A future for Foucault scholarship in rhetoric; or, tales of a disillusioned poststructuralist

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow." ~ Kay, Men in Black (1997)

The day I realized I wanted to get a PhD in rhetoric was the day that my wonderful rhetorical theory instructor at Ripon College, Professor Jody Roy, lectured about Foucault. It certainly wasn't a comprehensive overview of Michel Foucault's theories; she talked about his theory of the episteme, the cultural system of knowledge production which comes to tyrannize our systems of determining truth. There was something about this concept that rang true to me, as someone who grew up in a town where cultural assumptions about normal and abnormal, right and wrong, were very narrow and seen as objective, and who often felt people jumped to conclusions about what they "knew" far too rapidly. Quite frankly, my mind was blown.