Foucault’s thinking had an enormous impact on me in the 1990s when I was getting a degree in philosophy, and shaped a lot of my later thinking about performance as Bacchanalia and the creation of ruptured spaces through chaos. I’ve felt a bit disillusioned with him in recent years because of how his work has been used in critical theory. It’s very good to be reminded that Foucault can’t actually be pinned down as a mascot for any particular political agenda. “I think I have in fact been situated in most of the squares on the political checkerboard . . . : as anarchist, leftist, ostentatious or disguised Marxist, nihilist, explicit or secret anti-Marxist, technocrat in the service of Gaullism, new liberal, etc.”

How We Forgot Foucault – American Affairs Journal

via Ross Douthat’s interesting “How Michel Foucault Lost the Left and Won the Right“