This paper outlines a set of considerations on the politics of reading by suggesting a concept of inheritance to think about the reception of Michel Foucault in organization studies. On the one hand we consider what Foucault inherited from others, the interpretations and decisions he made in relation to an earlier tradition, while on the other hand we consider how Foucault s work has been inherited as it has moved into organization studies. We read Foucault with the assistance of concepts of reading and inheritance that we, in turn, have appropriated from Jacques Derrida, which offer potential ways of considering relations between writers and the way that inheritances are instituted in practices of reading. This involves insisting on the necessity of engaging with a number of complexities, contradictions and double-binds in the texts of Foucault (and others).