Summary
Last December Liz Truss made a speech. The Minister for Women and Equalities spoke about her memories of being at school in Leeds. She was taught about sexism and racism, she said, but not enough time was spent on being taught how to read and write. "These ideas," said Truss, "have their roots in post-modernist philosophy - pioneered by Foucault - that put societal power structures and labels ahead of individuals and their endeavours."
So do Foucault's ideas pose a real danger to social and cultural life in Britain? Or is he a "bogeyman" deployed by some politicians to divide and distract us from real issues?
In this edition of Analysis, writer and academic Shahidha Bari tries to make sense of Foucault's influence in the UK - and asks whether his ideas really do have an effect on Britain today.
Producer: Ant Adeane Editor: Jasper Corbett
Contributors:
Agnes Poirier, journalist and author of Left Bank: Art, Passion, and the Rebirth of Paris, 1940-50
Michael Drolet, Senior Research Fellow in the History of Political Thought, Worcester College, University of Oxford
Lisa Downing, Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality at the University of Birmingham
Richard Whatmore, Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Co-Director of the Institute of Intellectual History
Matthew Goodwin, Professor of Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent
Clare Chambers, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Cambridge
Charlotte Riley, Lecturer in Twentieth-Century British History at the University of Southampton
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
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| 0:36.0 | Hello, thank you for listening to Analysis. I'm Sharhead Obari and in this edition I'm looking at whether the ideas of philosopher Michel Foucault have an effect on Britain today. |
| 0:47.0 | I'd like to welcome you on behalf of the Howison Lecture in Philosophy. |
| 0:52.0 | It's 1980 and a professor at the University of California Berkeley takes to the stage. |
| 0:59.0 | But as he tries to introduce a guest lecturer, he's interrupted. |
| 1:03.4 | As you may or may not realize but you will now, that there's a mob of people out all around there trying to get in here. |
| 1:17.0 | The speaker that they're trying to see... |
| 1:21.0 | Michelle Foucault has made the suggestion by the way. |
| 1:23.4 | He says this is a very technical lecture and difficult and I think he wants to imply boring, |
| 1:30.8 | but I guess we'll just have to go ahead with people beating down the doors. |
| 1:35.0 | French philosopher Michel Foucoucou. |
| 1:39.0 | Well, now, shall begin. |
| 1:42.0 | Technically. Now shall begin. begin. Technical, difficult. |
| 1:45.0 | Boring. |
| 1:50.0 | But more than 40 years after students banged on the doors of a lecture hall in California, |
| 1:55.2 | Fuko's ideas continue to reverberate. |
... |
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