ABSTRACT
Getting to the surface of things' is the author's initial objective here, and in particular to the surface of the things that Foucault says in his analyses and that of 1978-79 now published The Birth of Biopolitics (BB). Undertaking a surface reading now indicates how far away 'we' were in general, a generation ago, from having any sense of Foucault as potential theorist of management or accounting. There is no commentary on the fact that Foucault identifies this eighteenth century workshop dressage as management and indeed puts it in 'scare quotes'. Perhaps most ironic of all is that there is one piece which appears to give a passage from Foucault, as an opening quotation, which begins: 'Management is possible only when the strength of a firm is known' and continues to note that for management there is needed a 'concrete, precise and measured knowledge as to the firm's strength', and knowledge 'nameable as accounting'.
