François Cusset: French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States (2003–) [FR, EN]

“During the last three decades of the twentieth century, a disparate group of radical French thinkers achieved an improbable level of influence and fame in the United States. Compared by at least one journalist to the British rock ‘n’ roll invasion, the arrival of works by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari on American shores in the late 1970s and 1980s caused a sensation.

Outside the academy, “French theory” had a profound impact on the era’s emerging identity politics while also becoming, in the 1980s, the target of right-wing propagandists. At the same time in academic departments across the country, their poststructuralist form of radical suspicion transformed disciplines from literature to anthropology to architecture. By the 1990s, French theory was woven deeply into America’s cultural and intellectual fabric.

French Theory is the first comprehensive account of the American fortunes of these unlikely philosophical celebrities. François Cusset looks at why America proved to be such fertile ground for French theory, how such demanding writings could become so widely influential, and the peculiarly American readings of these works. Reveling in the gossipy history, Cusset also provides a lively exploration of the many provocative critical practices inspired by French theory. Ultimately, he dares to shine a bright light on the exultation of these thinkers to assess the relevance of critical theory to social and political activism today—showing, finally, how French theory has become inextricably bound with American life.”

Publisher La Découverte, Paris, 2003
ISBN 2707146730
373 pages

English edition
Translated by Jeff Fort, With Josephine Berganza and Marlon Jones
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2008
ISBN 0816647321, 9780816647323
388 pages

Reviews: Jennifer Ferng (Leonardo), Juliet J. Fall (Foucault Studies), Ethan Kleinberg (NPDR), Bridie Lonie (Junctures, FR).

Publisher (FR)
Publisher (EN)

French Theory: Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Cie et les mutations de la vie intellectuelle aux États-Unis. (French)
French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. (English)

Johanna Drucker: History of the/my Wor(l)d (1990)

A striking alternative to the familiar telling of historical events, Drucker’s account of mythic and major events in the course of western civilization marches roughshod over received traditions. The combination of typographic innovation, visual puns and linguistic play are unique elements of her style. A richly suggestive work interweaving official history and individual memory.

“Several themes interweave in this book: a feminist rewriting of the history of the world, an opposition between official history and personal memory, a critique of feminist theoretical attitudes towards language as patriarchal, and all sorts of graphical and textual puns and play. The book is a tribute to my mother, and the drum majorette who opens the book is a figure that corresponds to her early years, youth, and activities as a baton twirling teen in Downer’s Grove, Illinois. I had learned language, and literature, through an intense and intimate relation with her. The feminist dogma of language as patriarchal didn’t fit the erotic and personal experience of my relation to the literary through the relation to her, even male identified as she was. She may have been the law, and the symbolic, but she was fiercely feminine and feminist as well. So the red text erupts through the black, making memory a strain of presence within the history retold.” (author)

The work first appeared in the letterpress edition in 1990. Five years later it was published in two-color offset by Granary Books.

Publisher Druckwerk, Cambridge, MA, 1990
40 pages
via Danny Snelson

Interview with the author (Tate Shaw, The Journal of Artists’ Books, 2007)

Publisher (1995 Edition, Old site)
Publisher (1995 Edition, New site)

PDF (updated on 2018-12-31)
JPGs (added on 2018-12-31)

Lucy R. Lippard: Get the Message? A Decade of Art for Social Change (1984)

“This book is the third collection of essays I’ve published in a little over a decade. Each of my books has marked the beginning of a specific phase of my life, though not necessarily its end. Changing (1971) was the product of my ‘formalist’ or art-educational period; it consisted primarily of essays written from 1965 to 1968, with a few late additions foreshadowing my next book-Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object.. (1973). From the Center (1976) and Eva Hesse (1976) documented my developing conversion to feminism, which expanded all the possibilities that had seemed to be closing down in the ‘cultural confinement’ of the early 1970s. Get the Message? is the result of a need to integrate the three sometimes contradictory elements of my public (and often private) life-art, feminism, left politics. Owing to publication delays, only two essays from the last two years are included.” (introductory note from the author)

Publisher E.P. Dutton, 1984
ISBN 0525480374, 9780525480372
343 pages
via fiona

Review: Fred Pfeil (Minnesota Review, 1985).

PDF (19 MB)