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The array of objects and materials with which we open this Companion volume (see Figure 1.1) deliberately echoes the imaginary encyclopedic listing that Foucault draws from the work of Borges to show how things become intelligible through the relations that surround them. An encyclopedia, traditionally, does the job of revealing what a thing is by mustering and representing the relations deemed most relevant, and thus most useful to readers. Borges was working in the opposite direction. His fantastical encyclopedia revealed the unsettling effects of things grouped as if there were connections, when those connections are unfathomable to the reader. The effect was to undo the certainties, the habitual modes of classification, and to open things up to strange alternative possibilities. Foucault's (1970;.xxiii) interest in The Order of Things was to track back through Western intellectual history to reveal that the apparent …