it's one of the most honest admissions by any philosopher ever. the original french is 'Bien éloigné de vous donner une solution, j'indiquerai seulement quelques-unes des difficultés qu'il présente' from one of his speeches about the meaning of the term 'author.' when he wasn't raping algerian kids, he made some insights.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5871225&forum_id=2#49916149)

there is no 'solution' to this; it's just the inevitable operation of an 'information society.' it can't be otherwise.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5871225&forum_id=2#49916169)

if u can't listen to beethoven or learn isaac newton's calculus without feeling that it's not right simply to root around in ideas about the insolubility of the shittines of civilization then u're just being indulgent at best, more likely resentful of those better or whiter than u

while we were putting men on the moon foucault was bitching about civilization keeping ugly & violent criminals in prison

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5871225&forum_id=2#49916203)

western academia celebrated him while suppressing some of his hot takes, such as both sides being shitty and oppressive in the vietnam war. and without a lot of preening; his whole approach was that the structural mechanics of both states made such an outcome inevitable. he was a precursor to more modern foreign policy realism, 'seeing like a state'-kind of arguments, etc.

foucault saw the space race as an obvious extension of the panopticon, and predicted that orbital launch capacity would be used first and foremost to launch spy satellites and military navigation/communications, which was more or less true.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5871225&forum_id=2#49916503)

you can "reason" your way into a lot of bullshit, especially if you write like a mid-late 20th century french critical theorist. and if you do not depart from the world of simple reason it becomes possible to accept a lot of disparate thoughts from contrasting writers at once. maybe the best example is the critical theorist interpretation of nietzsche, who they stripped of all spirit and meaning to come away with a boring ass theory of relativism among other things. and if you narrow your reading of nietzsche just enough you can do this with the right twists and turns and linguistic maneuvering. but nobody who reads both nietzsche and foucault themselves, not as a pedantic academic or as an ideologue with an axe to grind but as a real reader, can come away from them thinking, yes, these people take the same stance towards humanity and life.

for all foucault had to say about "vietnam" or particular socialist colleagues you still know what it was all *about*. and if u don't i invite u now to pause and think abt it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5871225&forum_id=2#49916519)

foucault doesn't even try. which might well be evasive, lazy, etc. but what he pushes again and again in different essays/lectures is the notion that the modern person's interaction with 'the state' or other big institutions is not being mediated through older structures like your village and its parochial interests.

technological modernity regards the population as a mass but also the individual as a specific identified unit with a set of cataloged characteristics. one corollary of that fact is that - once aware of this - you should regard yourself as the most basic unit of action and analysis when it comes to decisions such as whether or not to submit to a military draft (for instance).

this is a huge shift from all sorts of other systems which still took concepts like 'the glory of the nation' seriously as a kind of shared, non-individuated ethic which relied on 'the people' as a metaphysical analytical unit.

it might be harsh to strip all the romanticism away from individual-state relations, but it has been nothing but vindicated in the past few decades. it's an appropriate and analytically-useful cynicism.

foucault's problem in some sense is that he came too late, since his basic framework was completely applicable in the era prior to WWI, and that's when it would have done the most instantaneous good.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5871225&forum_id=2#49916558)

not exaggeration or flame btw

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5871225&forum_id=2#49916191)