AGAINST SARCASM: the myth of the pomo French intellectual

I live in France and lead a very active intellectual life here. I am constantly inspired by the rich and creative work being published here, and quite surprised by the image of it that I see on various Anglophone media.

There are no social constructionist French philosophers publishing today. Michel Serres, Alain Badiou, Bruno Latour, Bernard Stiegler, François Laruelle are the major pluralist philosophical thinkers, and they are all very critical of social constructionism, as were their immediate predecessors. Deleuze, Derrida (contrary to what is often claimed), Foucault, Lyotard, Lacan, all denounced the dangers of linguistic and social idealism that they found in one-sided versions of structuralism. These philosophers were also quite critical of meaningless jargon, despite their own style often veering towards extreme abstraction and neologism to match the generality and the novelty of the problems they were analysing and the concepts they were proposing.

So in fact they preceded the hoaxers by decades in confronting the problem of empty slogans and pseudo-discussions in philosophical fields. Their major difference with Boghossian and Lindsay is that they had mastered the literature and proposed well worked-out alternatives.

They were in favour of humour, and condemned sarcasm as the attribute of lazy egos enamored of their own sound bites in the place of real work.

 

Publicité