I Broke Up With Michel Foucault*

6 September 2016, 1856 EDT

I broke up with Michel Foucault. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I sort of ghosted him. Let me explain.

When I was in grad school I fell in love with Foucault. He was just exactly what I was looking for- he made me see gender differently, and he helped me to finally piece together what I thought I was trying to say in my thesis. It was magical. He just really ‘got me.’ You know?

But then things changed. I was introduced to theorists like Judith Butler, bell hooks, Aimee Cesaire, and Frantz Fanon and I started to realise I just couldn’t be exclusive with Foucault anymore. He pretended class just didn’t exist and I hated that we could never talk about race. We would go out and talk abut gender with his friends, but when I took him to parties and my friends brought up patriarchy he got all weird. So I ghosted him. It’s awkward because he’s in so many old publications. I still call him sometimes, but we mostly don’t have anything to say to one another- he says I’ve changed, I say he hasn’t. Sometimes at conferences friends ask me about him. They’re like, ‘hey you’re close with Foucault, can you ask him x.’ And I have to politely tell them that Foucault and I don’t really talk anymore. I try to be nice and say ‘he’s great, but it was time to move on,’ or something like that. But what I really want to say is, ‘he’s really not that great. He turned out not to be as smart as I thought he was. And I got tired of everyone talking about him.’

Oh and since the break up a bunch of friends have tried to set me up with other theorists. They don’t understand that I’m happy just having solid friendships with a bunch of thinkers. Most of my Canadian friends tried to get me to date Georgio Agamben. ‘He’s amaaaaazing. Ask him about the camps and Zoe,’ they say. But we went out a few times and- between you and me- he’s a real misogynist jerk. Why do people love him so much? And don’t even get me started on Zizek. I’ve been set up with him a bunch of times by my white hipster friends and I finally had to tell them ‘yeah I know Zizek…and I’m just not that into him.’

So there it is. I ghosted Foucault and ended up happier for it. Sometimes at conferences I see academics with their theorist loves and I think they might be better off if they did the same.

*Inspired by the blog post ‘Fuck you Zizek