[throwawaygh]

Foucault's distinctly french and distinctly intellectual. The two are definitely touching the same elephant, and if you like Foucault you'll probably find something in Illich, but Illich appeals to a less intellectual and more American (religious?) audience that would turned off by -- or simply never get past the first page of -- Foucault.

Religious fundamentalist homeschoolers will read Illich and get something out of it, but would probably not have the patience/reading comprehension level to engage with Foucault. Or, if they did, would burn it.

So, both have their place.

That said, I wish Foucault had provided a more thorough treatment of schooling, though. I think his reaction to schooling was something like "yeah that's so transparently a factory floor look-alike and so transparently training compliant factory workers that I'm not even sure it's worth saying much else".

[Der_Einzige]

"intellectual" sounding but certainly not actually "intellectual".

Foucault's explanation for why leprosy disappeared from Europe is pure psudoscience, along with the entirety of psychoanalysis (which he accepted at least partially). I don't like scholars who take the likes of Lacan as being serious instead of charlatans

Foucault had some good ideas in works like Discipline and Punish or A history of Sexuality but filtering between the noise and signal is extremely tough with him...

[voidhorse]

While that’s a fair assessment, (even philosophers that idolized and refined Foucault’s methods (see Ian Hacking) point out his loose handling of historical fact) that’s not really why people read Foucault and to ignore the entire edifice of his thought because of such mistakes would be the very definition of missing the point.

In my opinion, it is not so much the concrete historical subjects of Focualt’s work that are valuable, but rather his approach at developing a mode of critique founded on historicity and his reminding us in a very general and strong sense that our present is determined by a complex of historical events that don’t actually fit into the neat and tidy bundled up narratives histories present (since this is usually the objective of writing history) but that things are far less coherent and far more like structural emergent phenomenon than they are the effects some historical will (a la Hegel) or the interests of “great men”. Not to mention he does what any great philosopher should do which is make us recognize the concepts we take for granted thanks to years of idioms and cliches being drilled into our heads are not so simple after all (his analysis of power). I think it is the task of every philosopher worth salt to de-hypostatize concepts.

This is why critiques that take issue with Foucault for “forgetting the subject” are taken more seriously and have more ground to stand on than any shallow dismissals on account of a few factual flubs.

[throwawaygh]

> "intellectual" sounding but certainly not actually "intellectual"

Sure. I was sort of intending to use the word in a way that didn't even make a distinction between those two things; i.e., I was using "intellectual" to refer more to the writing's style and tone than its substance :)

"Intellectual" doesn't necessarily mean "scientific" or even "correct". Maybe "academic" would be a better word for what I'm trying to get at.

[marnett]

I assume your hate towards Lacan extends towards Slavoj Žižek as well?

[deleuze]

Totally, and French intellectuals don't usually go over well with the average reader of HN. But, if anyone finds the discussion in this comment section resonates strongly with them, just reading about Foucault's ideas would be a good place to start. Why limit ourselves to school. :) This is fertile ground for thought and I'm glad to see discussion here.

> I wish Foucault had provided a more thorough treatment of schooling, though

Agreed. I think most schools were just broadly more authoritarian when he was writing. There's certainly more room to discuss the ways in which schooling has changed as we've shifted from the factory to service and knowledge economies.

[throwawaygh]

> There's certainly more room to discuss the ways in which schooling has changed as we've shifted from the factory to service and knowledge economies

Exactly. You could literally write Discipline and Punish today, but with education. The body -> mind and everything.

Educate and Punish? ;)