Quick Notes #3

Damn, I’m really just gonna talk about the most hot button theorist in my friend group right now

Foucault.

Let’s look at Greenspan’s interpretation of him.

For Foucault, “the a priori is historical.”

Contra Marx, “Foucault is deeply suspicious of accrediting these changes to the internal dynamics of history.”

To quote Foucault from Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, “[the rhythm of historical transformation] does not follow the smooth, continuist schemas of development which are normally accepted.” These changes are not produced within history itself, but rather “the transformation of the a priori impact history as a force of the outside.”

For Foucault, the transcendental isn’t historical but history is of transcendental events.

“Foucault’s work concentrates on the workings of power in order to map shifts in historical regimes.”

“Power, in Foucault, serves as a diagram for the underlying forces governing everything from what people believe, to how bodies move, to the way in which objects are produced.”