jsl

One example of where Foucault would be useful to technologists in particular is in understanding the role of discourses in perpetuating gender inequalities in technology.

Foucault talked about how we reinforce power relations through the internalization and mobilization of discourse. For Foucault, power is best understood by studying our everyday interactions, instead of examining decrees from those in authority. Power affects us so deeply that we often don't realize how our speech and actions reinforce systems of inequality. Working in software, I see exclusionary comments at least on a weekly basis that almost slip under the radar as being innocuous until you realize that this is exactly the form of power that Foucault analyzes in his studies.

So to answer your question, assuming since you're posting in HN that you're in the software field, you may be interested in reading Foucault if you're interested in obtaining additional analytical tools to understand and improve the currently horrible, exclusionary system that permeates the software world.

As a disclaimer, I'm not saying that Foucault is the only way to understand this phenomenon, nor even necessarily the best. Just trying to point out some concrete ways in which his concepts may be useful in certain scenarios.

Much of Foucault's work is different from projects that you would find in thinkers like Plato or Kant. Kant for example treats cognition as the product of certain universal categories that exist apriori. Chomsky is heavily influenced by this sort of thinking, and for both Kant and Chomsky the product of starting from those premises tends to be an essentialist view of human nature.

Rather than starting with axioms that lead to a sort of universal knowledge, Foucault did studies that could be considered more sociological in nature to show how relations of power affect the way that we experience ourselves and others, i.e., how it fashions our subjectivity. This is what he terms his "archaeological" method in articles like "What is Enlightenment?" http://foucault.info/documents/whatisenlightenment/foucault..... Examples of these studies include his works Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality.

At the very least, Foucault's studies show how some of the most significant ways in which we experience the world and ourselves are socially constructed, rather than essential. Identity then becomes political, rather than something that is distinctly our own. In some of his work, he also directly takes on thinkers like Kant in an attempt to show their work as historically situated rather than universal.

D&P is good, but I'd suggest as a first read the first volume of the History of Sexuality. It's a more concise introduction to his thought on the role of power in formation of subjectivity, rather than as something that is top-down. I've seen too many beginners in Foucault get wrapped up in notions like the panopticon in D&P and miss more substantial elements of his thought.

I'd also recommend his essays such as "What is Enlightenment?" for beginners (online: http://foucault.info/documents/whatisenlightenment/foucault....). Even though it may require a few reads, it helps to consider his thought in relationship to thinkers like Kant (who heavily influence linguists such as Chomsky, and Chomsky's view of human nature), and perhaps more importantly it indicates the important role that he considers power to have in the formation of knowledge and subjectivity.

Thanks tikhonj for the very well articulated response. I wish that this thread had been pointing directly to your comment rather than the blog post that you responded to!

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