Today, these practices bearing the secret of our rationality no longer look so remote. With time, they are coming closer. It is pointless now to look for this ethnological reality in Australia or at the beginning of history. It resides in our system (the panoptic procedures), or next door to it, if not inside our cities (the strategies of Béarn or Kabylia), than still nearer (the “unconscious”). But however proximate the content may be, it’s “ethnological” form remains. The form given to these practices located far away from knowledge and yet possessing its secret poses a problem from the outset.

de Certeau, p. 64