French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States

by François Cusset, Jeff Fort (Translator)

“In such a difficult genre, full of traps and obstacles, French Theory is a success and a remarkable book in every respect: it is fair, balanced, and informed. I am sure this book will become the reference on both sides of the Atlantic.” — Jacques Derrida

During the last three decades of the twentieth century, a disparate group of radical French thinkers achieved an improbable level of influence and fame in the United States. Compared by at least one journalist to the British rock ‘n’ roll invasion, the arrival of works by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari on American shores in the late 1970s and 1980s caused a sensation.

Outside the academy, 'French theory' had a profound impact on the era’s emerging identity politics while also becoming, in the 1980s, the target of right-wing propagandists. At the same time in academic departments across the country, their poststructuralist form of radical suspicion transformed disciplines from literature to anthropology to architecture. By the 1990s, French theory was woven deeply into America’s cultural and intellectual fabric.

French Theory is the first comprehensive account of the American fortunes of these unlikely philosophical celebrities. François Cusset looks at why America proved to be such fertile ground for French theory, how such demanding writings could become so widely influential, and the peculiarly American readings of these works. Reveling in the gossipy history, Cusset also provides a lively exploration of the many provocative critical practices inspired by French theory.

Ultimately, he dares to shine a bright light on the exultation of these thinkers to assess the relevance of critical theory to social and political activism today-showing, finally, how French theory has become inextricably bound with American life.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Theory, France, Nonfiction, Politics, American History

413 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

François Cusset is Professor of American Studies at the University of Paris-Ouest Nanterre, François Cusset is a writer and intellectual historian. A specialist in contemporary intellectual and political history, he is the author of French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States and The Inverted Gaze: Queering the French Literary Classics in America.

Reviews

[Kim Lacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cusset argues that the US has reinvented French Theory for its own purposes, straying far from its original intentions in France. At the start, there's a fascinating chapter on the development of the US university that really situates how this reinvention was able to bloom here. If I would have read this at the beginning of grad school, I would have felt he was totally wrong; but looking back, Cusset nails a lot of the resistance to theory that surrounds humanities departments (like, from the sciences). We use this stuff for everything, and it was simultaneously refreshing and mindblowing to read how so much of what we've been trained to understand (well, 'accept' because of translation and publishing issues, which Cusset spends some time discussing) is possibly bogus. I can see that a lot of academics might be offended by this book, but I highly recommend to my peers.

[Yann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un livre vraiment dense et instructif, pour quelqu'un comme moi, totalement neuf sur la question, la seule introduction au sujet ayant été au travers du livre de Jacques Bouveresse sur les prodiges et vertiges de l'analogie. Il est question d'un courant universitaire aux États-Unis, inspiré par quelques français établis là-bas, et de leur diffusion et ramification dans le monde entier au bout de quelques décennies. C'est très précis et abondant, tout à fait bien adapté au public français puisqu'il fait bien sentir les différences entre nos deux pays qu'il connaît bien. Il est aussi relativement objectif, même si au final, l'auteur regrette amèrement que ce courant ne soit pratiquement pas estimé ni même connu chez nous.

En même temps, la peinture qu'il en fait n'est pas très convaincante, d'autant qu'il le défend surtout pour l’opportunité qu'il y aurait à gagner pour nos enseignants du supérieur, en emboitant le pas à cette mouvance, d'avoir plus d'influence, de reconnaissance, d'argent, de citations, de réseau, de pouvoir à l'intérieur du monde de l'enseignement supérieur. Tout cela dans un contexte mondialisé de concurrence entre les universités, les départements d'enseignement et les professeurs, plutôt qu'un quelconque idéal politique, amour de la science, recherche du bien public, ou autre sottise qu'il affecte de mépriser comme des vieilleries auxquelles, selon lui, nous resterions sottement attachés.

Mais bon, ce n'est pas le titre qui honore l'homme, mais l'homme qui honore le titre. Les espoirs qu'il fonde sur les affaires de foulard me laissent froid. L'enseignement est devenu un business, et comme disait Casanova, l'argent des sots est le patrimoine des gens d'esprit. Il faut juger l'arbre à ses fruits. Toutes ces exégèses clinquantes faites de cabrioles rhétoriques, postures de divas et autres galipettes littéraires pourraient bien n'être au fond qu'un beau miroir aux alouettes.

[Emahunn Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the ivory towers that blanket America, especially in the humanities, acquiring the language of French Theory separates one scholar from her contemporaries. But to possess this language, to use it willingly and willfully, simultaneously necessitates scrutiny. The scholar is challenged on her understanding of Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Lacan, and, if one cares enough to cite a woman in his relentless interrogation, Kristeva and, to add an element of resounding surprise, Spivak. To take a course in literary theory is to read excerpts from these intellectuals, which is to then make sense of their entire corpus. Tenure may be slightly harder if you deny access to one of these towering giants of intellectuality.

