The Ghost of Michel Foucault Haunting Douglas Murray
(SA/2025)
I.
Readers familiar with Torpedo the Ark may recall that I have written several posts which mention the neoconservative political commentator and cultural critic Douglas Murray: click here.
And whilst I wasn't exactly blown away by either of the books of his that I've read - The Strange Death of Europe (2017) and The Madness of Crowds (2019) - I still find him in many ways an admirable figure and, if forced to choose, would still rather go to dinner with him than Gaby Hinsliff.
However, the fact that Murray continues to denigrate Michel Foucault's work - or, more precisely, abhor Foucault's influence within academia - is something I still find disappointing (and kind of irritating) ...
II.
Speaking in conversation with philosopher Roger Scruton at an event organised by The Spectator in 2019 [1], Murray concedes that, as a writer, Foucualt is often brilliant and his books are "filled with resonant phrases and so on" [2].
However, Murray cannot forgive the fact that Foucault deconstructs the notion of truth as an objective thing in itself, to be pursued rigorously and maintained as an absolute standard or ideal: "I finally read Foucault last year and I have to say: I'm so appalled ..."
And why is he so appalled?
Because, says Murray, whilst he'd previously read about Foucault's work and heard others discuss it - and whilst he'd always known that he "sort of instinctively disliked it" - it was only after reading it [3] that he realised how catastrophic Foucault's philosophical project really is:
"this sort of perversion of all life [...] as being solely about power, and the ignoring of every other human instinct - the total ignoring of love, the total ignoring of forgiveness; power, only power."
That, I think, is an unfair and grotesque caricature of Foucault and his work; one that goes beyond being a gross oversimplification [4].
I'm not a Foucault scholar, but I'm pretty sure that he didn't think of power as something that could be possessed and didn't think either in terms of oppressed groups needing to be emancipated from the domination of more powerful oppressors; he was a post-Nietzschean thinker, not a neo- or quasi-Marxist [5].
Thus, whilst power certainly plays an important role in his philosophy, he conceives of it in a highly novel manner as something complex that produces things (including us as subjects) and puts something new into the world; it induces pleasures, generates discursive practices, forms bodies of knowledge, etc. It is power - not love - which runs through the entire social body and which, as a matter of fact, calls love into being [6].
For Murray this is a distortion of the truth: but then, he would say that wouldn't he, being a moral idealist who, despite being an atheist, still affirms Christian virtues [7].
Oh, and whilst we're discussing this: I think it's also profoundly mistaken to blame Foucault for the rise of identity politics (which Murray does): Foucault, the masked philosopher and anti-essentialist, argued that identities are not inherent but socially and historically constructed and could easily become traps or a form of subjugation.
Instead of creating or maintaining identity, Foucault's political strategy was more focused on refusing it and developing new forms of resistance and even a cursory reading of his work makes it pretty obvious that he would have very little time for today's identity politics (would, in fact, see it as reactionary; a return to the same old bullshit to do with fixed categories and subjectivation).
I really don't understand why Murray fails to see this; particularly as he claims to have read Foucault. It's almost a wilful misunderstanding - one which Jordan Peterson also buys into - and if I said earlier that I'd rather go to dinner with Murray than Gaby Hinsliff, I'd like it to be noted that I'd sooner go to dinner with Foucault than Murray (even if dinner with Foucault often involved nothing more than a club sandwich and a Coke) [8].
Notes
[1] The full transcript of Douglas Murray's conversation with Roger Scruton (8 May 2019), in which they discuss what it means to be a conservative, can be found on The Spectator website: click here. All lines quoted in this post from Murray are taken from here.
The relevant clip from the night in which Foucault is condemned by both men, has been posted by Culture Wolf on YouTube: click here. Anybody who thinks they might like to watch the entire event online can visit The Spectator website: click here.
[3] The fact that Murray doesn't mention any specific books or essays, leaves one to wonder the extent of his reading of Foucault who published around a dozen books during his lifetime and who has had at least twice as many posthumous publications of essay collections, lecture series, etc.
[4] It is also, of course, a live paraphrase of a passage that will appear in The Madness of Crowds:
"From Michel Foucault [...] thinkers absorbed their idea of society not
as an infinitely complex system of trust and traditions that have
evolved over time, but always in the unforgiving light cast when
everything is viewed solely through the prism of 'power'. Viewing all
human interactions in this light distorts, rather than clarifies,
presenting a dishonest interpretation of our lives. Of course power
exists as a force in the world, but so do charity, forgiveness and love.
If you were to ask most people what matters in their lives very few
would say 'power'. Not because they haven't absorbed their Foucault, but
because it is perverse to see everything in life through such a
monomaniacal lens."
See Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (Bloomsbury, 2019), p. 80.
[5] As one commentator has recently pointed out:
"Right-wing critics frequently label Foucault's thought as another
species of Marxism. Douglas Murray wrote in The War on The West (2022) that 'Foucault's obsessive analysis of everything through a quasi-Marxist
lens of power relations diminished almost everything in society into a
transactional, punitive and meaningless dystopia.' Jordan Peterson has
also been fond of calling Foucault a 'postmodern neo-Marxist'.
It's a
popular and long-held narrative, but there are several problems with it.
For one, it is incoherent to describe Foucault as a 'neo-Marxist' or a 'cultural Marxist'. He, like other postmodern thinkers, was broadly
opposed to Marxism."
- Ralph Leonard, 'Michel Foucault still confuses the Right, 40 years later', Unheard (25 June 2024): click here. As Leonard rightly goes on to argue, it's Nietzsche, not Marx, that haunts Foucault's philosophy.
[6] I'm thinking here of something written by D. H. Lawrence:
"For power is the first and greatest of the mysteries. It is the mystery behind all our being, even behind all our existence. Even the phallic erection is a first blind movemet of power. Love is said to call the power into motion: but it is probably the reverse; that the slumbering power calls love into being."
See Lawrence's essay 'Blessed Are the Powerful', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 327.
[7] In a live streamed video conversation on a Christian radio podcast with the theologian and former Anglican Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, Murray confessed:
"I was brought up a Christian, a believing Christian into my adult life, and am now, I suppose, in a self-confessedly complex situation of being among other things an uncomfortable agnostic who recognises the values and the virtues that the Christian faith has brought."
See 'The Big Conversation' (season 3, episode 3), hosted by Justin Brierly (13 May 2021): click here.
[7] Moreover, Right-wing critics frequently label Foucault’s thought as another species of Marxism. Douglas Murray wrote in The War on The West that “Foucault’s obsessive analysis of everything through a quasi-Marxist lens of power relations diminished almost everything in society into a transactional, punitive and meaningless dystopia.” Jordan Peterson has also been fond of calling Foucault a “postmodern neo-Marxist”. It’s a popular and long-held narrative, but there are several problems with it. For one, it is incoherent to describe Foucault as a “neo-Marxist” or a “cultural Marxist”. He, like other postmodern thinkers, was broadly opposed to Marxism.
[8] In an amusing interview, Foucault expressed his preference for American fast food over French cuisine; specifically mentioning a club sandwich and a Coke, followed by ice cream.
The interview, with Stephen Riggins, was first published in the Canadian journal Ethos (Autumn, 1983). As well as revealing his favourite meal, Foucault also voiced his thoughts on the quest for monastic austerity and a cultural ethos of silence. It can also be found under the title 'The Minimalist Self' in Politics, Philosophy, Culture, ed. Alan Sheridan and Lawrence D. Kritzman (Routledge, 1988), pp. 3-16.
