Customer Reviews

French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States

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I bought this for my mother based on the review, figuring if she didn't like it, I would. She is a highly educated person, but wasn't familiar with the topic, and I thought it would introduce her to some of the theory that I use, etc. and give her some kind of entry into my academic world.

No dice - she found that you have to already be familiar with the topic to get anything out of this. After reading it, I agree. I found it wholly fascinating, but can understand why someone else who is not in this environment would be lost. The writer makes many assumptions regarding the reader - it's NOT an introduction by any stretch of the imagination.

That being said, it's a good book.

I agree with the reviewers who say this book is mostly for academics who are already somewhat familiar with the subject matter. But, also agree that if you have been in the American academic system for a while, you have probably already encountered many of the relevant names already. If you have and have tried to navigate their texts on your own, you may have been like me and in desparate need of a history lesson.

This book is a fabulous whirlwind tour of a vast array of important names (author functions). It aligns texts and authors in a historical narrative and is loaded with citations. I am excited to reread this book and use it to decide what to read next.

I feel as though this book creates a corpus called "French Theory" and in reading it, I have discovered that it's the subject I have been struggling to study all my life. I feel as though I have been reading one complicated and unconnected text after another desparately trying to get my arms around the field. Finally, an advanced textbook on the subject. Love it.

The most important uses of this book for me , as an American, were:
1) Chapter 12, "Theory as Norm", although by far not a rigorous synopsis of the major writers, did give an excellent micro-feel for what each of them was trying to achieve( at least from the perspective of their impact as perceived in America); although not an endpoint, certainly a starting point for those readers who would want to know what the big deal was all about. In fact, the "Prehistories" chapter served that function as well. Chapter 12, in a very useful way, also pointed out how intention and effect (the writers in French versus the readers in English) could be skewed by misinterpretation and mistranslation, politics, and a whole host of other forces.
2) In many places, this synoptic approach served as a very good lead-in to a particular writer, for example, the section "The Invention of Poststructuralism(1966)" described Derrida's "technique"(if that's a good word for it) in just a few paragraphs, and was instrumental for me in reading other sources and finding other references for that writer. After reading these pages, I immediately went to Derrida's "Writing and Difference", and picked up the thread of what was being explicated here in this book. This helped me a great deal in regard to Foucault, Proust, and Levi-Strauss.
I was not that interested in the genealogical or archaeological threads of the book, whether or not it was too anecdotal or not, but for me it was a great introductory work!

I always wondered how the grand philosophy of 20th century France was turned into esoteric marginalia in America. This book, despite its absolutely awful translation, offers many insights into American intellectual life as well as the roots of neo-conservatism in French-bashing. Though it often hard to read and overly detailed in its description of certain esoteric mutations of theory, the insights this book offers into the currently moribund state of Continental philosophy in America were enlightening. This book also served me as an introduction to the valuable works of Bourdieu, Baudrillard and DeBord.

French Theory has a "controversial" reputation in American academia. I have always wondered why most "serious" scholars denounce French Theory as "quackery", and French theorists as empty jargon cobblers, while Comp Lit and English departments are so hostile to criticisms. After reading this book, I think I would agree with the author as to where the problem lies. It is not the French thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze who were peddling "quackery". Nor is it the American theorists who are selling huge doses of obfuscatory academic halluciations. Decontextualization is the key to the answer. The French authors were never a homogenous school. They were typical "Old-World public intellectuals" addressing French history, and social issues. The invention of French Theory in the American University is a result of an intrinsic struggle of American culture, ideology and identity. Since French Theory is only one episode in a long history of academic bickering in the American University, we may very well say that French Theory will evetually give way to a new theory and a new debate.

What fascinates me most in this book is the recount of the changes that have taken place in the American University, philosophy of education (in a non-technical sense), intellectual trends, and ideological struggles. The transformation of the university from the old "referential and moral" institutions to the new "professionalistic and isolated" corporations does seem to be the source of many differences between the Old World (including the British, French and German traditions) and the New World in terms of the education system and intellectuals' roles in society in general.

As for the writing, I think it is generally clear. Sometimes it digresses too much away from "French Theory". But such "excursions" probably are necessary for a fuller description of the social and historical contexts. The translation is understandable. I don't have any complaint there. It seems that the translator does understand the author's views very well, and also is an expert on "theory", philosophy and French. I like the physical appearance of the book as well. It feels very nice.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the reason why "French theory" is so notorious in America.

The previous reviewer is probably correct about the audience for this book. That said, if you've come through the American academic system, at least in the humanities or social sciences, in the last 30 years or so, this is a fascinating account of the way particularly American concerns and politics led to a "structural misunderstanding," a selective appropriation and transformation of French thinkers and their ideas.

And if you think Sokal has had the last word, I'd recommend Latour's Reassembling the Social, where he draws upon the Science Wars to upset fundamental approaches in the social sciences. The Science Wars were vital for social theory, just not in the way Sokal would like.

