The Politics of the Performative:
the Stages of "I amsterdamnation"

A tribute to brilliance

"I Promise I've always been like this...
...the wall's inside my head...
And no one will ever notice if I keep my mouth shut tight...tight...tight..."

-Guster, Center of Attention

The Zen of Foucault

Sitting in my Foucault tutorial, I naturally confronted issues of power and knowledge. Specifically, I found myself in awe at the conceptual shifts that accompanied Foucault’s own paradigmatic transition from archaeology to genealogy- i.e. what happens when we start learning about the present from the past and stop thinking that we can uncover our past from our presence (if it hasn’t already happened, I doubt that grand epiphany is looming large on the horizon- oh yeah, and the origins are nowhere, and god is dead, so we should just go skiing, in my approximation).

Ok, moving forward (don’t look back- in anger? Ha?…ha! ) If there’s anything I haven’t learned from Foucault, it’s how to really embrace this academic frame through which I can conceptually grasp an effective reality that (dis) places me- all of us really, in some time and space and way or another- in the presence and upon the horizon, looking out towards the aleatory.

Why Amsterdam?...Am I Amsterdam?

http://www.expatinfodesk.com/destinations/amsterdam/

(Ask the Authors)