But how and why did French Theory become such a big hit, a language requirement, in the United States? This is the project of Francois Cusset's _French Theory_ (2003). Yet, Cusset does not limit himself to this intriguing task of intellectual history. He seems to be just as curious as to how intellectuals and scholars in the United States appropriated the thoughts of French theorists, engaging in what he refers to as "creative misreadings" that fit the cultural and political conditions of the time (early 1970s to late 1980s). Aptly, the author writes "that the very logic of French theoretical texts prohibits certain uses of them, uses that were often necessary, however, to their American readers in order to put the text to work. It is an example of the recognized interplay between betrayal and reappropriation...The American 'invention' of these French texts, therefore, designates a skill at making texts say what one has understood of them or, at least, what one needs to draw from them" (278). It is this reappropriation that essentially functions as a translation of French works that are interpreting German philosophy. And it is quite useful, evidenced by how many times Foucault is cited in graduate papers, Derrida is discussed in coffee shops, and Deleuze used as a way of nuancing conversations about capital.

In the conclusion, the author, I feel, accurately admits that Marx is the center for many of these theorists. They are either extending his theories, complicating them, or calling them into question without ravenous intentions to dismantle them. What I find to be lacking in his analysis is a fuller discussion of their relationship to Marxism. It is well know that Foucault was a student of French structural theorist, Louis Althusser, and was also, albeit briefly, a member of the Communist Party in France. Jacques Derrida, also a student of the latter, sustained a lasting friendship with the leading theoretician of the French Communist Party. One reads about Derrida's remarks on Marx and Marxism in the early 1990s, later published as _Spectres de Marx_ (1993) and the responses comprised in the anthology _Ghostly Demarcations_ (1999), but Foucault and Derrida have a deeper relationship to Marxism, both personally and politically, at least for Foucault, than the author chooses to investigate.

There is also a great aperture in Cusset's treatment of what he calls "minority groups" and their relationship to French Theory in the 1980s. He says nothing about the importance of _The Signifying Monkey_ by Henry Louis Gates in terms of deconstruction and intertextuality, making the provocative argument that these practices are embedded in the African (American) diasporic literary tradition. In his conversation about feminism, bell hooks or Hortense Spiller are not mentioned once, despite both authors being major contributors - originators in some respects - to womanism, feminism, and postmodernism. His conversation regarding Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, and Homi Bhabha comes off as circumscribed in relation to other American theorists. All this is to say that the minority experience, regardless of how French Theory functioned as one of many parts of an intellectual cache for groups of color and women, is exactly that - MINORity, the condition of being "minor."

But this book is critically important in terms of understanding the political and intellectual (which is also political) landscape that fertilized the United States for growing its own unique brand of French Theory. I recommend it as a supplemental text to understanding what why we are doing what we are doing in academia, and how.

[Andrew]

There was once a time when I invested a lot in the concept of "French theory" as it was purveyed at my little liberal-arts college, far from the real world, tucked in a little pocket in the green Midwestern hills in a town that looked like a Thomas Kinkade painting. I was enraptured by the radical questioning, the breathless prose that I had to puzzle over, the tonic cosmopolitanism, and the sense that you could be smart and cool as fuck at the same time -- in other words, it had the same appeal as post-punk records or transgressive fiction. But that does not a cogent theory make, and after some time in the real world, I found the ideas presented to often be too airy-fairy.

Cusset confirms another point -- that these writers were, by and large, presented out of context. To get them honestly, you need a classically French philosophical education beginning with Plato, a certain amount of Voltaire worship, and a solid grounding in Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche, and despite what Jordan Peterson might claim, the last of those three is the only one who remains au courant in American universities. Instead, I was subject to a bastardized version of French concepts filtered through American social conditions.

I should point out that his style is still very Left Bank, and the same translation failures that occur in, say, Deleuze-to-English also apply to Cusset-to-English. And it's very much written for French audiences, and so there's not much of an explanation of who the French thinkers are, let alone an explanation of people like Bernard-Henri Levy and Alain Finkielkraut who remain marginal in America but are actual media stars in France, and who view themselves as modern incarnations of Camus and have all the intellectual honesty of Paul Wolfowitz on CNN circa 2006 (and who often possess remarkably similar views). So unless you already have a grounding in theeeeeeory, it isn't worth your time.

[Avery · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book about French theory in American spends a lot of time introducing aspects of American culture that French people might find foreign. I would recommend it to a young French intellectual. Anglo-Saxon readers would do better to read The Myth of Disenchantment, which unveils some hidden layers of 20th century theory. Cusset observes how Derrida's emphasis on misreading and the integration of the Other was anticipated by Oswald Spengler, but not that Spengler got his ideas from occultists...

