Foucaultblog on hiatus?

Foucaultblog was founded in 2007 as a kind of indirect adjunct to my and Stuart Elden’s co-edited book on Foucault and geography. I’ve been the sole owner and contributor to it during that time, passing on Foucault news (I set up a Google Alert: whenever anybody mentioned “Foucault” on the web I would check out what they said and link to it if it was interesting). This is quite time consuming as you can imagine.

I’ve been thinking for some time that Foucaultblog is perhaps nearing the end of its run, but at the same time I know there’s a wide readership of the blog centering around interest in Foucault. I’ve rather badly kept it going these last few months but have increasingly found myself restricted by the (self-imposed) need to keep it on topic, when I might wish to write on other issues (eg Wikileaks).

Now I think the time has come to at least admit publicly that I have less interest and time in maintaining this blog. This has meant fewer posts and as every blogger knows, fewer posts means fewer readers. There are two options which occur: put the blog on hiatus, or ask you the readership to take it over. My guess would be that people would prefer to run their own blogs rather than one associated by someone else, so I’ve decided to put the blog on hiatus.

What this means is that while I may occasionally post here if something very interesting happens, my blogging activity will be elsewhere.

To that end: in September 2009 I registered for another blog name, opengeography, inspired by the open geography movement and its associated practices such as participatory GIS and openstreetmap. I started posting regularly there about a week ago. It’s weird but I knew no-one was reading it and this felt very liberating. I planned to post there for a while and then gradually stop here. I also planned to design it a bit more before publicising it.

However, I’m starting to see a few readers and links there now, so I might as well confess to it.

So, farewell then, foucaultblog!

Those readers interested in open, public and participatory geographies, critical historical genealogies of space and territory, and critical cartography, and oh well, the things I’m interested in, are welcome to check out opengeography! It’s experimental and unplanned and the topics will no doubt vary widely, but it the idea is to create an interesting, riskier space.

Thanks to all who have commented and linked here over the last few years!