I've been lurking for some weeks but thought I would add a "non-philosophical"
comment on practical applications. Foucault has had a major impact on literary
theory and criticism. One could say and not be too far afield that the entire
approach called "new historicism" is fundamentally indebited to Foucault, and
the new programs of "cultural studies" likewise are informed by his work.
Admittedly some of the work depends on bizarre and oversimplified
understandings of Foucault, but literary studies have taken him at his word and
picked up the tools. People are going back to archival work and using his
ideas of institutions and discursive formations to undo or question the
selectivity earlier archivists employed. Thomas Laquerer's *Making Sex: Body
and Gender From the Greeks to Freud* out-foucaults Foucault. And
substantiating Foucault's concept of epistemic shift, look at Sidney Mintz's
*Sweetness and Power:The Place of Sugar in Modern History* that emerged from
anthropological field work (a subtle irony compared to sugar fieldwork) in the
late 1940s--I should say began in the 1940s. Oops mispelled Laqueur. My own
sense, and perhaps I'm naive, is that Foucault's contribution is descriptive ,
not prescriptive. While it undercuts Newton's project of methodical
accumulation of knowledge, it also reenacts it.
Buena vista from the Southwest, Maja-Lisa
comment on practical applications. Foucault has had a major impact on literary
theory and criticism. One could say and not be too far afield that the entire
approach called "new historicism" is fundamentally indebited to Foucault, and
the new programs of "cultural studies" likewise are informed by his work.
Admittedly some of the work depends on bizarre and oversimplified
understandings of Foucault, but literary studies have taken him at his word and
picked up the tools. People are going back to archival work and using his
ideas of institutions and discursive formations to undo or question the
selectivity earlier archivists employed. Thomas Laquerer's *Making Sex: Body
and Gender From the Greeks to Freud* out-foucaults Foucault. And
substantiating Foucault's concept of epistemic shift, look at Sidney Mintz's
*Sweetness and Power:The Place of Sugar in Modern History* that emerged from
anthropological field work (a subtle irony compared to sugar fieldwork) in the
late 1940s--I should say began in the 1940s. Oops mispelled Laqueur. My own
sense, and perhaps I'm naive, is that Foucault's contribution is descriptive ,
not prescriptive. While it undercuts Newton's project of methodical
accumulation of knowledge, it also reenacts it.
Buena vista from the Southwest, Maja-Lisa