Foucauldian critique offers no alternatives, potentially serving an ideological function

Evidence

Jacques Donzelot has admitted this in a backhanded fashion: “In Anglo-Saxon countries where Neoliberalism was imposed from the start of the 80s, Foucault studies provide the means of a sophisticated critique, albeit one which is visibly lacking a capacity to propose alternatives. Does this political ambivalence in the notion of governmentality not condemn it to serving an ideological function?” — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1954

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with Mirowski’s broader thesis across this book that critique that cannot propose alternatives is absorbed into neoliberal resilience. — connects to: Foucault’s concept of resistance lacks any account of where it comes from.; Academic critique of cultural politics dismissed it as a substitute for practical politics — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2643; Said’s Foucauldian ‘will to power’ discourse operates without imperialist agency or design. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 759
• SEED: An argument could be made: critique-without-alternatives as the cognitive signature of the survivor thought collective post-2008.

Broader Connections

• Foucault’s concept of resistance lacks any account of where it comes from. #corroborates (0.90)
• Academic critique of cultural politics dismissed it as a substitute for practical politics #exemplifies (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2643