In light of this theological genealogy the Foucauldian apparatuses acquire an even more pregnant and decisive significance, since they intersect not only with the context of what the young Hegel called "positivity," but also with what the later Heidegger called Gestell (which is similar from an etymological point of view to dis-positio, dis-ponere, just as the German stellen corresponds to the Latin ponere). When Heidegger, in Die Technik und die Kehre (The Question Concerning Technology), writes that Ge-stell means in ordinary usage an apparatus (Gerät), but that he intends by this term u the gathering together of the (in)stallation [Stellen] that (in)stalls man, this is to say, challenges him to expose the real in the mode of ordering [Bestellen]," the proximity of this term to the theological dispositio, as well as to Foucault's apparatuses, is evident.5 What is common to all these terms is that they refer back to this oikonomia, that is, to a set of practices, bodies of knowledge, measures, and institutions that aim to manage, govern, control, and orient—in a way that purports to be useful—the behaviors, gestures, and thoughts of human beings.
6.
One of the methodological principles that I constantly follow in my investigations is to identify in the texts and contexts on which I work what Feuerbach