On Blindness to Being

Abstract

In the last chapter, the insurrection of buried discourses was considered, as well as its potential de-legitimizing effects upon what we think we know or understand to be true. This chapter considers another discourse buried in plain sight, that of animals as beings. It also addresses disperse statements and discursive formations, whose presence or not marks conceptual limitations. Specifically, statements that are not understood to contain truth-telling power lie outside our current way of knowing. They are not knowledge or “true” and they lack the power associated with knowledge. Conversely, of course, statements that are knowledge form our conceptual possibilities. This is because power-knowledge determines the form of possible knowledge (Foucault, 1977, p. 28).