Judith Butler marks Michel Foucault's centenary, pushing back on 'woke' labels
In an interview with Bibliobs, the philosopher behind "Gender Trouble" pays tribute to Foucault this autumn, arguing his prose is too ironic and subtle to fit the caricature of "wokisme."
Michel Foucault would have turned 100 this year, and Judith Butler has marked the occasion with an interview published by Bibliobs, part of Le Nouvel Obs. Butler, author of "Trouble dans le genre" (Gender Trouble), uses the centenary to reflect on Foucault's legacy and to reject attempts to recruit his work for contemporary ideological battles.
L'écriture de Michel Foucault est trop ironique, trop subtile pour correspondre au stéréotype du wokisme.
Judith Butler, to Bibliobs
According to the summary published by Bibliobs, Butler describes the philosopher's work as having opened fertile paths of inquiry, including for feminist thought. The interview frames this as a tribute from one of the most prominent theorists of gender to a thinker whose influence on her own writing has long been acknowledged.
The source material gives no further detail on the content of the interview beyond Butler's remark on Foucault's style and its distance from the polemical use now sometimes made of his name.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.
