It seems to me that just as the intellectual history of the 19th century can be distilled down to two seminal names, Marx and Nietzsche, that of the 20th C is encapsulated in the names Weber and Foucault. The intimate connections between them are increasingly being made clear by a number of scholarly works and articles. The consensus being that both shared a concern for the inscription of power upon the modern body. But is this not the result of simply concentrating upon two of the most popular works of these thinkers, that of the _Protestant Ethic_ and _Discipline and Punish_ respectively? What if we broaden our perspective to encompass their entire oeuvre? What consonances do we find now? Perhaps now it is embodied in their historical analysis of the social production types of modern rationality? This seems rather clear in reference to Weber, but cloudier when applied to Foucault, especially in regards to his earlier works. Can we see this concern binding together _Madness and Civilization_ , _The Order of Things_ and _Discipline and Punish_? What do the list members think? Is the analysis of a historical episteme in _Order of Things_ centered on a form of discriminating judgement, of the disappearance of a world of undifferentiated similitude and its replacement by a world founded in the anxious need for rigorous analysis, a prefiguring- on an archeological level, that is, on the level of formations of discourse- what _Discipline and Punish_ does on a genealogical level, on the level of material practices? Can the common dominator for both historical accounts be simply reduced to a concern for elucidating modern forms of rationality? Or do list members see another binding thread here? What, in the list members opinions, are the best scholarly works treating the convergences [or for that matter divergences] between _Order of Things_ and _Discipline and Punish_? I look forward to your responses.
best
bradley
"Of all writings I love only those which the writer writeth with his blood. Write in blood, and thou shalt learn that blood is spirit"
Nietzsche. "Thus Spake Zarathustra".