Method 5: Genealogies, histories, time

Grosz (2001) Architecture from the outside. Essays on Virtual and Real Space

Elizabeth Grosz does not simply receive the well-worn pages of Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, or Henri Bergsonon the subject of duration. Rather her attempt is to open up a central thematic of modernist architecture — utopia — to a new consideration. Grosz, like Tafuri, suggests that utopia is the good place that is no place. She says that utopia might be the way for architecture to find its own place in the political by reconceptualizing itself as that movement of time which is duration: a concept of time as a perpetual becoming.

Bussolini (2010) 'What is a dipositive?'

The distinct French and Italian concepts of appareil/apparato and dispositif/ dispositivo have frequently been rendered the same way as ‚apparatus‛ in English. This pre- sents a double problem since it collapses distinct conceptual lineages from the home languages and produces a false identity in English.

Dean (2003) Prologue for a Genealogy of War and Peace: Genealogical Approaches

A paper with a rather clear explanation of what a (foucaldian) genealogy is/ could be about at the beginning (history of present, relation to truth...)

Rorty (1982) Method, Social Science, Social Hope

Rorty explores the issue of method in social sciences, how it came to be equated with "objectivity", "rationality" and "rigor". He is expressing some concerns about the "hermeneutic turn" choosing Dewey against Foucault. 

Dean (2003) Critical and Effective Histories. Foucault's Method and historical Sociology

This book places Foucault's methodologies against central currents in social theory and philosophy in order to provide a guide to doing historical sociology in particular and social science more generally. The book addresses the many formulations of Foucault's methodological position and seeks to establish its relation to such figures as Nietzche, Kant, Weber, Elias, Habermas, Giddens and the Annales and Frankfurt Schools.

Waterton (2010) Experimenting with the Archive: STSers As Analysts and Co-constructors of Databases and Other Archival Forms

This article is about recent attempts by scholars, database practitioners, and curators to experiment in theoretically interesting ways with the conceptual design and the building of databases, archives, and other information systems. This article uses the term ‘‘archive’’ (following Derrida’s Archive Fever 1998/1995 and Bowker’s Memory Practices in the Sciences 2005) as an overarching category to include a diversity of technologies used to inventory objects and knowledge, to commit them to memory and for future use.

Leigh Star (2010) This is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept

There are three components to boundary objects as outlined in the original 1989 article. Interpretive flexibility, the structure of informatic and work process needs and arrangements, and, finally, the dynamic between illstructured and more tailored uses of the objects. Much of the use of the concept has concentrated on the aspect of interpretive flexibility and has often mistaken or conflated this flexibility with the process of tacking back-and-forth between the ill-structured and well-structured aspects of the arrangements.

Massumi (2003) An Interview With Brian Massumi

Mary Zournazi interviews Brian Massumi. He elaborates his notion of affect and relates it to contemporary capitalism (Negri) and societies of control (Deleuze). Many passages touch the topic of temporality.

Veyne (2010) In universal history, everything is singular: 'discourse'

This is the first chapter of Paul Veyne's recently translated book about Foucault, "Foucault, his thought, his character". The chapter is quite general but sets out Veyne's interpretation of Foucault's method and approach to history. He asserts that Foucault was a sceptical thinker who 'believed in facts' but not transhistorical truths. Veyne disassociates Foucault from poststructuralism, postmodernism, and the philosophy of language.

Bourdieu (1990) Structures, habitus, practices