The Mediocracy: French Philosophy Since the Mid-1970s - Softcover

Lecourt, Dominique

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1859844308 ISBN 13: 9781859844304

Publisher: Verso, 2002

Synopsis

Generating great controversy on its publication in France, The Mediocracy argues that a veritable counter-revolution in intellectual life has seen the period of the ‘master thinkers’ of the 1960s succeeded by an era of generalized mediocrity. Where Althusser or Lacan, Foucault or Derrida once held centre stage, today restorationist currents prevail in academia and on television. Fuelled by a complaisant media, contemporary French ideology seeks neither to interpret nor change the world, but is instead content to legitimise a globally hegemonic neo-liberalism.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Defending and contrasting the common critical project to which Althusser, Foucault, and others were committed before and after 1968 with the philosophical impostures and political abdications of the present, Lecourt calls for a resumption of the traditions that made Paris the post-war intellectual capital of Europe.

About the Author:

Dominique Lecourt was a pupil of Louis Althusser and Jacques Derrida at the Ecole Normal Superieure in the 1960s. Now Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VII, his publications in English include Marxism and Epistemology and Proletarian Science?

Gregory Elliott is a member of the editorial collective of Radical Philosophy and author of Althusser: The Detour of Theory and Labourism and the English Genius: The Strange Decay of Labour England?.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1859844308
• ISBN 13: 9781859844304
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 258