Prehistory’s Original Sin

In recent years, a different style of left-wing critique has gained a foothold in the academy. A group of mostly young scholars criticize the postwar liberal consensus, which they charge with propping up global inequality and sanctioning American hegemony abroad. But they are not Old Left holdouts: They recognize that, after Michel Foucault’s unmasking of modern disciplinary techniques, class politics and progressive social reform need new justifications, to the extent they can be salvaged at all.