[Eileen]

first – gossip as praxis
second – part one's definitely the meatiest, the rest a little scattered and self indulgent, don't know if i'd recommend reading the whole thing unless you already have a masochistic relationship with theory & want to confront the simultaneous enormity and inanity of ze french giants
thirdly – feeling ... like i need to get the fuck out of academia

[nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably closer to 3.5 stars, but I'm rounding up because of the excellent cover and typographical presentation. If I were more finicky about spelling errors, though, I might have chosen to round down.

This is an excellent overview/analysis of both the epistemological context (especially insofar as it is organized, materially, by divisions in disciplinary knowledge production) and the historical conditions that allowed French theory to live in the U.S. university system. I kinda think that the first half of the book--which, in my opinion, is much stronger and well-argued than the second half, which, however delightful for its gossipy, "fun fact" approach, never quite reaches the analytical sophistication or precision of the first 150 or so pages.

Zach and I both noticed Cusset's emphasis on the influence of French theory in the Humanities--writ large insofar as cultural studies doesn't quite belong there, though it doesn't not belong there either--and doesn't touch as much on the influence of these theories on the social sciences. This is a significant oversight, because chapters on the "star system" of the U.S. academy would have had to be carefully rethought. For that matter, history in its disciplinary form is not very well represented here save the occasional Joan Scott reference.

Anyway, this isn't so much a book that you read for the minutiae of its details but for its narrative arc and structural analysis. It's also not a good book to introduce or explicate the concepts or the content of "French theory"--scare quotes, yes. It assumes from the outset that you either know this stuff or you don't. It's interested, rather, in the effects of "FT"--and the historical conditions that allowed it to take shape as part of the everyday in the U.S. academy. Moreover, it's also engaged in the questions of the relationship between this body of knowledge and U.S. politics. And for me this is where Cusset's perspective, which is one of both an outsider and an insider the the U.S. theoretical enterprise, is most valuable.

[David M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is something much more interesting than another introduction to Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, etc. It's really a chapter in US intellectual history. How these disparate French thinkers came to represent a vanguard (if not a new orthodoxy) for many American students and professors. In part it's a story of the disappointments of the sixties. After any truly radical social transformation failed to materialize, radicalism tended to retreat to the confines of the university. Identity politics and a supposedly radical "theory" became the consolation prize for a revolution that didn't happen.

Cusset is fair and balanced, but I'm sorry to say we Americans sometimes come off as a bunch of dullards. You can't effectively subvert a tradition you haven't bothered to read.

[Marissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a philosophy background (analytic more than continental) and I read this for a history graduate class (in the course of getting my PhD) and I found it to be too esoteric for me. The nature of the subject-matter is really to blame rather than the author. I'm glad I read this and certain parts were fascinating but I found it to be a book for the author's peers and colleagues rather than a book for the general public.

[KeyForLocked]

In second chapter, gives a beautiful account of why it was the literature departments—and not the philosophers—who took up the task of studying French Theory. I used to think it was only about rejecting the stylistic austerity of analytic philosophy. But now the author shows how the departments of English and foreign languages became the natural hosts.
This parade of fancy names—anthropologists, historians, philosophers—almost none of them literary scholars. Why, then, were they invited into literature? Under the influence of the Humboldt model, Charles Eliot introduced electives at Harvard in 1869; by 1902, John Dewey had already spread the gospel of liberal education.
What Americans then needed was a unifying purpose—something to hold the disciplines together. In Germany, that role belonged to philosophy; in France, to history. But in the United States, the mission of reflecting on cultural identity was assigned, by the nation-state itself, to literature.
And so Matthew Arnold could insist that literature might resist the disasters brought by technology; J. H. Newman could claim that literature is the mother of all disciplines. You see, literature can be anything. At the very least, it can claim to be about everything.

As a mirror, in November 1973, the Gauche Prolétarienne (GP) dissolved itself under the auspices of the CFDT. The Maoists split in two: those who turned against totalitarianism, and those who dug in—the purists of the UCFml.
A month later, The Gulag Archipelago appeared. Amid the collective silence of the Left, some intellectuals among the former confessed their errors and began to settle accounts with the inheritance of their elders. It was, they said, time to return to humanism, to Christianity, to the liberties of democracy. And there was television now—new channels, new audiences. They would become the nouveaux philosophes.
Foucault and Barthes looked on with a certain sympathy; Deleuze and Castoriadis with disdain. Among these publications, Marion’s name began to circulate widely. Their campaign rode the mood of the moment: suspicion toward Soviet power, the CIA’s rhetorical support for Latin American dictatorships, Mitterrand’s calls for recruitment.
The movement ended, and the masters left behind no disciples. Their accusers, too, soon disappeared—more completely than the accused.
Twenty years later, when the Sokal affair broke, the French found themselves puzzled. The old masters’ names now sounded as though they belonged to another century.

