This page was created by Collin Hardwick.
Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & Discourse on Language
Discipline/Field: Philosophy, Critical Theory, History,
Year: 1969
Main Arguments & Concepts
The Archaeology of KnowledgeI find it very helpful to keep in mind that main purpose of this book is to describe a methodology. In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault makes a case for his method of studying ‘history,’ by studying the discourse -- or predominant knowledge systems -- of an era. These discursive formations (which are not just linguistic), or epistemes (191) have material effects, creating events and constrain the possible actions of those living under the discourse.
Foucault is careful to distance himself from sort of emancipatory role; he writes, “My aim was to cleanse it of all transcendental narcissism; it had to be freed from that circle of the lost origin, and rediscovered where it was imprisoned; it had to be shown that the history of thought could not have this role of revealing the transcendental movement” (203). Discourse is not the same as a Marxist false consciousness -- there is no ‘truth’ to reveal under discourse.
The Discourse on Language
This lecture is added to the end of The Archaeology of Knowledge. Foucault begins by noting that he is limited by discourse conventions, namely the introduction. He continues to discuss how discourse is limited by various forces; not everyone can say anything at any time. He terms the ways that discourses are limited as “rules of exclusion,” the most obvious of which are prohibiting rules. He does not expand on prohibition much, but I assume he means things like literal, on-the-books laws (RSAs in Althusser’s terms). He is more interested in other forms of control, what you may terms “social” in common parlance. He terms these controls as “division and rejection.”
There are three principles of division and rejection. The first is “reason and folly” (217). This principle encompasses language that is deemed sane or not. He relates this to “will to truth” (220).
The second principal is “internal rules” (220). The rules consist of “commentary” (like literary criticism), “author” and “discipline” (as in disciplinary convention). Basically, this is almost the rhetorical triangle ... how audience and context affect the discourse.
The third principal is “subjection of discourse” (227). This principal has to do with how people are allowed (or not) into discourses. There are four components of subjection: ritual, fellowships of discourse, doctrine, and social appropriation, which are all linked.
Foucault continues by discussing how philosophy is implicated in the above forms of exclusion. Here, he puts forth his general scholastic goals: “to question our will to truth; to restore to discourse its character as an event; to abolish the sovereignty of the signifier” (229).
He then outlines the methodology required to achieve his goals (all on pg. 220): 1) “Reversal” or basically looking at the discourse from a different, “negative” perspective. 2) “Discontinuity” or recognizing that discourse is not one big force, but a bunch of components. 3) “Specificity” or that there is no capital-T-Truth underlying discourse. 4) “Exteriority” or that we must look at discourse contextually.
Underscoring this whole methodology is a call to historicize discourse, to see “discourse as regular series and distinct events” (231), recognizing the materiality that forms these events.
He provides some examples of his methodology before concluding with some acknowledgements of his own philosophical positions, basically concluding with a note that all contemporary philosophy is Hegelian (235).
Quotes
“What we are concerned with here is not to neutralize the discourse, to make it a sign of something else, and to pierce through its density in order to reach what remains silently anterior to it, but on the contrary to maintain it in its consistency, to make it emerge in own complexity” (47).“The analysis of statements, then is a historical analysis, but one that avoids all interpretation: it does not questions things said as to what they are hiding, what they were ‘really’ saying, in spite of themselves, the unspoken element that they contain ... but on the contrary, it questions them as to their mode of existence” (109).
Notes
Foucault and other post-structuralists are often criticized for determinism (see Jameson [though Spivak actually criticizes him for ascribing too much agency to the marginalized]). However, I think that Archaeology demonstrates that his philosophy does allow for agency; he does describe the removal of the subject (55), but refutes absolute determinism by arguing that discourse creates a “set of conditions” (208). So, there are individual intentions, but those are circumscribed by sets of conditions.One way I think about Foucault’s limited conditions is through Asao Inoue’s CCCC chair’s address: “It is to say that problematizing their own Whiteness should reveal this kind of painful paradox: that good work, done by conscientious White people, can still kill people of color by codifying White language supremacy. The presence of their White bodies perpetuates historical racial injustices. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t. There are no easy way outs of the steel cage of White language supremacy.”
While Foucault is not really interested in describing literal archives, his use of the term may be interesting to refer to when considering my (literal) archive works: “The archive is first the law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events” (129). In other words, his ‘archive’ is a way to describe how knowledge systems work.
Related
Fairclough, Language & PowerFoucault, Discipline & Punish
Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
