Even before anyone speaks, you can sense the old argument in practically every humanities seminar on the East Coast these days. Within minutes, the room divides along an invisible line drawn somewhere between Frankfurt and Paris after someone mentions dominance and another mentions power. Like Trump cards, the names are thrown out. Adorno on one side. For the other, Foucault. The ideas themselves hardly have time to breathe because everything happens so fast.
The conflict predates the majority of those involved. Theodor Adorno, a German philosopher who lived in a modest Los Angeles home during his exile in America and wrote about jazz with a suspicious horror, has somehow come to represent a particular attitude. skeptical, depressed, wary of popular culture, and certain that the system depresses everyone. In contrast, Michel Foucault is portrayed as the more elegant choice. The Berkeley lectures in the late 1970s, the shaved head, the leather jacket, and the feeling that he was constantly one step ahead of anyone attempting to stop him.
Choosing one over the other has begun to feel like a political act in American departments. The Adorno camp frequently maintains that capitalism remains the engine, that economics powers the entire apparatus, and that understanding the commodity form is essential to comprehending domination. That is met with a shrug from the Foucault camp. They say that power exists everywhere. It can be found in the doctor’s office, the prison, the school, and the hospital. A CEO is not necessary for it to operate. It simply hums along, creating the people it requires.
In her book about the two thinkers, Canadian philosopher Deborah Cook, who has spent years attempting to break this impasse, contends that the gap is largely artificial. At one point, Foucault himself acknowledged, almost sheepishly, that he might have avoided a great deal of trouble if he had read the Frankfurt School earlier in life. These days, that admission is frequently cited. When people want to make peace, or at least appear to be trying, they reach for this type of line.
However, the tranquility never lasts. The fact that critical theory in America has become entangled with the larger debate over who should speak for the oppressed is part of the issue. It still hurts to hear Edward Said’s old grievance that the Frankfurt School was eerily silent about race, empire, and the colonized world. When Adorno’s name is mentioned, you can hear graduate students rolling their eyes. Whether it’s fair or not, there’s a feeling that he was writing about issues that differ from those in the global South for a Europe that no longer exists.
Though not always better, Foucault has aged in a different way. His subsequent research on neoliberalism is drawn into debates that he most likely wouldn’t be aware of. He is now quoted by conservatives. Anarchists do the same. Strangely enough, management consultants also do. The Foucault card has become so ambiguous that it occasionally appears to have no meaning at all, which is a problem in and of itself.
Observing this from the cheap seats, it’s remarkable how little the texts themselves seem to matter these days. Names have evolved into roles, and roles have evolved into identities. Before anyone will take the work seriously, a young scholar attempting to make a career must choose a side, or at least indicate one. In all of this, it’s difficult not to feel like something has been lost. In a battle neither of them would have particularly enjoyed, two challenging, contradictory thinkers—both worth reading slowly—were reduced to flashcards.
It remains to be seen if American critical theory can escape this predicament. The argument is repeated, albeit with a different accent each time.
