Foucault is the guy who said "I am thinking of a number between 1-10... PANOPTICON!"

Am currently reading this book - Foucault for Beginnners. Who is Foo-Co you ask? Well that's what the book is for. It's interesting because it's sort of a graphic novel/ easy breezy introduction to the philosopher himself. Apparently this is a series, you can get other "so and so for beginners" I may just have to invest. 

Eventually I will come up with my paragraph or two that I need to come up with that I can spout out in random classes and/or public speaking engagements so that I too can prove that I "know" Foucault. 

But to begin... did you know his name is actually pronounced Michelle (but that's a girls name!) and not Michael (because that's a boys name gosh darn it) as one would expect? Or at least one that only ever referred to the man by his last name. We are not on a first name basis. As I am not on a first name basis with so many of these doods... Sartre, Freud, Lacan, Levi-Strauss (Claude, not you know, LEVI). But I am on a first name with Roland (as in Roland Barthes). For some reason Roland never seemed all that high and mighty to me. Like Roland and I could get together and share a pitcher of Pear Cider and he can start yelling around about how the author is dead and doesn't matter and I can roll my eyes and be like "Roland... we get it. Blah blah blah, post-structuralism, blah blah blah, nobody cares about the author, except for EVERYBODY else..." 

You know who I'm on a nickname basis with? Ole Willie Shakespeare. This also goes double for old Cray Cray King Lear (who I got to know VERY well as I had to read all about him in high school AND in college). I'm like "Cray Cray, chill, so you hate your daughters, we ALL hate your daughters." 

There's a point to this story. The point is the thing I remember most about Foucault is prisons and power. And a lot of it is just a relearning/ learning process. Because I came to much of these areas of study with my background in Psychology, realizing that we spent much of the times learning about our "Founding Fathers" (why are they always FATHERS? Where are the dang MOTHERS?) Jung, Freud, Skinner and that dude who like made the dogs spit. Oh sheesh what was that guys name? He's all "look at my dogs they have more spit when I tease them with this bell and make them think they are going to get food. And now I will do it to you humans and take over the world?" PAVLOV (now say the last quote in a vaguely Russian accent). 

As I move through my courses here, focusing more in literature, social science theory, and yes even psychology there are just a few people I got to get a grip on and old Mikey here is one of them. (That's not working. He is Foucault. FOO-CO Foucault - HA). 

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