpopular opinion among (often) leftist intellectuals in Europe at the time.
- pasabagi 2y ago
  I mean, it seems a bit unclear what his political positions actually were, but it does seem they were just opinions. As philosophers go, that's pretty small beer: Thales used to roast people alive in a brass container, Marcus Aurelius was responsible for numerous genocides, and Heidegger was a card-carrying Nazi.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 2y ago
    >Thales used to roast people alive in a brass container Source?
    - teractiveodular 2y ago
      That would be Phalaris of brazen bull fame, not Thales. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalaris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalaris
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Jacques Derrida signed a petition to decriminalise pedophilia [0]. The age of consent at that time in France was 15. "In a sense, all the rest of my life I've been trying to do intellectual things that would attract beautiful boys." [0] https://x.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1806019580315463689 https://x.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1806019580315463689

slibhb 2y ago

The author is a social conservative. He's by no means defending Foucault's "assault against sexual normalization". My sense is that, by "recognizing Foucault's bleak genius," the subtext is "we need God because otherwise there's nothing but depravity".