Jim Beggs

English 956
Prof. Lingyan Yang

Ever since I read most of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, I have been
impressed with the depth and breadth of Foucault's knowledge, as well as his ability to
synthesize apparently random pieces of information into a coherent vision. I liked that Foucault
called much of the theoretical work that he and others undertook as the “insurrection of
subjected knowledge.” The notion of insurrection particularly appeals to me, as it carries the
connotation of revolt against authority and regimes. I have found Foucault somewhat difficult to
engage with, as there seemed a lack of systematization that allows one to neatly sum up exactly
what he was all about. I think that was by design, because the “systematization” of knowledge
was how a certain set of norms were established, and then people could exercise power through
these nets of knowledge.
The first lecture from “Two Lectures” provides a somewhat encapsulated view of
“genealogy,” what I think Foucault saw as his methodology. First, he talks about his own
plumbing of depths “the great warm and tender Freemasonry of useless erudition.” Then he
talked about the insurrection of subjected knowledge. Genealogy for him, was the fusion of the
two, which revealed the basis by which the systematization of thought excluded and made
aberrant “local” knowledge and discourse. I also think it is useful that he emphasizes an
examination of struggles, conflict, and war. At one point he posits that “power is essentially
repression.” I'm not sure that I can agree with this surprisingly terse statement. He offered a
second hypothesis: “power is war, a war continued by other means.” I think this is essentially
true, and I am interested in examining social justice movements for professional and personal
curiosity, as well as pedagogical application. As “dubious” as Foucault considered “class
justice,” I hope there can be some basis on which people can learn from the history of organizing
for social change, I prefer the Marxist variety, and that students can learn the critical thinking as
well as the techniques to change their circumstances.
Honestly, I found “Las Meninas” very confusing, but I notice the recurrence of “holes,”
“gaps,” “scissions” and the importance of space in Foucault's work, I think because space is
essential to how we come to understand the world. I think it gets at a fundamental problem of
literature, that we can philosophically understand that because language is “slippery” and that
endless possibilities of meaning erupt from the text when we examine it closely. However, in the
interests of time and wages, there is always a limiting principle when we talk about meaning. I
don't have the time to write completely because I have to put food on my table and professors
have to as well. If writing “completely” is even possible! From The Order of Things, I see that
some of my understanding of “What is an author?” was somewhat limited as the “circulation of
discourses” that I envisioned was a process distinctly twentieth-century to present day.
I had never heard Foucault and New Historicism linked before, but I think I saw the
connection between the two, in showing the importance of the interactions between literature, as
a discourse, and other discourses in society. (I hear Foucault chiding me for using “see” in
relation to reading.) I can see Barthes' influence on literary discourse, as in classes we very
deliberately talk about “texts.” I think New Historicism is a good way to more systematically
apply Foucault's ideas to literary texts. The only place I've really seen him do that specific task in
depth was in “What is an author?”