[Kristofer D]

French Theory doesn’t explain - or profess to explain - the ideas of its principal characters. To even refer to its titular characters as “characters” is already misleading - Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and Co. are stick figures in Cusset’s narrative. French Theory is about the construction of a specific (non-)knowledge, the creation of “French Theory”, which, as Cusset details, is less a unified body of theory than a sociological phenomenon. “French Theory” is a way of speaking, a bohemian affect.

My first exposure to “French Theory” conforms more or less to Cusset’s accounting. Although I first read “French Theory” while I was in college, I did not read any “French Theory” for college. My coursework, primarily in (analytic) philosophy, sociology, and women’s studies, featured very little in the way of “French Theory.” I went to a no-prestige non-flagship campus state school; I didn’t know anyone who read “French Theory” for college, but I did meet some people at college who did read “French Theory,” primarily other boho weirdos.

First exposure: Foucault’s name would occasionally appear in AdBusters, a magazine I knew from finding it on accident at the Barnes and Noble in Fargo, ND. I had no idea who he was, but AdBusters certainly seemed to think you, the bohemian audience, would know exactly who he was. I remember opening of issue #42 - no table of contents, just 12 pages of the Courier slogan “grand narratives are always invisible” imposed over a series of photographs and Mark Tansey paintings. Based on Cusset’s telling, this is a typical first exposure to “French Theory” - a completely decontextualized phrase or slogan (or, more charitably, a “detourned” phrase) juxtaposed/imposed over contemporary art, and consumed in a non-academic setting. I was too far in the middle of nowhere to know about Semiotext(e) or the New York contemporary art scene generally. AdBusters was my introduction to all that.

Second exposure: I bought the (international) noise conspiracy’s A New Morning, Changing Weather LP sometime around 2004 at a used record store (again, in Fargo, ND). This was, oddly enough, my first true exposure to the canon of “French Theory” (“French Theory” in its truest sense - not structuralism, not poststructuralism, not literary theory, but “French Theory”). The liner notes featured, alongside an essay titled “The Global Fear Factory”, a short reading list accompanying each song’s lyrics. So, in a song featuring the lyric “Cause essence is nowhere and nothing is real” we are admonished to read Simulation and Simulacra, the Samuel Beckett novel Malone Dies, and Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics. That Simulacra and Simulation is mis-titled is symptomatic of the diffusion of “French Theory.” Likewise, one might puzzle at the purpose of a notionally anticapitalist rock band telling its listeners to read Saussure. Other recommendations besides Saussure and Baudrillard include Judith Butler, Foucault, Spivak, but also more traditional left-wing standbys like George Orwell and Noam Chomsky. That the respective arguments of Chomsky’s Year 501 and Hardt and Negri’s Empire are in direct contradiction maybe matters less than the aesthetic effect of being the kind of person that has read both books, or, perhaps more likely, knows both titles.

Cusset unfortunately doesn’t discuss AdBusters or the (international) noise conspiracy directly; he does discuss the (New York) art scene as a significant vector of “French Theory”. The punk and hardcore scenes of the 1990s do not get any mention, alas. But I imagine he would get a kick out of the existence of the (international) noise conspiracy - a Swedish rock band who surely introduced more than just myself to “French Theory,” an example of the “Worldwide Theory” phenomenon he discusses in chapter 13.

Surely there is something “postmodern” about the way a set of obscure French authors became superstars in America and it is via their fully Americanized version that they become known in Sweden, which then re-exports back to the United States, by now completely divorced of its “original” “meaning” such that the audience is admonished to read the defiantly Hegelian American Marxist Harry Cleaver alongside Foucault and Baudrillard.

But enough about me - is Cusset’s book any good? Yes. But to clarify, this book is not a history of French Theory; it is a history of “French Theory”, the American invention. As Cusset tells it, a group of French philosophers and critics found an American audience in the 1970s and 1980s just as their fortunes had been all but eclipsed in Gaul itself. As the democratic socialist left took power in France in the 1980s with an aggressive program of economic reform (apparently unknown to American audiences in the moment but when the time came, Foucault was an opponent of Mitterand from the right), the “radical” thinkers of poststructuralism had been supplanted by the thin gruel of the TV friendly New Philosophers. No matter; 1968 Thought would find a new home in the context of a country with a newly puissant right, the United States.

But - as Cusset tells it - this new invention would be transmogrified into something nearly unrecognizable to French readers who had lived through the structural revolution as it occurred. The Savage Mind had been translated into English in 1966 with no popular impact. While Barthes was popular with the literati before the rage for “French Theory” and Althusser was widely disseminated within the diminished subculture of post-1960s Marxist-Leninism during the 1970s, it was Sylvere Lotringer’s journal Semiotext(e) that set off the cultural tidal wave that we now know as “French Theory”. The history of Semiotext(e) warrants a book of its own; until then, Cusset will have to suffice.

