EMMA: New Ground

Reading Foucalt Backwards

If you start with the last paragraph of Michel Foucalt article "Of Other Spaces" and read backwards to the beginning you have an understanding of what Foucalt is trying to mean. The way he writes becomes simpler as he goes on, so reading from the end gives you context for what he is saying. For instance, instead of reading about utopias and Galileo and heterotopia and why you come back to yourself when looking into a mirror, you read about rest homes, prisons and psychaitric hospitals being places of deviation, which is his point. Then all other information that comes before it informs you from something you actually understand. Then, it makes sense that he talks about looking into a mirror because the mirror becomes reflective of society. So then why is it interesting to read about someone saying that places exist and we occupy them physcially and in our minds. Actually it is not, but what is interesting is how he places those ideas in different cultures which informs us about human behavior and our knowledge increases. Reading this the way it was written assumes that we know what he is talking about and he is leading us to a conclusion that he has discovered. However, if you are not familiar with the history he describes or if you are familiar with the history and don't understand how they relate to concepts such as heterotopia the information can be overwhelmingly simplistic and you feel like so many postmodern dance audiences when they understand that there was a relationship between two people dancing on stage but they don't get it.

posted by Unknown @ 11:13 AM