{"id":429,"date":"2021-06-15T10:58:09","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T10:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/?p=429"},"modified":"2021-06-15T10:59:01","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T10:59:01","slug":"is-it-really-foucauts-fault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/2021\/06\/15\/is-it-really-foucauts-fault\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it really Foucaut’s fault?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a thought-provoking op-ed in\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>, Mitchell Dean and Daniel Zamora write<\/p>\n

\n

We are perhaps living at the end of politics,\u201d Michel Foucault wrote in the late 1970s. With the exhaustion of utopias and radical alternatives to capitalism, what was now at stake, he memorably wrote, was to develop \u201cnew types, new kinds of relations to ourselves\u201d. Political advancement is not delivered through \u201cparties, trade unions, bureaucracy and politics any more\u201d, he wrote. Instead, politics has become \u201can individual, moral concern\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2014 and then go on to lay the current trends of self-centred \u00abprogressivism\u00bb at the philosopher\u2019s feet.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure we can blame it all on Foucault, but when they write<\/p>\n

\n

Beginning in the late 60s, political change would\u00a0be reframed as a struggle against oneself, against our \u201cinner enemy\u201d. One had to confront the \u201cfascist within\u201d.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0shift made the self just another market to conquer, with self-help coaches, new age gurus, energy healers, food counsellors, alternative therapists and lifestyle brands all trying to profit off of this turn inwards. Politics, as Christopher Lasch would write, would \u201cdegenerate into a struggle not for social change but for self-realization\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I find myself in complete agreement.<\/p>\n

Social justice, socialism, and left-wing politics have, for me, always been about solidarity. It is, most emphatically, not about\u00a0me<\/em> but about how I can contribute to making the world a better and more just place. Making it about\u00a0my<\/em> improvement, about\u00a0my<\/em> consciousness being raised, about\u00a0my<\/em> journey to become a woke individual (yes, I see the irony in light of my last post<\/a>) is an act of selfishness and the opposite of solidarity.<\/p>\n

The entire opinion piece is here: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/jun\/15\/michel-foucault-self-individual-politics<\/a>. It\u2019s worth a read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a thought-provoking op-ed in\u00a0The Guardian, Mitchell Dean and Daniel Zamora write We are perhaps living at the end of politics,\u201d Michel Foucault wrote in the late 1970s. With the exhaustion of utopias and radical alternatives to capitalism, what was now at stake, he memorably wrote, was to develop \u201cnew types, new kinds of relations … Continue reading “Is it really Foucaut’s fault?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[95,94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-social-justice"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":431,"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions\/431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}