Noam Chomsky called Foucault a morally bankrupt phony. I think Chomsky was being kind.
Foucault's writing is problematic because the conclusions he makes are too broad and are backed up by too much conjecture. So were a lot of other writers of the time, many of whom Sokal covered in his book "Fashionable Nonsense."
If anyone is aware of other non-rationalist western philosophies, I'd be curious as I'm only aware of the Lacanian schools and then more standard post-structuralist stuff like Foucault and Deleuze.
I'd also be careful of trying to read a philosopher's life inside their ideas. Deleuze led a very bog-standard life for a white man in the postwar era in Europe despite advocating for fairly radical philosophies. It's the ideas that take root and shape the academy and then society. If you wish to push back on post-structuralism, criticize the idea, not the people. Foucault himself may have been depraved, but others certainly weren't.
Stirner was prophectic in calling out Hegel's and Marx's bullshit, and the way that his work triggered Marx so hard that Marx felt the need to write an entire book calling him a doo-doo head (The German Ideology) shows that he was subversive in the best way possible - he got under the skin of a thinker whose legacy is hundreds of millions of people dead. I suggest giving him a read, as he has a truly non-rationalist philosophy which is very different from any that you've read before.
Re: Deleuze being "bog standard". You think that doing tons of LSD with his homie Guattari while they wrote Anti-oedipus was "normal"? One of them even killed themselves by throwing themself out of a window (supposedly due to "chronic pain" but who the heck knows with their literal schizoanalytical ideas)
"He struck me as completely amoral, id never met anyone who was so totally amoral" ... "I mean, I liked him personally, it's just that I couldn't make sense of him. It's as if he was from a different species, or something."
this is a far cry from calling him a morally bankrupt person
The debate is a fun thing. Some people hear Foucault make no sense, others see him slicing Chomsky up into so many pieces he appears to not even notice.
Then at the end it turned more towards morality and Foucault showed himself to be quite clearly completely, illogically, disturbingly amoral - as Chomsky himself later more or less described him (a video which has been linked in other comments)
No person with a shred of moral character or intellectual honesty could ever conclude anything remotely close to Foucault winning, let alone "cooking" him.
edit: It starts building up to the real conflict/debate around maybe 45min, but it really becomes concrete at 54:13. Foucault just finished rambling about "destroy the bourgeoisie " and Chomsky says "surely you believe that your role in the war is a just role" and then further lays down some very sensible, insightful ideas about justice.
Foucault then says something to the effect of "the proles dont fight for justice, they fight to have power for the first time in history. One wages war to win, not because it is just".
Chomsky disagrees, but remains patient and extends an olive branch to him to say something less insane - suggesting that if such an overthrow would lead to a terroristic police state (e.g. the USSR, north korea etc...) , then I wouldn't want the proles to win. The only justification for such action is if one thinks - rightly or wrongly - that some fundamental human values will be achieved".
Foucault just doubles and triples down and they go back and forth.
YET, he even ends up agreeing with Chomsky by saying that the "suppression of class power" is the goal. Chomsky says ah hah, so you finally agree with me then.
And foucault just dodges it and rambles some more. Chomsky then again shares some beautiful and insightful, yet humble, ideas.
And then it ends.
Foucault - and postmodernism in general - is all about narcissistic resentment.
The link is here. Its very much worth watching. https://youtu.be/3wfNl2L0Gf8?si=954dTZp7G_C9PTMr&t=3255
The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky by Arundhati Roy http://www.rarre.org/documents/roy/The%20Loneliness%20Of%20N...
When Chomsky Wept by Fred Branfman- https://www.salon.com/2012/06/17/when_chomsky_wept/
Absolutely beautiful writing about a beautiful person.