During the years 1945-1965 (I am referring to Europe), there was a certain way of thinking correctly, a certain style of political discourse, a certain ethics of the intellectual. One had to be on familiar terms with Marx, not let one's dreams stray too far from Freud. And one had to treat sign-systems—the signifier—with the greatest respect. These were the three requirements that made the strange occupation of writing and speaking a measure of truth about oneself and one's time acceptable.
Then came the five brief, impassioned, jubilant, enigmatic years. At the gates of our world, there was Vietnam, of course, and the first major blow to the powers that be. But here, inside our walls, what exactly was taking place? An amalgam of revolutionary and antirepressive politics? A war fought on two fronts: against social exploitation and psychic repression? A surge of libido modulated by the class struggle? Perhaps. At any rate, it is this familiar, dualistic interpretation that has laid claim to the events of those years. The dream that cast its spell, between the First World War and fascism, over the dreamiest parts of Europe—the Germany of Wilhelm Reich, and the France of the surrealists—had returned and set fire to reality itself: Marx and Freud in the same incandescent light.
But is that really what happened? Had the Utopian project of the thirties been resumed, this time on the scale of historical practice? Or was there, on the contrary, a movement toward political struggles that no longer conformed to the model that Marxist tradition had prescribed? Toward an experience and a technology of desire that were no longer Freudian. It is true that the old banners were raised, but the combat shifted and spread into new zones.
Anti-Oedipus shows first of all how much ground has been covered. But it does much more than that. It wastes no time in discrediting the old idols, even though it does have a great deal of fun with Freud. Most important, it motivates us to go further.---Michel Foucault (1977) "preface" Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
I believe that Foucault's preface was added to the English translation. This indicates, I believe, how famous Foucault was becoming outside 'Europe' in the 1970s, and how little known, relatively speaking, Deleuze (and Guatarri) still were in the broader academy. [Of course, the previous two sentences are nonsense if the preface already existed in the French edition!]
One of the key functions of Foucault's preface is to announce and, thereby, to promote (ahh) a rupture in European thought. He does so by implying that the period between 1945-1965 was non-Utopian (or even anti-Utopian) in character; and dominated by (politically correct) conceptual references to Freud, Marx, and (what one may call) structuralism. While I was born after that period, if i recall correctly, as late as the early 1990s, Jay Cantor -- then a recent MacArthur prize winner -- would offer courses on modernism (ahh) structured around Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche.
Part of Foucault's proposed change is more subtle; rather than adopting the stance of speaking truth to power (which we may associate with Sartre then, and Chomsky today), Foucault insists here on a difference stance regarding that "strange occupation", of "writing and speaking a measure of truth about oneself and one's time." (Of course, this may include speaking some truth to power.) This presupposes that one is capable of grasping some such self-knowledge (there are hints of Socrates here) and could somehow comprehend (elements of) one's time.
In his preface, Foucault claims that the intellectual edifice of the 1945-1965 was undermined not by contradictions in its internal logic or by other intellectual means, but in virtue of changed historical even political circumstances. One may say that Foucault presupposes that the "powers that be" structure intellectual thought, and that blows to that (political-financial) base undermine the intellectual superstructure.
A more jarring feature of Foucault's (ahh) analysis is that he treats 1965-1970 as a "jubilant" period. What's jarring about this is that while Foucauth mentions 'war' later in the paragraph, one of the key explicit causes of the "impassioned period,' Vietnam, can be best described as a carnage. Of course, these deaths were not European;* I am not one to take away the sense of warm nostalgia from the generation of 1968. But it is also notable that Foucault treats the period as enigmatic and he, thereby, volunteers that he is capable of speaking some truth about his own time (and so applying for the strange occupation).
As an aside, Foucault asserts here a European consciousness with its own self-understanding. This is, of course, quite standard for French intellectuals after Hegel (go read Sartre's (1961) preface to Fanon's Wretched of the Earth). But he does so without noting the -- recall Spivak's criticism of Foucault/Deleuze and defense of Derrida-- subaltern.
In Foucault's narrative Anti-Oedipus, is a (ahh) material sign-post on, an invitation to join the path beyond Freud, Marx, and the sign. (See here for some fun ngram data.) With some temporal distance, we can say that Foucault invites to a beyond-modernist intellectual landscape.+ What's notable, however, is that it is left unclear what has happened in the five jubilant years, was it (i) an attack on "social exploitation and psychic repression" (the old banners) or (ii) did new kinds of political struggles and new experience/technology of desire get developed? It's clear, I think, that Foucault believes (ii) is more likely, and that he thinks (i) involves some kind of self-deception. With the benefit of further hindsight, we can see that nostalgic social democratic interpretations (for whom Reagan, Thatcher, and Hayek are the Antichrists) conform to (i), whereas identity theorists and even (capitalist/technological) anarchic futurist theorists tend to conform more to (ii).
What's notable, however (again look at the NGRAM), is that while Marx and Freud indeed declined in significance (indeed a trend that developed between 1965-1975), and Foucault himself became rather important (after the 1980s), Marx and Freud continued to be more widely mentioned than Foucault.** That is to say, while undoubtedly somebody who spoke a measure of truth on the period (say) 1975-2015 could mention reasonable familiarity with Foucault and Deleuze, it is not obvious that they were constitutive of our correctness in thought. Some other time, I return on what these requirements might be, although I welcome suggestions by readers.
*Europe was also spared the cycle of ethnic, urban riots in the 1960s.
+I am not using post-modern because it's an open question if that avenue was Foucault's intention.
**Of course, this data is imperfect and rather rough. (You may even claim that it does not cover Foucault's "Europe" at all.) I don't have comparable data on after 2008, but I suspect Marx has done well during the last decade.
Foucault's preface to Anti-Oedipus is a great text to revisit what I said here one year ago about Foucault's "cryptonormativity" as a way of shifting the risk of making normative claims to the reader.
Foucault in 1977 seems to be addressing those who just lived through the late 1960s and early 1970s. Foucault says, basically, that he won't tell you how to think about what you lived through, but here's a book just nutty enough to measure up to the craziness of those days.
In the United States the early 1970s strike wave ended abruptly with mid-1970s inflation and President Carter pulling back from Democratic commitments to labor unions. (I’m going to guess that something similar happened in France at that time.) The new social movements and identities of the 1970s and 1980s were often exclusionary as well as liberatory, even as an active participant myself. Even when I was a teenage Marxist in the late 1970s in New York City, the slightly older crowd who had believed in 1972 that revolution was imminent seemed self-deceiving. That already seemed nostalgic in 1980.
So in retrospect it seems silly for Foucault to shift the entire normative burden to readers by saying, "It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation) that possesses revolutionary force." Good judgment is for squares! If you desire intensely enough, then it will be so.
On the other hand, my conservative students, now that I live in one of the most conservative parts of the US, are not going to listen to a liberal professor tell them how to think about any controversial issue. And leftist young people in the liberal parts of the US do not want to hear about old defeats (although they might be curious).
So shifting normative risks may be the only way to talk in a somewhat egalitarian way about norms regarding the difficult questions. That’s not my entire pedagogy, but it’s a key part of it.
Posted by: Aaron Lercher | 02/06/2019 at 08:16 PM