Anyone familiar with “French Theory” will already know bits and pieces of the story; they are almost certain to learn additional bits and pieces. I loved this book but would offer two rather modest critiques of it.

First critique: Cusset misidentifies the prehistory of “French Theory” in the United States. Cusset treats Lotringer as the primary vector of dissemination of “French Theory.” Gayatri Spivak is also credited for her work translating and introducing Of Grammatology. But I think it is reasonable to say that “French Theory” as a phenomenon was already underway by something like ““French Theory” Mark I”. That is, the New Left Review had already introduced an Anglophone, non-exclusively academic audience to Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, and Althusser. In the United States, far from New York City in Tucson, Arizona (!), the Marxist-Leninist journal Theoretical Review was publishing and discussing Althusser and Poulantzas alongside Gramsci (curiously, Althusser and his student Poulantzas are almost entirely absent from Cusset’s book). Concurrently but less significantly for American audiences, Lacanian themes became familiar within film studies via the British journal Screen. Likewise, Paul Piccone’s Telos - although more preoccupied by innovations in Germany and Italy than France in its early years - is not mentioned.

Second critique: we might wonder just what “French Theory” is. Is it a “canon” of thinkers? An affect or outlook influenced by a set of now-dead French philosophers? A sociological phenomenon wherein a set of Franco-American memes took root in American society (“bodies and spaces”)? We might also then wonder if perhaps “French Theory” is also something more than strictly “French” (or American). That is, right alongside the French theorists of “French Theory” a parallel track of occurred, whereby Western Marxism was also spayed, neutered, and recontextualized as “critical theory” (a more capacious term than Horkheimer’s Critical Theory, as it now includes Agamben and even Heidegger himself). Although Cusset does briefly discuss the early 80s issue of Semiotext(e) dedicated to Franco-Italian Autonomist “Post-Political Politics”, he otherwise does not discuss the extent to which the new Italian thought was introduced to an American audience on the back of “French Theory.” Michael Hardt plays an important role here, having written one of the earliest English monographs on Deleuze while also acting as an early translator of Giorgio Agamben, and, of course, co-authoring one of the all-time best-sellers of “French Theory,” Empire (that neither of its authors is French is just one of the fun little ironies of history).

This is ultimately the biggest flaw in the book - since “French Theory” is just as much about American reception and recontextualization as it is about French authorship, one might wonder just where the boundaries of the canon of “French Theory” lie. Of course, that is perhaps part of Cusset’s own argument - “French Theory” is Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze; but it is also the Americanized Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze. But it is also not Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze at all - it isn’t even “Foucault,” “Derrida,” and “Deleuze.” It is simply an aesthetic temperament that took the world by storm. “French Theory” is one manifestation of that certain thing, immanent to the social itself, what Deleuze called an “abstract machine” or Foucault a “diagram” - “French Theory” is not French, nor Theory, it’s something else entirely.

But even this possible retort is perhaps letting Cusset off the hook too easily. It isn’t just that “French Theory” is the product of the fevered imaginations of the Coastal cultural elite. The revolution in the humanities was also a revolution in the social sciences; as Cusset mentions near the end of the book, Foucault stands alone amongst “French Theory”-ists in terms of citations and book sales. At the time of publication, Foucault was already canonical within American political science and sociology; in 2023 there is no sign of this changing anytime soon. Indeed, if Derrida’s star has fallen in the humanities in the interim, Deleuze’s star has risen significantly. Meanwhile, Slavoj Zizek has become an international academic megastar, having studied directly under one of the masters - Lacan - while also engaging both with French theory and Americanized “French Theory.”

“French Theory” is profoundly important, if not particularly profound itself. For anyone curious as to how and why it is that “bodies and spaces”-style discourse began, this book will be enlightening. Anyone interested in either French structuralism/poststructuralism or “French Theory” will learn something from Cusset. For me, it was an incredibly fun thinking person’s page turner: part gossip journalism, part intellectual history, part amateur sociology, (much smaller) part philosophy.

[Elizabeth]

from the library c 2008 for English translation by U of Minn

Table of Contents

Preface to the English Edition xi
Introduction: The Sokal Effect 1
Part I. The Invention of a Corpus
1. Prehistories
17
2. The Academic Enclave
33
3. The Seventies: A Turning Point
54
4. Literature and Theory
76
5. Deconstruction Sites
107
Part II. The Uses of Theory
6. The Politics of Identity
131
7. The Ideological Backlash
166
8. Academic Stars
193
9. Students and Users
217
10. Art Practices
230
11. Theoretical Machinations
248
Part III. There and Back
12. Theory as Norm: A Lasting Influence
265
13. Worldwide Theory: A Global Legacy
287
14. Meanwhile, Back in France
309
Conclusion: Difference and Affirmation 329
Acknowledgments 339
Translator's Acknowledgments 341
Notes 343
Index 377

