Foucault rejected the postmodern label and poststructuralists were co-opted by American theorists.

Evidence

I should, however, make a qualification to the judgement just passed. I do not believe that the work of the philosophers now known as poststructuralist can be dismissed in this way: wrong on fun­ damentals Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault may be, but they develop their ideas with considerable skill and sophistication, and offer partial insights of great value. But then it is not clear that they would necessarily endorse the idea of a postmodern age. Invited to comment on this idea not long before his death Foucault sardonically re­ sponded: ‘What are we calling postmodernity? I’m not up to date?’ It is necessary to distinguish between the philosophical theories de­ veloped between the 1950s and the 1970s and subsequently grouped together under the heading of ‘poststructuralism’ and their approp­ riation in the past decade in support of the claim that a postmodern epoch is emerging. The running has been made in this latter develop­ ment primarily by North American philosophers, critics and social theorists, with the help of a couple of Parisian figures, Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard, who appear, when set beside Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault, as the epigoni of poststructuralism. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 39

Categorization

• XREF: This decoupling of poststructuralism from postmodernism directly challenges Jameson’s collapsing of the two. The claim that Americans ‘made the running’ reframes postmodernism as a US theoretical import, not a French export. — connects to: Foucault himself repudiated the postmodern label. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 39
• SEED: Angle: ‘The invention of postmodernism’ — tracing how American academics appropriated French theory to construct an epochal claim the French philosophers themselves disavowed.
• QUESTION: How accurate is Callinicos’s characterization of Baudrillard and Lyotard as ‘epigoni’ compared to Deleuze/Derrida/Foucault? Worth checking secondary literature on who actually endorsed the postmodern epoch claim.

Broader Connections

• Foucault himself repudiated the postmodern label. #corroborates (1.00) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 39