Kaspar Villadsen, Foucault’s Technologies – Oxford University Press, November 2024

Shame about the prohibitive price…

Michel Foucault is rarely viewed as a philosopher of technology, yet academics and students routinely refer to his terms ‘technologies of power’, ‘governmental technologies’, and ‘technologies of the self’. This book is a response to the contradiction between the paucity of research into Foucault’s technological thought and the abundancy of technological vocabulary and metaphors in his own writings as well as in the commentary literature; it provides the most extensive examination of the role of technology in Foucault’s work so far. 

Villadsen argues that technology serves neither as an object of Foucault’s analysis nor as a convenient metaphor for making arguments, but as rather integral to his thinking and writing. As the book’s title, Foucault’s Technologies indicates, it explores not Foucault and modern technology understood as technical devices like television, smartphones, or industrial machines, but rather Foucault’s approach to the theme of technology and his use of technological terms. The book provides an extensive exploration of Foucault’s technological thought, arguing that he offers a distinct framework that confronts commonsensical understanding and other scientific approaches to technology. The reader will travel a route paved with discussions of how Foucault’s work intersects with that of other key thinkers, particularly Heidegger, Althusser, Nietzsche, and Deleuze. 

While presenting efforts in intellectual history, the book ultimately focusses on the analytical implications for ‘users’, showing how researchers can benefit from Foucault’s technological approach. As such, the book offers an analytical framework effective for the study of problems in present-day welfare states and the emergent world of data-capitalism.