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| Power/Knowledge. A Think/Tank? |
I was advised to read Foucault. I was aware it would take some effort. The book I chose as a beginning point is a series of essays from later in his life that reflect on his own work - the master on the master, so to speak - and so provided some hope of being fundamental. The introduction did me a further favor, as the editor explained that the chapters were in chronological order but if you
really wanted to start at the beginning, you needed to turn to Chapters 5 and 6, which include two lectures trying to explain his overarching research purposes, and a short essay on power.
I was lucky to read these materials in the most romantic way possible: with my wife in the passenger seat dj'ing the text-to-speech as we drove to a national park. We worked through each essay together, pausing frequently to parse out the delphic pronouncements and self-referential rambling into something resembling an understanding of his points. This was very much a team effort, both of us making progress when the other became stuck. Here is what we found.
