Bauer's History

 When I did my masters in ALM during the 2010’s a very outspoken perspective was that digitisation eventually would solve a lot of heritage issues. Even though for instance born digital documents would come with certain challenges such as the format becoming obsolete, digital services were deemed as the future. Almost ten years later I think a lot about the results of this change. Starting with the obvious it is clear that digitization to some extent have saved important historical documents from the risk of pershising. We can for instance see how many medieval documents have been scanned in ways that not only saves the information but also the context in the form of margins, tearings etcetera. On the other hand we can also see how other objectives are far from succeeding. A rather clear example is that we only partly have digitised entire archives. Instead the tendency is that only some records, in some cases even only some individual records have been digitised. Thereby it is onl...

 Returning to the idea of Foucauldian theory one could easily say that it to a large degree can be utilized to discuss power-relations in society. This have led many researchers interested in Foucauldian theory to being labelled as political, system-critical and similar often negative nouns. But is there actually a need for social criticism and utilizing the theories that is not political in nature? In my view it is clearly so, and perhaps researchers actually need to discuss their social worth rather than aiming at changing the world.  When I started writing my dissertation in 2018 I was rather based from a social-change perspective. The idea here is that we need to produce knowledge to make a social change, and if you see something in society that needs change a good way to achieve that is through research. Whilst this is a theory I to large degree have great sympathy for, this form of knowledge production is but one form of utilization of a Foucauldian perspective.  Si...

 For better or worse, the theories of french philosopher Michel Foucault shaped alot of my thinking and writing between 2015–2023. I have since moved on theoretically and today I would place myself as ecclectic in terms of theory: the aim of using theory should be to explain reality, rather than proving the works of a certain philosopher. Still I have thought alot about the relevance of Foucault and my interpretentions of them. In this two piece entries I will try first try to explain some of Foucault theory of governmentality and some of his philosopher, and in the next entry I will try to describe how some of them might relate to contemporary society on a wider base.  Foucault is perhaps one of the most ambigious philosophers, since his work to a large degree have intersections even though they deal with different subjects and time periods. But perhaps the most common way to understand Foucault is his discussions on power and how society shapes human behaviour. The word powe...