"A great story, full of twists and turns. . . . Careers made and
ruined, departments torn apart, writing programs turned into
sensitivity seminars, political witch hunts, public opprobrium,
ignorant media attacks, the whole ball of wax. Read it and laugh or
read it and weep. I can hardly wait for the movie." --Stanley Fish,
"Think Again, New York Times" "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 "The Atlantic Ocean has two sides, and
so does French Theory. Reinvented in America and betrayed in its
own country, it has become the most radical intellectual movement
in the West with global reach, rewriting Marx in light of late
capitalism. Breathtakingly moving back and forth between the two
cultures, Francois Cusset takes us through a dazzling intellectual
adventure that illuminates the past thirty years, and many more
decades to come." --Sylvere Lotringer 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-Francois Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles
Deleuze, and Felix 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 thesame 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. Francois 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. Francois Cusset,
a writer and intellectual historian, teaches contemporary French
thought in Paris at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques and at
Columbia University's Reid Hall. His books include Queer Critics"
and La Decennie." Jeff Fort is assistant professor of French at the
University of California, Davis. He has translated works by Maurice
Blanchot, Jean Genet, and Jean-Luc Nancy.
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