If someone was not aware of the controversy surrounding the works of philosophers and literary critics going by the names of Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj Zizek, Michel Foucault, and Alain Badiou and decided to read samples of their work, it might be interesting to see if such a reader would find them as "radical" as they are sometimes portrayed in both the academic and popular press. Such a neutral and isolated reader who is not embedded in the community of experts might extract an interpretation of these works that would be very different from the usual ones currently expounded. Being free from the hype and controversy might allow such an individual to give a fresh interpretation or new paradigm, and one that might in fact have didactic utility. In addition, it would be very interesting to see the reaction of these philosophers and their followers to this interpretation/paradigm. Would they object to it with the assertion of the impossibility of "neutrality"? Or would they view it as normal, as being yet another example of the tensions and "oppositions" that are embedded in every text?

If one believes in the wide scale proliferation of the works of these philosophers, as the author of this book clearly does, it might be difficult to find such a reader. The author portrays "French theory" as a body of works, ideas, or texts that have seeped into every facet of American culture, both academic and non-academic. His evidence for this however is very meager and in fact purely anecdotal. This perhaps should not be surprising, for a sound statistical study of the influence of "French theory" would not be forthcoming from someone who stands in opposition to things scientific. But it is a supreme irony that those in the scientific community, particularly those who cheered after the successful culmination of the "Sokal hoax", also do not study the impact of "French theory" from a rational, scientific perspective. Instead, very cursory summaries of "French theory" are given, coupled with selected quotations that they feel support their case of its degrading and anti-scientific bias.

In spite of the author's refusal or inability to present a case for the widespread influence of "French theory" he does introduce the reader to some of the works of the French literary theorists along with short histories and biographies of these theorists and a few of their followers. Anyone who was in the academy during the 1980's and 1990's no doubt has vivid memories of the controversies going on at the time with "politically correct" thinking, the Sokal hoax, and the book by Alan Bloom widely discussed and debated. Many viewed "French theory" as an epistemological black plague that must be stamped out without mercy in order to protect "naïve" impressionable students and the scientific enterprise. Others viewed it as an invitation to revel in a kind of literary Dionysian ecstasy, to become "intoxicated at the prospect of never hitting bottom" to quote the Derridean translator Gayatri Spivak. Others, dubbed the "neoconservatives" by the author and by the academic guru Stanley Fish, felt that it was proof of the decadence of liberalism and the American "Left." But here lies another irony with all these groups: they all seem to take on the attributes of the very thing that deconstructionists describe: they all seem to inhabit their own "logospheres" with each one completely convinced of its apodictic certainty, of possessing the legitimate metanarrative, and having as its purpose the total subjugation of the other "logospheres" to its hegemony.

The author rightfully takes issue with the degree to which American academics and their students have understood "French theory". Few it would seem have taken on the enormous time commitment involved to master its intricacies and historical context. In the introductory pages he makes clear just what he means by "French theory" and in the early chapters one gets the definite impression that the literature departments in the United States were "ripe" for an inculcation of "French theory." But regardless of the intellectual content of "French theory" it is perhaps a compliment that American culture is receptive to new ideas, no matter how alien they may appear at first glance. If American society went overboard with "French theory" it was because of its possibilities of being a guide to making sense out of things, as a tool that competed with structuralism. The deconstructionists however did not mean this to happen, argues the author, and any set of procedures to that end would be their anathema. Popular culture even got in on this distortion, the author quoting the case of the Hollywood movie "The Matrix" and its incorrect exploitation of Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacre et Simulations."

But one could also argue that even a "misunderstanding" of "French theory" could be taken as proof of its influence. After all, it would not be the first time that "surface readings" have resulted in substantial philosophical, literary, or political movements. And the Sokal hoax could be interpreted as an example of what some cognitive scientists call conceptual blending, as an expansion (deliberate or not) of a text to make it say something that is similar to another text. The concepts of quantum gravity do not bear much resemblance to those in hermeneutics, but they can easily be made to resemble them by this blending of concepts. Such a blend may be a farce to some, and from a scientific perspective it certainly is, but for a "neutral" reader it might actually be entertaining or poetic to a certain degree. In this respect Sokal may have done more harm than good for the scientific community, in that he showed how easy it is to "corrupt" a text, even a scientific one, and make it express concepts that are very similar to another one, no matter how "irrational" the latter is. He thus may have inadvertently presented an example of the flexibility of scientific discourse, which in the traditional view is "tighter" in its interpretation and demands a high degree of mental discipline for its understanding.

The author ends the book with an exaltation of French theory in its ability to "decipher" the "operations of power" and its "theoretical grasp of the world." This can only be done he says by extracting it from the academy and the hands of professional commentators. Oddly enough, he refers to the risk of taking it on, and expresses hope that it will "restore life to life." Taking a swipe at the capitalist marketplace and all of its (supposed) vicissitudes, French theory will according to the author spare us of the capitalist logic and consequent cynicisms. In asserting this he is definitely of reactionary status, and has his work cut out for him if he is to stymie or disrupt the flow of technical and scientific advance taking place at the present time. At least for this reviewer, it is difficult to see how the rhetorical constructions of Derrida & Co. could significantly halt this advance, and it really should not attempt to.