from the library computer:
Choice Reviews
Although the dust jacket promises a "gossipy" history of many leading French intellectuals and their rise to celebrity status in the US, this book is anything but gossipy. Cusset (Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris) offers a rather scattered account of the arrival of these French theorists on US soil beginning with background on the American university scene of the 1960s-70s. The overall argument is that French theory was adopted and adapted by American intellectuals in the 1980s-90s, giving it a power and credence that it never achieved in France. It has become integral to American culture through its influences on art, identity politics, cultural studies, literary theory, and cinema, as well as through all manner of conservative backlash. Cusset elaborates in detail on the influence of Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, et al. while also showing the ways their theories have been differently interpreted in the US and in France. The overall result is not as clear as one might hope--readers may get bogged down in details that often lack accompanying evidence, and the book does not quite bring the theorists themselves to life. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers. Copyright 2008 American Library Association.

[Billy Rubin · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an academic in the natural historical sciences, my first introduction to what is in this book called French Theory came from the Alan Sokal affair--his publication of outright nonsense in the critical journal Social Text. It seemed that "postmodernism" was useless from this perspective. Yet, my partner found Foucault and especially Derrida--once she was able to penetrate the density of the verbiage--extremely useful in her legal theory classes in grad school. I always struggled with this dichotomy; how could a useful tool of analysis also generate complete gibberish?

So it was on fertile ground that Stanley Fish's review in the NY Times fell, and I went out and bought this book that would hopefully answer my questions. And its a remarkable book! It begins with the very same Sokal affair, but then goes into the historical development of French Theory (spending a lot of time in Paris in 1968), and how in America these writers (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, etc.) were well received and theory led to the development of communitarian based politics of what we now call "intersectionality", whereas in France there was a rejection of these academics and a retrenchment into the ideology of the previous centuries.

It was a surprisingly easy read given the subject matter, but it still took me some years to work through because so much of it was new material to me, not coming up in a humanities stream of study beyond the basic liberal arts design of my undergraduate. Reading another introductory text on literary theory well beyond the structuralists and poststructuralists was enormously helpful for me in the end. I do wonder what postscript Cusset would write given the rapid changes in Western democracy and the rise of new authoritarianism of the past few years.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book begins by comparing the assemblage of post-'68 French theorists as the rugged actors in those lovable American cowboy Westerns.

What is this object called 'French theory,' and what kind of social and material conditions led to its practice?

Apparently, pragmatism + "college kultur" + identity politics + rugged individualism + hegemony + supercapitalism + proto-post-structuralist styles + neo-conservative backlash in America. And so you get histories in bite-sized chapters of: Sokal's hoax, the idea of the university, post-structuralism's rapid introduction and assimilation (bypassing structuralism) into the humanities, politics behind cultural studies, 'French Theory' as object in the culture wars, 'French Theory''s life in the art world and internet/movies, global 'French Theory,' short biographies of American disciples/interlocutors like Butler, Fish, de Man, Spivak, Jameson etc.

Then a series of "betrayals": of Derrida and Co. by French intellectual community, of American "French Theory" by those same French Theorists. Thus, outlines of two critiques: the first against American French Theorists for balkanizing the intellectuals and abetting the Reagan Revolution. Second, against French intellectuals for turning up their noses at the cowboys and their subsequent mutation á l'américaine especially as "difference" becomes more and more a real thing in the world.

The book's writing style struck me as very self-consciously French, i.e., asserting things without needing to defend assertions, playing with dichotomies. This was annoying. Also, the Germans were brought up too late in the narrative.

[غبار · Rating 3 out of 5]

idk, so dense and overwritten and bloated with All The Names but i also think this is the most lucid and comprehensive history i might ever read on the subject (not that i want to seek out many more, after reading this one). i loved chapter 9 "students and users", laughed at chapter 8 "academic stars", and found chapter 13 "worldwide theory: a global legacy" v refreshing.

[Sam]

This was like reading a book-length version of US weekly but for critical theory. My goodness it was dripping with gossip and scandal.

[Luc De Coster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ik herinner me nog hoe geschokt ik was toen, ten tijde van Koninklijk Commissaris voor het Migrantenbeleid Paula D’Hondt, begin de jaren negentig, Jef Verschueren en Jan Blommaert “Het Belgische migrantendebat” publiceerden. Het probleem, volgens Jef & Jan, was dat “wij” migratie als een probleem zagen, aan de basis waarvan de komst van migranten lag. Ook vonden zij dat racisme niet langer beperkt kon blijven tot discriminatie en afkeer op basis van etnie en huidskleur, maar moest uitgebreid worden naar culturele identiteiten, eigenschappen, opvattingen en gedragingen. Als brave burger die bereid was naar Martin Luther King te luisteren en zonder aandacht te schenken aan kleur te discussiëren over opvattingen en gedragingen om zo mee te helpen in de strijd tegen het racisme, bleek ik plots zelf een probleem.

