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Foucault's work is viewed by some as unfathomable.
I remember my first encounter with his work via the concept of governmentality - reading, re-reading aloud, making notes, re-reading, and then it made sense. This was early in my MA studies and the course, taught by a Foucaultian, used his work almost exclusively to make sense of how the law is used in global governance. From that moment of recognition, I moved on to Discipline and Punish which instantly helped me, a secondary teacher at the time, to make sense of the neoliberal downloads of practices into Ontario's secondary schools. From that point it became difficult to make sense of the problems and populations that became the object of my studies without turning to Michel Foucault for help. Five years later, he would serve as the central theorist in my doctoral dissertation on women street traders - the 'heavy' behind both my theoretical framework and my methodology. Thus, I am delighted to recall that he thought of his work as a 'toolbox' for others to use. An inspiration, guide, and mentor - his work is both accessible and an 'assistive technology' of sorts. "Foucault nicely expresses the idea of his work as a toolbox in the following comments in a 1974 interview about his expectations for Discipline and Punish: 'I want my books to be a sort of toolbox that people can rummage through to find a tool they can use however they want in their own domain...I want the little book that I plan to write on disciplinary systems to be of use for teachers, wardens, magistrates, conscientious objectors. I don't write for an audience, I write for users, not readers.' " (emphasis added) More late-night reading of Foucault: A Very Short Introduction by Gary Gutting (112-113). The extract is taken from 'Prisons et asiles dans le mécanisme du pouvoir’ in Daniel Defert and Francois Ewald (eds.), Dits et écrits, 1954-1988, four volumes (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), pages 523-4.
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From Foucault: A Very Short Introduction by Gary Gutting. Oxford University Press.
Page 47: "The forces that drive our history do not so much operate on our thoughts, our social institutions, or even our environment as on our individual bodies. So, for example, punishment in the 18thC is a matter of violent assaults on the body: branding, dismemberment, execution, whereas in the 19thC it takes the apparently gentler but equally physical form of incarceration, ordered assemblies, and forced labour. Prisoners are subjected to a highly structured regimen designed to produce 'docile bodies'. A Foucaultian genealogy, then is a historical causal explanation that is material, multiple, and corporeal." This aligns with the observation that there does not have to be a straight line from a single event/action/thought/process in the past to a given outcome in the present. Thoughts and institutions, etc., are not omitted among the "forces that drive our history" but the actions on the body are more powerful in cementing those forces and the continued shaping of thoughts, social institutions, and the environment. This operates outside of the example of crime and punishment. Application: schools and codes of conduct.
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