In this respect, if we are to follow Michel Foucault in his Lives of Infamous Men, the focus on the

quotidian is not by any means natural but emerges out of a particular nexus of discourses surrounding the

absolute politicization of life. Following this line, the shift from the legendary world of the epic to the

individual in the novel marks the emergence of newly interdicted bodies on a molecular scale, disciplined

by a whole host of sciences dedicated to the regulation and (re)production of the life of the population. No

longer relegated to the realm of irrelevancy, the disciplined body of the everyday, no matter how briefly

or ephemerally, is made worthy of study and control: “the insane”, “the criminal”, “the raced” and “the

sexually deviant” are all called into being by power, marked briefly if only to be snuffed out of historical

remembrance. Yet, if Rilke is to be read not merely as a mouthpiece for this emergent regime of power or

what Foucault will claim as part of the dictates of a confessionary apparatus, we must give special

attention to the whole of which Rilke demands we transcribe the dictation of existence. While Foucault’s

Infamous Men are to be obliterated in their exposure to power, for That is, one should take into account

what one normally takes for granted, even the most subtle details of the quotidian.

Moten: Poetry just lets you put stuff together in a different kind of way; in a way that does
not immediately tie you down with certain kinds of diegetic or argumentational
responsibilities. The criticism is the same thing, it’s just that maybe you have to show more
of the connective tissue that allows you to put these things together. In a poem I can just put
Thornton Dial together with with Sleater-Kinney, and I don’t have to explain it. The other
stuff, it’s not just that you have to explain it, but you want to explain it—how do these
things connect? You show the conduits through which there is commerce between these
seemingly different things.