Dat was de eerste keer. Maar sindsdien (dat is dus de laatste dertig jaar) las en hoorde ik regelmatig allerlei maatschappelijke analyses waar ik met mijn hoofd niet bij kon en die het laatste decennium -althans voor mij- overal en dagelijks de kop opstaken in de cultuuroorlogen rond racisme, seksisme, seksuele identiteit, culturele identiteit en (de)kolonisering.

Het viel mij daarbij op dat die ideeën vaak uit de Angelsaksische academie leken te komen en dat er vaak namen vielen van Europese en dan vooral Franse filosofen. Toen ik eens op dit boek stootte, met de ondertitel “How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Co transformed the intellectual life of the United States”, besloot ik om op expeditie te gaan naar de bronnen van de postmoderne Nijl.

Mijn eerste vaststelling is dat ik eigenlijk veel te laat ben voor het feestje. Het is nu 2023 en het boek is juist 20 jaar oud. En het is een geschiedenis van een evolutie in de menswetenschappen aan de universiteiten wereldwijd, maar vooral in de VS, grofweg tijdens het laatste kwart van de twintigste eeuw. Was ik wat alerter geweest, ik had al veel vroeger kunnen mee feesten.

Een lange introductie om mijn positionaliteit tegenover dit boek duidelijk te maken: dat heeft uiteraard een effect op de wijze waarop ik mijn lezing van deze tekst construeer. Een ignoramus die nu pas in de postmoderne filosofie duikt, kan natuurlijk slechts een geeuw ontlokken aan getrainde filosofen, maar is misschien nuttig voor mensen die een bescheiden kaarslichtje appreciëren om met mij beter in het duister te kunnen tasten.

"French Theory" is een moeilijk boek, laten we daar niet moeilijk over doen. Er wordt zeer veel kennis verondersteld. Het is ook een haast encyclopedisch overzicht van alle filosofen, menswetenschappers, activisten, kunststromingen en politieke strekkingen die schatplichtig zijn aan de “French Theory”. Buiten de drie frenchies uit de ondertitel, gaat het ook over Lyotard, Baudrillard, Guattari, Barthes en nog wat anderen.

Elke poging tot inhoudelijke samenvatting is kort door de bocht, maar “French Theory” lijkt in de eerste plaats te gaan over de filosofische vraag over kennis en waarheid. En initieel hadden Derrida en co het dus over wat er kan gezegd worden over het waarheidsgehalte van teksten. Later ook met Foucault over hoe de machtspositie van de producent van kennis de inhoud ervan vorm geeft.
French Theory beschrijft dan wat er met deze Franse filosofie gebeurde in de Verenigde Staten en hoe die daar -terwijl ze in Frankrijk zelf werd afgevoerd- omgevormd werd en op heel andere terreinen ingezet werd dan literaire kritiek of epistemologische vraagstukken: Judith Butler en haar queer theory, Edward Said en zijn begrip “orientalism”, om er twee van de meest bekende te noemen. Maar er zijn er heel veel, waaronder ook een wat vergeten Belg, Paul De Man, Derrida-specialist en neef van …

Men kan het een beetje vergelijken met het werk van Marx: velen gingen er mee aan de haal en gaven er hun eigen invullingen aan, breidden het uit en gingen het toepassen op gebieden, waar Marx zelf waarschijnlijk nooit aan gedacht had.

En dat doet Cusset wel goed: het onderscheid maken tussen het oorspronkelijke werk, de verdedigbare voortzettingen en omvormingen en het soms karikaturale misbruik ervan. Natuurlijk passeert de geinigheid van Sokal en Bricmont ook de revue.

Ik begrijp nu waar de Verschuerens en Blommaerts van deze wereld hun inspiratie haalden en hoe zij tot die onoplosbare analyses komen. Ik begin de contouren van het postmodernisme in de filosofie toch al wat waar te nemen. Dat is toch al iets.

En het verklaart allerlei voor mij vreemde fenomenen dichterbij, zoals het verschijnen van Sarah Schlitz in een Belgische regering, de heftigheid van de heisa rond het Museum voor Midden-Afrika in Tervuren, de tegenwind die JK Rowling krijgt als belijder van een klassiek feminisme en zovele andere fenomenen en strijdperken.

