This is a compilation of some of Foucault's most interesting or important writings. This is designed to give the reader a cross-section, a sense of Foucault's body of work in general. ( )

In the interests of archival preservation, your humble and ever-energetic reviewer paraphrases two of his posts from the (unfortunately) moribund Political Philosophy Group:

I find "Nietzche, Genealogy, History" (one of the selections in this anthology) to be almost completely impenetrable. Aside from picking up a few tidbits, from the trivial--words and concepts often change their meanings over time--to the controversial and unargued for--one cannot evaluate the truth of propositions involving certain concepts (even the concept of “truth” itself) independent of the historical context--I have absolutely no idea what Foucault was trying say. No idea whatsoever.

Now, I fully admit that I am pretty ignorant in matters of continental philosophy--perhaps in the same way that I am pretty ignorant in the discipline of, say, linear algebra or the language of Swahili. Among other things, I don’t understand the vocabulary of those subjects. If I read a paper defending a particular theorem in linear algebra, or making an argument in Swahili, I would have virtually no understanding of its content. Nevertheless, concerning linear algebra or Swahili, if I asked someone conversant in one of those subjects to explain the paper to me, I am confident they could do so, at least on some basic or superficial level. In other words, they could translate it. But as far as I can tell, Foucault simply cannot be translated. You just have to spend six years reading more Foucault or other works of continental philosophy, etc. (At which point, even if you still couldn’t understand it, you might claim that you could, if only to prevent people from thinking that you were an idiot.) So, if that is true, then either Foucault’s “philosophy” is a complete scam, or understanding it is far different from understanding any conventional intellectual discipline. It’s more like learning how to ride a (really difficult) bike, or becoming a Zen monk or something. I am inclined toward the scam thesis.

Nietzche is a totally different matter. He is sometimes cryptic, overly polemical, irritatingly metaphorical and often ambiguous, etc. but he nevertheless appears to be making actual claims than one can question, evaluate the arguments for, agree or disagree with, etc.

Like I now really want to read Discipline and Punish.

Not. ( )

For anybody with more than a superficial interest in Foucault's thought, I would strongly suggest not buying this volume. Buy Discipline and Punish, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, the three volume Essential Foucault, The Order of Things, and Language, Counter-memory, Practice instead. I bought this for a graduate seminar on Foucault and was a bit peeved to see how much it overlapped with books I already owned or was going to have to buy soon thereafter. ( )