[082349872349872]

So what is power-knowledge? Any suggested introductions?

After a quick skim of https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/#HistPris I think I can relate the idea of power-knowledge to something with which I am much more familiar: closed loop control theory.

Under that model, it makes sense that one's ability to control would be dependent not only upon how good one's effectors may be ("power"?) but also upon how good one's sensors may be ("knowledge"?). (let alone questions of system identification!)

But that could easily be me using the wrong prism ("observability/controllability") for analysis.

[knowhy]

I'm not familiar enough with closed loop control theory to make a statement if the analogy is appropriate. But a quick skim is definitive not enough to get an understanding of Foucault. However these two quotes from the plato article should make a good starting point:

> The key idea of the archaeological method is that systems of thought and knowledge (epistemes or discursive formations, in Foucault’s terminology) are governed by rules, beyond those of grammar and logic, that operate beneath the consciousness of individual subjects and define a system of conceptual possibilities that determines the boundaries of thought in a given domain and period.

> On Foucault’s account, the relation of power and knowledge is far closer than in the familiar Baconian engineering model, for which “knowledge is power” means that knowledge is an instrument of power, although the two exist quite independently. Foucault’s point is rather that, at least for the study of human beings, the goals of power and the goals of knowledge cannot be separated: in knowing we control and in controlling we know.