Foucauldian discourse analysis

It's also, to be really direct, it's also about my own approach to historical material, which probably mirrors something closer to a kind of genealogical approach, one where I'm trying to think about how Ford helps us sort of see a genealogy of religion or history or America in these moments that I take up.

So it's chronological in that I sort of pick these moments in Ford's history and then sort of, I suppose, in sort of Foucauldian terms, like sort of try to dial down in a kind of archaeology of that moment to try to understand that in order to situate Ford in this larger genealogy of these terms.

So I think in some ways it's both a kind of formalist approach to the material and a kind of methodological decision in order to try to think about the larger questions of intellectual history, I suppose.

Yeah, that's awesome.

A sea change as a change in values.

And the value sea change is we're getting away from this Foucauldian piercing gaze to a collective embrace, a collective glance.

So women tend to be more, and there's big evidence based on this, women tend to be much more collaborative in team settings.

They have a softer approach to patient care and so on and so forth.

And, you know, and it was those early moments where I was like, I mean, I, I didn't know what type of history I definitively wanted to write.

I was really smitten by and enamored by Foucauldian approaches that had made the major interventions in Middle Eastern studies up until that point.

And I basically was like, wow, I can write a Foucauldian analysis using these state documents.

And I'm not saying this again in a dismissive way, but it was like almost, there was something, there could have been something very formulaic, almost like a mathematical equation because the theory was so strong of like, I see, you know, governmentality here.

If I piece together these different ministries and what the state was doing and this kind of idealistic representation of what sport fitness could do.

Like, it's not academic criticisms of neoliberalism or left-wing views in Europe, for certain, I mean, that's where I live, that are bringing us out of that paradigm.

It's the weakness of its own social model, and it's the weakness of its, and it's the unsatisfying nature of its own ideals that people are experiencing, and it has nothing to do with, like, you know, Foucauldian critiques of homo economicus or whatever that was.

And it's kind of like...

And I think it's important to realize this, that what was being experienced by most people during the neoliberal period was a set of norms, and I don't think all of those critiques are misplaced, but also people were experiencing the triumphalism of those norms.

So there is at once...

If we go Foucauldian here, knowledge is not just power, but power gets to decide what counts as knowledge.

And some forms of knowledge are valuable.

Some forms of knowledge existing are valuable, whereas other forms of knowledge not existing are also valuable.

And so, very early on, as this process of state building gets underway, public health is identified as something important.

And I think originally it had less to do with sort of the Foucauldian notion of population, whereby you're thinking of the sit-in three in mass, but more with the traditional idea of benevolent governance, which is a Confucian idea, right? Right.

By taking an interest in and facilitating a certain standard of living for the populace, you are, you know, acting benevolently toward the populace.

And then in response, they rise.