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

by Dominique Lecourt (Author), Gregory Elliott (Translator)

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.

Back Jacket

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.

Author Biography

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?