Customer Reviews

Language, Counter-Memory, Practice

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A remarkable collection of essays and lectures all of which revolve around the subject of language. For Foucault, Discourse represents a context within which power relations exist. The two most noted essays in this collection are 'What is an Author?' and 'Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.'It is in the latter that one can discern the enormous impact that Nietzsche has made on Foucault's archaeological project. He engages in a discussion on the nature of history as it relates to power relations and truth. Foucault writes: "The successes of history belong to those who had used them, to disguise themselves so as to pervert them, invert their meaning, and redirect them against those who had initially imposed them; controlling this complex mechanism, they will make it function so as to overcome the rulers through their own rules" (151).

This is a remarkable collection with lectures and essays ranging from Borges and Holderlin to Deleuze. One can also find his explication of the 'History of Systems of Thought' as a discipline which would dominate his attention in the final years of his life.

I like the idea of counter memory consisting of actual events that most people would never think about. Millions of people never read this book.