Michel Foucault (b. 1926, France – d. 1984, France)
Books

I have a complicated relationship with Foucault and plenty of unfinished business that will never be finished. I won’t even specify here particular texts as that would require a lengthy essay to get all the bits and pieces together – and it would be besides the point here.

Many find Foucault’s work on power to be his most important or interesting contribution. I find that part least interesting – as I do not find matters of “power” particularly interesting at all. On the other hand, I also have a qualified guess that many references to “power being everywhere” may be misguided, misappropriated or misinterpreted. But since I do not care for that part much, I find no reason to elaborate it any further.

What I do like in his works is genealogies of e.g. insanity or homosexuality – tracing how public perception and social dealings with those phenomena radically shifted over time, in particular the shift from an observed quality among others to a basis of identity. I find it particularly relevant in contemporary exaggerated focus on identity politics that has more or less turned into something taken for granted.

I also find his work on epistemes useful to think with – not least in terms of how discursive formations may define and restrict what can be discussed at all. I seem to run into those limits all the time…

Finally, his analysis of Las Meninas got me interested in painting.