De ongedekte flank in het werk van Michel Foucault en George Sorel

Samenvatting

The Unprotected Flank in the Works of Michel Foucault and Georges Sorel. Michel Foucault's and Gilles Deleuze's "Gesprek over intellektuelen en de macht" ([Conversation on Intellectuals and Power] Raster, 1979, 10) and other works show how Foucault's theory of power and criticism of the Enlightenment philosophies are combined with romantic fascination for popular insurrections. He used a genealogical method to describe the insurrection of subjugated knowledge, ie, authentic and popular types of knowledge exiled to underground social circles by scientific discourse. His support for the Iranian Shi'ite revolution is fully in line with this idea. A comparision with Les Illusions du progres ([The Illusions of Progress] Paris, 1908) and other works by Georges Sorel, a romantic critic of the Englightenment who considered the French labor union movement as a popular antiutopian revolt, shows that Sorel's idea of myth as a rousing device closely resembles Foucault's idea of political spirituality. Although both thinkers rightly demonstrated the normalizing and disciplinarian effects of modern society, their political populism has some totalitarian implications. 35 References. Adapted from the source document.