Foucault (book)

Summary

Merquior provides a largely negative evaluation of Foucault's work. He argues that Foucault's works were often riddled with major errors of fact and reasoning, seriously (sometimes fatally) weakening Foucault's arguments. Merquior notes that in his first major book, Madness and Civilization (1961), Foucault argues that in Europe before the Enlightenment madness was relegated to the fringes of society but nonetheless seen as a type of divine wisdom engaged in dialogue with, and pointing out the foibles of, society. However, Merquior suggests that the historical record contradicts Foucault by showing that the insane were often imprisoned and treated cruelly long before the Enlightenment, that English philanthropist William Tuke and French physician Philippe Pinel did not "‘invent’ mental illness" but rather built on the work of predecessors, and furthermore the motives for creating insane asylums across Europe was nowhere near as uniform as Foucault implies. Merquior writes that, "Foucault’s epochal monoliths crumble before the contradictory wealth of the historical evidence." Merquior compares Madness and Civilization to Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death (1959), describing them as similar calls "for the liberation of the Dionysian id." Discussing The History of Sexuality (1976), Merquior writes that Foucault's views about sexual repression are preferable to those of Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, and their followers, in that they have "the advantage of descriptive, if not explanatory, realism", and that Foucault is supported by "the latest historiographic research on bourgeois sex". Merquior considers the book's second two volumes to be of higher scholarly quality than the first, and finds Foucault to be "original and insightful" in his discussion of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and other Stoics in The Care of the Self. However, he notes that the details of Foucault's views are open to question, and suggests that Foucault's discussion of Greek pederasty is less illuminating than that of Kenneth Dover, despite Foucault's references to Dover's Greek Homosexuality (1978). In conclusion, Merquior suggests that Foucault's widespread influence in the academic humanities is attributable less to the quality of Foucault's work and more to his fashionable quasi-Marxist habit of "bourgeoisie-bashing".

Merquior does offer scattered praise for Foucault's work, describing his early efforts at literary criticism as "brilliant" and "insightful", and applauding his use of obscure historical sources and documents to shed new light on neglected areas of inquiry.

Scholarly reception

Colin Gordon reviewed Foucault in The Times Literary Supplement. Alan Swingewood reviewed the book positively in the British Journal of Sociology, calling it "elegant and well-informed". Swingewood endorsed many of Merquior's criticisms of Foucault, and wrote that Merquior was perhaps correct to conclude that Foucault "embraces nihilism." Merquior's work was praised by critic Roger Kimball and humanities professor Camille Paglia, who both suggested that it shows that Foucault made elementary errors in every area he wrote about; Paglia called Merquior's exposé hilarious. Though supportive of Foucault in general, Paglia criticized Merquior for failing to discuss what she saw as Foucault's enormous debts to French sociologist Émile Durkheim. Literature professor John M. Ellis called Foucault the best general account of Foucault's oeuvre, while Gregory R. Johnson called it one of Merquior's "minor classics." Conversely, English professor Paul Bové dismissed Merquior's criticisms of Foucault as arrogant and stupid.