Justice Vs. Power - Chomsky Vs. Foucault, Part 1

Well worth the watch; you can get to part 2 from Youtube.

Foucault on history

From What is Enlightenment? by Michel Foucault:

...it seems to me that this historico-critical attitude must also be an experimental one. I mean that this work done at the limits of ourselves must, on the one hand, open up a realm of historical inquiry and, on the other, put itself to the test of reality, of contemporary reality, both to grasp the points where change is possible and desirable, and to determine the precise form this change should take. This means that the historical ontology of ourselves must turn away from all projects that claim to be global or radical. In fact we know from experience that the claim to escape from the system of contemporary reality so as to produce the overall programs of another society, of another way of thinking, another culture, another vision of the world, has led only to the return of the most dangerous traditions.
I prefer the very specific transformations that have proved to be possible in the last twenty years in a certain number of areas that concern our ways of being and thinking, relations to authority, relations between the sexes, the way in which we perceive insanity or illness; I prefer even these partial transformations that have been made in the correlation of historical analysis and the practical attitude, to the programs for a new man that the worst political systems have repeated throughout the twentieth century.
I shall thus characterize the philosophical ethos appropriate to the critical ontology of ourselves as a historio-practical test of the limits that we may go beyond, and thus as work carried out by ourselves upon ourselves as free beings.

This is a very significant passage; I'm fairly sure I don't grasp the entirety of it, but a few things that jump out at me:

1: History, or at least Foucault's preferred method of history, is the analysis of the fringes of our everyday lives. What we perceive as 'insane' has shifted throughout history, and this perception is indicative of a deeper truth of our society. Sexuality (though perhaps less at the fringes today than in other times), too, is something that exposes much more about society, gender relations, etc, than meets the eye. Hence his works: Madness and Civilization, and The History of Sexuality.

2: He also seems to be saying that history should be done in such a way that the lessons we garner from history must be in some way useful and practical. I might be reading that wrong; either he means that, or he means that the models used for historical inquiry must be somehow applicable to contemporary society? Maybe it's the same thing, or neither.