On #FoucaultandDerrida

“In these complaints, [Derrida] is often paired with Michel Foucault—a fusing that would have baffled two such disparate thinkers, who spent more of their lives disagreeing with each other, personally and intellectually, than they did in accord. Nevertheless, the pair are cast as absolute moral relativists for whom there is no truth whatsoever—a position which not only did they not argue, but were at pains to disavow. Those who accuse them are generally speaking from a position of wanting to defend some version of ‘normality’ from the leftists at the gate. The two are used as a bludgeon in the ‘culture wars,’ the complexity of their thinking being elided to argue that not only are the barbarians at the gate; they are also French and talk nonsense. In general, the way to stop these Twitter discussions is to simply ask the poster which section of #foucaultandderrida or #derridaandfoucault they are basing their ‘argument’ on. Having done this several times before growing bored, I have never received a useful reply. ”

“How Derrida and Foucault Became the Most Misunderstood Philosophers of Our Time,” - prospectmagazine.co.uk/philosophy/foucault-derrida-post-truth-culture-wars-marxism. Writing on both lately, I can say one of the more fruitful points of comparison can be achieved with reference to their respective interpretation of Plato’s notion of hypomnesis, e.g. between Derrida’s “Plato’s Pharmacy,” and Foucault’s “Writing the Self.” The joke in this case is that both drew attention to the materiality of writing and in ways relevant to thinking about subjectivity on the internet today.