That’s because only the better ideas turn into dogma, and it is this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpful idea is changed into robot dogma that is deadly…The problem starts at the secondary level, not with the originator or developer of the idea but with the people who are attracted by it, who adopt it, who cling to it until their last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, imagination, and most importantly, sense of humor, to maintain it in the spirit in which it was hatched.— Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
Silvere Lotringer (15 October 1938 – 8 November 2021), a French-born literary critic and cultural theorist, began publishing the journal Semiotext(e) at Columbia University in 1974, helping to popularize French theorists, and thus postmodernism and critical theory, in the United States. Lotringer launched Semiotext(e) to escape academia; academia later embraced the postmodernism that Lotringer popularized through Semiotext(e) during his flight from academia.
According to Donatien Grau, Lotringer “stood against the very notion of authority.” He also believed that “history is not the enemy” but that “the enemy is those who do not believe in history.” Grau further wrote:
Semiotext(e) has given an editorial home to those who do not want to abide by the domination of the white male heterosexual rule. Every form of identity has found its way there, but it was never merely essentialized. It was offered as a creative possibility, often a poetic one: one that would manifest itself in writing, in literature, in philosophy. As such, this identity was not the end: it was a beginning.
In 1975, Foucault attended a symposium entitled Schizo-Culture hosted by the journal; Foucault’s writing was published in a corresponding issue that “has been credited with awakening within New York artists of the era a fascination with critical theory.” Semiotext(e) also became known for developing connections between high theory and underground culture.
Michel Foucault.jpg/ Wikimedia Commons
Lotringer expanded Semiotext(e) in 1983 to encompass a “Foreign Agents” series of books by French theorists. The series debuted with Baudrillard's Simulations, which, according to Wikipedia, “spawned a new art movement and served as the theoretical template for the Keanu Reeves movie, The Matrix (1999).”
The Matrix - bullet scene re-creation.jpg/ Wikimedia Commons
As with their other dalliances in modern art and perhaps even the hippie movement, a few years after the launch of “Foreign Agents,” the CIA allegedly took an interest in French theory, drawn to Foucault, according to Rockhill’s Marxist perspective, because of Foucault’s stance that “expansive radical movements aiming at profound social and cultural transformation only resuscitate the most dangerous of traditions.” If this is indeed the correct reading of both Foucault and of the motivation behind the CIA’s interest, it carries a certain irony today, given that Foucault is seen by some conservatives as the father of a dogmatic revolution based on Neo-Marxism. The writer Jarryd Battle, however, claims this is an unfair leap:
He was not denying truth, but helping to place it within a broader historical context. Truth could not help being “a thing of this world”, he wrote. Every society had a regime of truth, and a “general politics” of truth. These are simply types of discourse which society “accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.
Attempts to connect Foucault to the excesses of woke politics have to take some significant conceptual leaps. In Cynical Theories, the authors do this by separating out postmodernism proper from the “applied postmodernism” of activist circles. But this involves turning the descriptive work of scholars like Foucault into a prescriptive model for political action. This isn’t just nit-picking about historical narratives, but crucial to understanding French theory itself.
These insights are useful, they show us that our understanding of what makes a human being is often subject to significant change. What Foucault is calling for isn’t activism. It’s humility in the face of history.
In 1990 Lotringer again expanded Semiotext(e) with the Native Agents series, which he co-edited with his then-wife, the writer Chris Kraus, who described the series as a new form of female subjectivity, publishing writers from Cookie Mueller to Kathy Acker. Kraus eventually became a co-editor of Semiotext(e), and in 2001 the couple moved to Los Angeles (they later divorced; Lotringer died in 2021 at his home in Ensenada, Baja California).
1996 Kathy Acker 004.jpg/ Wikimedia Commons
All of Kraus’s books appear to have been published by Native Agents, from the highly original, funny, and intensely self-deprecating autobiographical novel I Love Dick to the emotionally painful but also darkly funny and self-deprecating autobiographical novel Torpor. Kraus covered the underground L.A. arts scene in an essay on the gallery Tiny Creatures in Where Art Belongs and offered her critique of MFA programs, as well as more self-deprecating takes regarding her comical misadventures with S&M, in Video Green. Her latest autobiographical novel, Summer of Hate, demonstrates her continuing interest in critical theory and social justice while maintaining the sense of humor and complexity of motivation in its characters that Kraus has displayed in all of her works.
In 2018, in the midst of the #MeToo frenzy, Kraus was the target of a brief, mini-cancellation over her defense of the female professor Avital Ronell in the face of a sexual harassment accusation by a young male student.
Recently I attended a reading by Kraus that was packed with young people; like any true fan I suspect these Johnny-come-latelys (although I myself was not introduced to Kraus’s oeuvre until 2015) of loving her work for all the wrong reasons, or at the very least, of missing her nuance. I often wonder what she thinks about the incredible morphing critical theory has undergone since it was first introduced to the U.S. by Semiotext(e). That question may forever remain unanswered.
Top photo: Chris Kraus, Royal College of Art, 2015.png/ Wikimedia Commons
What I lack in depth (in terms of knowledge of these particular philosophers, history in general, and technology), I hope I compensate for in my ability to spot connections and pull things together in an accessible way so that the layperson can see the big picture.
This is a very, very kind take on Foucault. The notion that he was just callin' it as he saw it and didn't have an active agenda is interesting. Camille Paglia's thoughts on Foucault are a sort of counterbalance to this view. She called him a "new Jehovah cobbled together out of string and beeswax" or something like that.
I don't know enough to evaluate Paglia's take but Salon.com has drifted quite far from its heyday! I feel like this is a giant puzzle and I have many of the pieces but they don't fit exactly. Yet a picture is forming. Also I just made the connection today that the piece accusing Foucault of pedophilia was in the publication "Catholic Insight"... which, well... pot/kettle.
Tour de Force.
I knew all the names and remember some of the incidents but this connection essay with links pulls together so much.
The Avital Ronell case. I had forgotten.
What I lack in depth (in terms of knowledge of these particular philosophers, history in general, and technology), I hope I compensate for in my ability to spot connections and pull things together in an accessible way so that the layperson can see the big picture.
That's what is needed esp. as you point out the response has shifted over time to these thinkers and who uses them as arguments.
This is a very, very kind take on Foucault. The notion that he was just callin' it as he saw it and didn't have an active agenda is interesting. Camille Paglia's thoughts on Foucault are a sort of counterbalance to this view. She called him a "new Jehovah cobbled together out of string and beeswax" or something like that.
Interesting. I've never read Foucault. At this point I think I am more interested in how he is being interpreted by others.
Then you may find this a fun read: https://neoliberalismo.com/Foucault.htm
I don't know enough to evaluate Paglia's take but Salon.com has drifted quite far from its heyday! I feel like this is a giant puzzle and I have many of the pieces but they don't fit exactly. Yet a picture is forming. Also I just made the connection today that the piece accusing Foucault of pedophilia was in the publication "Catholic Insight"... which, well... pot/kettle.