Thursday, January 26, 2012

foucault can go...

One of the pleasures of grad school is reading authors who for the most part were deemed irrelevant at the end of the last century by most of ordinary society. But am I really in normal society? No. Exhibit A: Foucault. While this French philosopher by all means has some influential and insightful ideas, reading him is literally like trying to read Russian. Which I do not speak. Or read. But through these really difficult authors which I have had to read for a few years now, including senior year of college, I have come to appreciate theoretical literary and artistic criticism much more than I ever thought I would. I still don't have too much of a fondness for Foucault, but I do quite enjoy Marx and Engels (especially the fact that they both had a passion for good wine), as well as some more modern postcolonial theory. While challenging, I have actually picked up quite a bit from many of the authors, and I am the better for it. So here's a challenge to you: read something that makes you think. No, it does not have to be all of Capital by Marx, but something that is much shorter can make you think just as much as a one-thousand page book. May I suggest something by Althusser or Horkheimer to get started? Do it, you will feel smarter and I know that some people are as crazy as me. I'm still not into Foucault though. He can go off and do some things that are too scandalous to put into writing. At least here anyway...

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