[Foucault-L] Introduction: Foucault, Spatiality, Power?

Foucault-L members,

I am a new member to this listserv and have just recently completed my Ph.D in Geography at Penn State University. My dissertation draws upon the Foucauldian governmentality literature to examine the history of street and house numbering in the gridded cities of the USA since the 18th century. In particular, I attempt to critically examine the linkages between the ordering of urban space, the production of geographical knowledges, and the governance of populations. For those interested, my dissertation can be accessed as a pdf file at:

http://etda.libraries.psu.edu/theses/approved/WorldWideIndex/ETD-1260/index.html

A version of chapter 2 will soon be published in an upcoming issue of the journal, Progress in Human Geography.

There has been a lot of talk recently (at least among geographers) of Foucault's call for a "history of spaces," which has inspired important new works, such as John Pickles' "A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping and the Geo-coded World" (2004) and Stuart Elden's "Mapping the Present: Heidegger, Foucault and the Project of a Spatial History" (2001). I am curious what members of this listserv take away from Foucault's discussions of spatiality, knowledge, and power. More specifically, what are the strengths--and limitations--of Foucault's understanding of such power/knowledge/spatiality relations?

-- Reuben S. Rose-Redwood, Ph.D





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