[GloriaGloom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sarà capitato a tutti di incappare in un qualche post di certi blog tenuti da studenti del DAMS o da casalinghe di Voghera che alambiccando intorno, che so, all'ultimo film di Tarantino, si sostiene la tesi della decostruzione dei generi per non dire che è una divertentissima cazzata - e quanto ne gudagnerebbe Tarantino. Se ora è pratica riservata solo ad alcune categorie in estinzione che internet ha riportato in luce era costume comune - come i più anziani tra voi ricorderanno - nei primi '80 applicare in modo improrio qualunque singulto concettuale di Deridda & c. al qualsivoglia. Ovvero un gruppo di importanti pensatori francesi le cui teorie erano ormai da tempo agée oltralpe tornavano sotto i riflettori - disinnescate da tutto il loro reale potenziale - come una sorta di coltellino svizzero multiuso applicato al pop (e un po' ne han guadagnato anche loro, i pensatori, - a voler essere maliziosi - di questa mutazione genetica ,visto il successo planetario, in quegli anni, di bignamini del pensar francese come i Frammenti di un discorso amoroso di Barthes, o il nostrano Eco con le sue fioriere medioevali). In realtà quella capriola rovesciata che portava a decostruire i film di Spielberg e le canzonette di Madonna nel nome di Deridda o a togliere il guinzaglio al cane per non incorrere nelle ire dei Focoultiani non arrivava da oltralpe ma dall'appropriazione soft che i campus americani avevano operato di quelle teorie: la cosiddetta French Theory.
L'avvincente libro di Cusset narra l'epopea dello sbarco nel Nuovo Mondo di quella teoria di teorie che per vie traverse e originali (in fondo non si è rizomatici a caso)risolleverà l'economia dei campus umanistici americani, regalerà brillanti carriere a docenti disperati per poi deflagrare nella società americana rivitalizzando gli strumenti della critica e regalando nuovo carburante ai più disparati e sfiatati movimenti d'opposizione. Con lingua brillantissima, ora ironica, ora sarcastica, Cusset ricostruisce minuziosamente quella scalata nel cuore dell'america pensante, all'indomani dell'insediamento di Reagan, quando i campus, spenti gli ardori movimentisti, erano tornati a essere deposito di futura mano d'opera intellettuale per l'industria, a scapito delle facoltà umaniste, che, con pragmatico tempismo USA, colsero al volo l'occasione di recuperare un pensiero europeo oramai appassito nella patria d'origine per riconfezionarlo a uso e consumo dell'istituzione universitaria americana - e quindi finanziamenti, congressi, pubblicazioni, feroci polemiche, istituzione dei corsi più astrusi, quarti d'ora di celebrità- e perfino riesportarlo mutato da dove era arrivato (una decostruzione della decostruzione alla fin fine). Libro che avvince, non annoia mai, e getta uno sguardo interessante nel sistema universitario americano. Forse, in alcune parti, un eccesso di stronzissima e francese onniscienza, lo rende un po' ingeneroso.
A latere, i cultori, come son io, della narrativa dell'ottimo David Lodge, non potranno esimersi da farsi grasse risate sovrapponendo alcuni degli attori principali di questa epopea alle fattezze dell'immenso Morris Zapp, e di ritrovarsi improvviamente catapultati nel backstage di Scambi o de Il professore va al congresso.
A latere bis, ovviamente ho letto il libro in traduzione, ma qui non è in archivio

[Leland]

A truly pleasurable experience to read, and incidentally, an especially timely analysis as Barack Obama's U.S. Presidency shakes up the established foundations of "identity politics." Cusset has understanding in depth of the period depicted -- and remarkably, this includes a sensitive appreciation of the circulation of ideas across the Atlantic and the more sophisticated of the "pop" phenomena in the U.S. - not a dismissal. It's darned exciting to follow his theme of a "feedback loop" -- Americans taking up the concerns of French theorists (I use the term in an inclusive sense -- putting the competitive impulses of the French aside) and offering back an invigorated discussion of the possibilities opened up -- . Well, it turns out that the French have moved on -- but, to what - ? I hope Cusset gives us a guide to events unfolding more recently - those disputes in France over Muslim headscarves demand a follow-up - !

[Melusine Parry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un livre vraiment excellent, clair et précis, très agréablement écrit et extrêmement bien documenté. Même quand on connaît un peu l'histoire, la voir articulée de cette manière lui fait prendre beaucoup de valeur. Le plus: le chapitre sur ce que les étudiants trouvent à la French Theory, qui m'a beaucoup parlé, et qui forme un ajout très original au reste. J'aime aussi beaucoup le fait que cette histoire de l'invention de la French Theory aux Etats-Unis est aussi souvent l'occasion de raconter l'histoire des idées aux Etats-Unis depuis la 2e guerre mondiale. La postface à l'édition de 2005 est éclairante.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not for beginners, which, alas, I am. Still, the personalities are well-written and I've been inspired to catch up as best I can.

I youtube'd a bunch of Derrida lectures and bought some Levi-Strauss for background. Someday I'll pick this up again.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking for at least a little introduction into the thought of the guys in the title, but that's not what this is. It was interesting to find out how their thought spread and came to dominate U.S. academic intellectual life, but ponderous in parts and dense in others.

[Caitlin Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading for grad school...

[Shulamith Farhi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent survey. I will say more about it later.