In his review of Stuart Elden's Mapping the Present: Heidegger, Foucault and the Project of a Spatial History mentioned here, Ali Muhammad Rizvi says that one should bear in in mind that, for Foucault, there is no single unique present, as there is no single unique past or single unique future. Therefore, there are potentially innumerable histories of the present, as there are innumerable (possible) pasts and futures.

Rizvi says that Foucault sees the present moment, the finitude that encircles us, as "not an end, but the curve and knot of time in which the end is beginning". But there are as many (possible) ends as there are (possible) beginnings. Thus the question of 'our' present arises here. Which present out of the innumerable (potential and actual) presents is 'our' present? The above questioning brings us to the strategic intent of Foucault’s work.

Rizvi adds that:

Foucault’s history of the present is a history of thought... But this history of thought is strategically situated in the context of its 'own history', its 'own present' thatis the history which it owns and to which it belongs. Thus in strategic terms Foucault’s history of thought situates itself in the context of the history of Western thought ... Foucault delimits his pursuits by situating himself in the context of a particular and specific past, present and (particular possible) future(s) Through this situation this history can only be dubbed as the mapping of the present, as Elden rightly points out. But the history of the present is mapping of the present not only because it is a situated history, it is mapping of the present basically and primarily because it is a strategic history, a history aiming at and situated in the context of the modern and Postmodern projects of freedom, what Foucault terms as "seeking to give a new impetus, as far and wide as possible to the undefined work of freedom".. Thus the project of mapping of the present is a project aiming to assess the strategic possibilities inherent in the present. Elden has missed out this strategic side of the Foucauldian project, in my opinion, or a tleast it has not been sufficiently emphasised.