Alan Schrift, a mediocre Nietzsche scholar at Grinnell College (otherwise a reputable liberal arts college), writes:
A general consensus has emerged that following the passing of Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida, Alain Badiou remains, in the words of Slavoj Žižek that appear on this book's cover above the title, the one final "figure like Plato or Hegel [who] walks here among us!
This is typical, I fear, of the embarrassing hagiography that is characteristic of those parts of the discipline where fealty counts for more than content. I have read only a bit of Badiou, partly because it didn't seem worth more effort, though I didn't have the sense he was a charlatan of Derridean proportions. But surely no one really thinks that Foucault or Deleuze is on a par with Plato or Hegel in terms of philosophical influence (Foucault is a more profound social theorist than Hegel and probably Plato, but that's a different matter).
In any case, as a sociological matter, declarations like this are interesting, even if absurd.
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