Le Sigh. Just ... Le Sigh. Can someone please save HP from herself. OMG this is a terrible terrible terrible piece. And also hilarious.

a thread ... https://thecritic.co.uk/the-enduring-legacy-of-michel-foucault/

"Postcolonial theory, queer theory, critical race theory, intersectional feminism all gained prominence at this time. They drew explicitly from postmodernist ideas and the go-to philosopher of choice was Michel Foucault."

No, Foucault wasn't a post modernist, he said so himself.
He is widely considered to be a post structuralist, however he was loathe to put himself in a box and evaded attempts to try to describe himself in a particular way.

Queer theorists misrepresent & misunderstand his work.

"Therefore, what is understood by society as knowledge is really just an exercise of power. It is power/knowledge."

What? Did you even read any Foucault at all? I mean, ever? Power/Knowledge refers to intertwinement of the goals of power and knowledge–in knowing we control and in controlling we know. Psychiatry is an example of knowledge/power, because it is an example of the way discipline

has come to replace the sovereign as the societal power. Psychiatry is a form of modern disciple–wields control through knowledge and knowledge through subjectification & surveillance.

He does not challenge the truth of medical science as he does psychiatry.

Foucault spends a great deal of time analysing the meaning of knowledge and how it's changed t/o history.

Foucault speaks about how sexuality became the object of study and confession, medicine became the confessional church once. He never believed sex was a construct.

BTW–when Foucault speaks of sexuality he means what we call gender. He would tell you genderism and gender identity is power/knowledge and biopower.

Incidentally, he would probably see social media and big tech censorship as a power/knowledge phenomenon.

"This power-knowledge is both constructed and perpetuated by ways of talking about things – that is by discourses."

Again, LOL. Discourse refers to far more than just the way we talk about things. Discourse refers the system through which ideas flow and people act and in each era the discourse is affected by the epistemes or societal mindset of the particular epoch.

"Western societies largely accept the findings of science as the most authoritative source of knowledge and this, to Foucault, was evidence that it was power-knowledge. He called this particular type of power-knowledge “bio-power.”"

Hahahaha. What? Biopower refers to the transformation of society from one in which power is wielded through sovereignty and violence, to one in which it is wielded through technologies and institutions which regulate and govern life–discipline/surveillance and public health.

"Perhaps the most directly dangerous manifestation of Foucauldian ideas is that found within the lesser-known fields of disability studies and fat studies. Here, even more so than in queer theory, is the concept of biopower made clear..."

Yeah, that's not biopower. Covid-19 public health restrictions, the shutting in of LTC residents–that's biopower. Abortion laws are biopower. MAiD is biopower. Governance of life ... biopower is wielded through positive measures and so seems more subtle.

"From postcolonial theory, we get the claim that everything needs to be decolonised. This is not limited to tearing down of statues or decolonising the curriculum; it also includes the highly racist claim that science and reason themselves are both white and Western and

“other ways of knowing” (including witchcraft and religion) belong to everybody else. This vast field of study is widely held to have originated with Edward Said, a Foucauldian."

LOL. Ok hahaha. A Foucauldian? Ok, lol. I would call him a post colonial.

Said applied MFs work on discourse and discursive formation to produce his seminal work Orientalism, does that make him a Foucauldian?

What's a Foucauldian? That's something you just made up, lol .

Also, doubting Said would call for the distruction of monuments or support claims science and reason are white and western, since he was an Arab, and so fully knew the history of science has a massive oriental component.

Did you even read Said? Lol. I can't even with this.

As for the rest, same disingenuous interpretation. As mentioned above, the queer theorists and clownfish brigade have grossly misinterpreted MF. In the way Lenin and Stalin totally misread Marx. Calling anyone a Foucauldian seems wildly misrepresentative because

Foucault did not have an integrative theory or any kind of standard methodology and in fact over the course of his intellectual life you can see this thinking evolve. He rejected the view of himself as purveying any kind of theory to explain any reality. He clearly stated this.

Why, why, why, do these faux intellectuals insist on continuing to write about Foucault, when they have obvious no clues and have never read a primary source or if they did, failed to understand it?

/end thread.