Philosophy is dead, long live philosophy

Being inspired at 10:30 this morning, I should write down my caffeine-fueled thoughts before I sink back into the malaise of the past week.

What worries me this morning is the rapidity with which Foucault was incorporated into the discipline of philosophy, if indeed he was ever actually outside of it. True, he worked with history and sociology, dabbling into psychology and criminology, but the uniting of these with philosophy is not unprecedented. Indeed, Foucault was always working in an inter-disciplinary framework, which keeps him situated squarely in the realm of the disciplines. If Foucault himself could not get outside of the system, who is to say that anyone can?
If his aim was to give a sort of call to arms to the next generation of theorists, then it seems that the incorporation of his work into the canon of Continental philosophy would make him roll over in his grave. Today we study him as the descendant of several different theorists, Althusser and Nietzsche, etc, and can thus work around the thornier parts of his theory to all the more easily categorize and shelve him, making his ideas safer and more palatable. Maybe the failing was Foucault's, and he did not go far enough in his work; it is also possible that he essentially attempted the impossible, using theory to critique theory itself. We may ask too much from philosophy, more than it can ever hope to give.
I suppose this is the crux of my rambling. The latest fad in philosophy is not the sincere attempt to find truth and the good, it is instead this sort of jaded post-philosophy and self-referential stuff that we see everywhere in 'post-modernism'. It is of course just one expression of a larger trend, one that I know did not actually start with philosophy itself. Abstract painting, modernist literature...these began working on the same ideas that would come to characterize a Foucault or a Derrida. Not that there is anything wrong with a moving away from truth and absolutes; I know that we have moved, as a civilization, beyond these things in a certain way. The larger cultural forces are beginning to pick up on this, although they will always be several decades behind the theoretical advances (after all, modernist beliefs still dominate our thinking for the most part). I really like the work that has been done in recent years, and I look forward to where we are headed; I do wonder, though, where it will be possible to go from here. What is the next step?
This is not a 'woe-is-me, philosophy is dead' post...I don't claim to be able to see the end of philosophy approaching. After all, people have been proclaiming that the end of philosophy is approaching since the first philosopher appeared, I'm sure. If there is one thing that history can teach us, it's that humans are too crafty and bored to be content with any answer for too long. What I am interested in, is whether something like Foucault's project could ever fully succeed. What would that success look like, and how would we bring it about? I wonder if all this world-weariness in philosophy could be holding us back....
Of course, I'm not suggesting a return to Aristotle or Kant; knowing that philosophy will and must be produced that is in keeping with its time. We cannot return to those ages, or return to their concerns and priorities; all that we can do is to continue moving slowly, whether the movement is a spiraling upward, downward, or a mere shifting from side to side.
Part of my concern is my ability to find my place in a field about which I am completely ambivalent. I shift from loving philosophy to hating it so often in a day that I no longer bother keeping track. I know that I don't have the kind of mind that can create new systems or uncover old ones, and I have made my peace with this. But right now I am looking to do something in this field that wouldn't feel like following an instruction manual written by someone else. Toiling is fine with me, and I enjoyed immensely the pop-culture, cultural studies work that I've done, but I have this nagging feeling that I'm missing out on something.
So I wonder still, where do we go from here?

This wandered a bit, and I didn't attempt to rein it in. I know that only one person reads this thing anyway (two if I count my co-poster) so I'm sure my dear reader won't mind very much.