Notes from: Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge

This book by the French master historian is probably one of the most influential in research methodologies. One point of critique to be kept in mind is by F.Kittler who says that Foucault's method only works for periods in history which are mainly marked by book production and that he had no way of transferring that methodology to the age of electronic media. Not entirely sure if Kittler is right as he puts so much emphasis on the 'media apriori'. And it is also maybe not that relevant as I don't rely on one single methodology but idiosyncratically pick and mix from what I find useful, which includes, besides Focault, also Bordieu, materialism and, my latest interest, constructivism. As you can see from my sloppy notetaking i will probably have to go back and speed read that book once more.

Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge, Routledge Classics, 1969 Gallimard, 2006 Routledge

by what criteria is one to isolate the unities with which one is dealing?
what is a science? what is an oeuvre? what is a theory? what is a concept? what is a text?
what is the legitimate level of formalisation?

demands to look at discontinuites p. 6

Making historical analysis the discourse of the continuous and making human cosnciousness the original subject of all historical development and all action are the two sides of the same system of thought. In this system, time is conceived in terms of totalization and revolutions are never more than moments of consciousness. pp 13- 14

There arises a new enterprise of which my earlier books Madness and Civilization and The Order of Things (left out french titles) were a very imperfect sketch. An enterprise by which one tries to measure the mutations that operate in general in the field of history; an enterprise in which the methods, limits and themes proper to the history of ideas are questioned; an enterprise by which one tries to throw off the last antrhopological constraint; an enterprise that reveals how these constraints came about. p. 16

-may aim is most decidedly not to use the categories of cultural totalities (whether world-views, ideal types, the particular spirit of an age) in order to impose on history, despite itself, the forms of structural analysis. The series described, the limits fixed, the comparisons and correlations made are based not on the old philosophies of history, but are inteneded to question teleologies and totalizations; p. 17

method purged from all anthropologism p. 17

1
The Unities of Discourse

The use of concepts of discontinuity, rupture, threshold, limit, series, and transformation present all historical analysis not only with questions of procedure, but with theoretical problems. p. 23

there is negative work do be done first: we must rid ourselves of a whole mass of notions, each of which, in its own way, diversifies the theme of continuity. They may not have a very rigorous conceptual structrue but they have a very precise function. p. 23

tradition allows to isolate the new against a background of permanence, which then allows genius to enter (paraphrased)

'influence' support too magical to be very amenable to analysis

medium of propagation - such defined unities as individuals, oeuvres, notions, or theories. p. 24

development and evolution - imply principle of coherence and the outline of a future unity

'spirit' that enables to establish between simultaneous or successive phenomena of a given period a community of meanings, symbolic links, an interplay of resemblance and reflexion,

We must question those ready-made synthesis, those groupings that we normally accept before any examination, those links whose validity is recognised from the outset; we must oust those forms of obscure forces by wich we usually link the discourse of one man with that of another; they must be driven out form the darkness in which they reign. p. 24

Book as node within a network pp. 25 - 26

through the naivities of chronologies one is led to an ever receding point
other side of the coin the secret origin 27

We must be ready to receive every moment of discourse in its sudden irruption. p. 28

syntheses must not be definitely rejected but remain in suspense p. 28

One is led therefore to the project of a pure description of discoursive events as a horizon for the search of unities that form within it. pp 29 - 30

we must reconstitute another discourse, rediscover the silent murmuring, the inexhaustible speech that animates from within the voive that one hears, re-establish the tiny, invisible text runs between and sometimes collides with them. The analysis of the discoursive field is orientated in a quite different way: we must grasp the statement in the exact specificity of its occurence; determine its correlations with other statements that may be connected with it, and show what other forms of statement it excludes. 30 - 31

defining other unities by means of controlled decisons 32

the 'sciences of man' 33

systems of dispersions p 41 (discourse formations)
rules of formation are conditions of existence (but also of coexistence, maintenance, modification and disappearance) in a given discoursive division. p. 42

the formation of objects

object exists under the positive conditions of a complex group of relations. 49
these relations are established between institutions, economic and social processes, behavioral patterms, systems of norm, techniques, types of classification, modes of characterisation 49

not 'internal' to discourse, also not 'external' but at the limit of discourse 50
situtation of the speaking subject

the historical apriori as condition of reality for statements 145