By Matthew Guerrieri<\/p>\n
This week’s discussion of Hickey’s book around these parts has been by Somehow, the delicate instrumentalities of … Foucault’s Though I would say that the caricature of By Matthew Guerrieri This week’s discussion of Hickey’s book around these parts has been by and large skeptical-critical, which kind of gives the impression that the book was a chore. But (for me, at least) I had a good time disagreeing with it–I read the book a second time and had more fun disagreeing with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-165","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-bookclubii","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nand large skeptical-critical, which kind of gives the impression that
\nthe book was a chore. But (for me, at least) I had a good time
\ndisagreeing with it–I read the book a second time and had more<\/i>
\nfun disagreeing with it. So, just to say thank you for by far the
\nhighest-quality procrastination of the week, here’s something I liked
\nabout the book: Hickey’s defense of French
\nStructuralism.<\/p>\n
\ncontinental thought had been transmuted by the American professoriat
\ninto a highfalutin, pseudo-progressive billy club with which to beat
\ndissenters about the head and shoulders.<\/p>\n
\nruthless, timely dismantling of the human sciences had simply
\nvanished. It had, in fact, been surgically amputated and a dumbed-down
\ntravesty of Frankfurt School sociology sewn onto its place. Barthes’s
\ndead author walked the steppes as an avatar of ethnic and sexual
\nidentity, replete with neediness and aura. Foucault’s Panopticon and
\nLacan’s gaze were untidily bundled into one lumpy paranoid concept….
\n(p. xix)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nContinental thought came as much from outside as inside (my alma
\nmater’s former
\npresident<\/a>, after all, was known for spitting about the Frankfurt
\nSchool like John Lithgow in Footloose<\/i>), the reminder that the
\noriginal thinkers were more elegant, subtle, and even playful than you
\nmight get from their reputation is always welcome. I never dip back
\ninto them without feeling refreshed (even Foucault, who can be pretty
\nheavy going in translation). So even though I didn’t quite buy
\nHickey’s application of the Bentham-Chardin divide from Foucault’s Discipline
\nand Punish<\/i><\/a> (pp. 5-8), it was still my favorite part of the
\nbook, and put a lot of the rest of his criticism of institutions in a
\nmore complex and useful context. In some ways, disagreeing with
\nsomeone who’s read Barthes et al.<\/i> can be more invigorating that
\nagreeing with someone who hasn’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"