After his critique of the clinic, and as a prolegomena to his theory of power, Michel Foucault outlined a distinct regime of knowledge that pivoted upon a new concept of “representation” – a Kantian sense of the limits of mental representations and the promise of formal representations. Modern knowledge, for the archaeological Foucault of Les Mots et Les Choses (translated as The Order of Things), is distinguished not only by its representational ethos, but by its agency in generating and congealing worldly relations: once words are thinkable as representation rather than as coincident with things, “discourse” is thinkable as a force of ordering things.
InterCcECT kicks off summer with a multi-session reading group on this crucial moment in Foucault’s thought. Join us Monday June 1st at 4pm, in the garden at Moody’s Pub (red line: Thorndale). We’ll be starting with the first three chapters from Part 1 of The Order of Things (Las Meninas, The Prose of the World, & Representing). Contact us for the readings.
What are your summer ambitions? As always, we welcome proposals and initiatives for events ranging from reading groups to field trips, works-in-progress sessions to pub afternoons.
In our sights:
Elizabeth Grosz, Nietzsche and Amor Fati May 6
Lee Edelman, with Lauren Berlant and Michelle Wright, May 7 & 8
InterCcECT 
