Comrades:

Martin Heidegger

This five-star philosopher was my teacher, and in some ways, he's still my guiding light.

Many people love to hate him, and for good reason: he was way too close to the Nazi regime for comfort. But ever since I studied Hegel and Heraclitus with him way back when, I have found Heidegger's way of doing philosophy to be all that a bag of pumpernickel chips. The long and short of it is: I learned everything I know about being and time from this guy.

Walter Benjamin

Together with Heidegger, Benjamin's my other main man.

The pairing of Heidegger and Benjamin already tells you a lot about me. They may both have had a mystical side, but they're an odd couple: one Nazi-affiliated, the other Jewish; one right-leaning, the other left-leaning politically. And so my determination to bring them together and make them speak to each other—even though in real life they weren't on speaking terms—shows that I am just about as eclectic as they come.

Benjamin gave me way too many ideas to list here, but some of my most fundamental and influential ways of thinking about language, culture, and history come from him. So for now, I'll just say that he's my role model and leave it at that.

Michel Foucault

You know the drill: Foucault shows that, from the schoolroom to the bedroom, you're not as free as you think you are. Instead, you're disciplined and punished. I follow Foucault's lead in tracking power's micro-operations and following its forays into everyday life.

Foucault's discussions of bio-power form the basis of my work on that subject. (See "Buzzwords" for the quick and dirty version.) What I try to show, though, is that Foucault didn't go far enough in his assessment of the dangers of biopolitical developments.

You can see, then, why I get the reputation that I have for being theory's very own Debbie Downer: Foucault's theory is famously bleak, but I argue that it's not bleak enough. Still, I insist that people who think I'm all dark and no light are missing a good part of the picture. Even downers get ecstatic from time to time, after all.

Hannah Arendt

In case you haven't seen the biopic, I'll fill you in. Hannah was another straight-A student of Heidegger. She fled Europe to come to the States during World War II, and she made it her mission stateside to account philosophically for how on earth that war could have happened.

Arendt's theories of the nation-state and human rights have been especially influential in recent years. For my part, I've drawn most inspiration from what she had to say in The Human Condition about the politicization of life itself—what some people call the transition of politics into "bio-politics."

Check out my "Buzzwords" for more on what those last, intimidating-sounding phrases mean, ok? Ok.

Slavoj Žižek

The class clown among theorists, Žižek's a good guy in my book since he frequently and respectfully cites me. I'm not saying we see eye to eye on everything, but my homeboy Slavoj takes my Homo Sacer hella seriously—as he should, of course. For that I am grateful.

Rivals:

Jacques Derrida

You know, I learned a lot from Deconstruction, so I feel a little guilty listing the movement's founder among the competition. Here's why: in several key ways, I think Derrida's theories, whether of language or of law, fall short, and I've spent a fair amount of time trying to clear up the theoretical messes that old Jacques made.

Which messes do I mean? Well, for one thing, I think Derrida fundamentally misreads the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, and, as someone who knows my work inside and out has noted, this misunderstanding has serious implications for the whole project of Deconstruction.

I don't think that this project pays enough attention to the basic fact of language, as I often repeat, "that there is language." Every time we communicate, we acknowledge that language exists, and that we're using it. Derrida just didn't pay attention to that. This is getting heady, I know, but that's what happens when heavy-hitters like me and Jacques go head to head.

Which reminds me: it may have been my critiques of his work that led Derrida to get revenge by including a harsh critique of my work in his lectures on The Beast and the Sovereign. If Derrida thinks you're worth critiquing, then that lets you know you're somebody for sure, but still. I really didn't appreciate those fighting words. Let the fight continue.

Judith Butler

Butler and I make perfectly civil public appearances together, and we share an interest in and commitment to the work of Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin. But I'm afraid that on some fundamental levels, we totally disagree.

Judith hasn't commented extensively on my work, and that's already a slight, since we're both former Foucauldians, and we're both interested in some of the same post-9/11 political quandaries. There's a moment in Precarious Life when Butler accuses me of being insufficiently sensitive to the racial and economic differences that make some populations more susceptible to becoming "bare" (meaning stripped of rights) than others.

She is certainly not the only one to have leveled this charge. People (including historians) are always hating on me for generalizing and ignoring historical specificity. But I say: hey, that's the philosopher's prerogative—and vocation. Deal.

Historians

As I've just said, I get grief all the time from people who think that I play fast and loose with history. Lots of people—especially in the U.S., where history is king of the humanities—accuse me of ignoring the nitty gritty details. These folks think I prefer to make sweeping and unverifiable theoretical claims instead.

They have a point, of course. But so do I, don't you think? I mean: isn't there room enough in the world for both micro-level historical work and grand theorizing? And isn't the way people have responded to my work evidence that, whatever its weaknesses here and there, grand theorizing really does get conversations started?

Even if I'm not and never will be a historian, I don't think that means that my work should be discounted or ignored. Not that it's likely to be, anyway: it seems to me that lots of the objections I get to my work are pretty much just about my celebrity, which the haters can't handle. I guess historians gonna hate.