For years, I have limited my considerations of Foucault to his archaeology, studying almost exclusively The Order of Things. I've mostly ignored his sociology, as iconized for me by his focus on apparatuses of social functioning (disposatifs). Beginning to read about this (in The Essential Foucault) I find myself considering them (disposatifs) to be basic cross-institutional arrangements for providing the functionalities required/allowed by modern societies --as almost a taken for granted sociological common sense view of how things work in modern societies, rather than just as self-consciously intended and arranged sets of social arrangements and thought flow systems.

    I understand (perhaps prematurely) that Foucault focussed on the self-consciously intended and arranged aspects and cases of apparatuses.

...

I have also begun to read in his lectures on The Hermeneutics of The Subject.

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