week 7

Based on the analysis of archive, discourse and statement, Foucault summarizes four major differences between Archeology and traditional history of ideas, which he thinks are “the utmost importance”(p138): the attribution of innovation, the analysis of contradictions, comparative descriptions, and the mapping of transformations (p138). By examining these different points in four chapters, he is trying to “grasp the specific qualities of archaeological analysis, and measure its descriptive capacity”(p138) .
According to Foucault, history of ideas has two functions: on the one hand, it “recounts the by-ways and margins of history (p136)”; on the other hand, it “sets out to cross the boundaries of existing disciplines, to deal with them from the outside, and to reinterpret them (137)”. Therefore, history of ideas is a discipline with “beginning and ending, is a description of obscure continuities and returns, the reconstitution of development in the linear form of history (137).” That is why this discipline focuses so much on the originality, continuity, and totality, since they are the themes of history of ideas. But Foucault refuses the originality, continuity, and totally that history of ideas uses in its explanation of development of human beings’knowledge. He also refuses comparative method, which replies on the comparison and analogy to find the similarity of different ideas; he refuses typology method, which works on establishing the category, grade, class or attribute of diverse knowledge; he refuses any historical explanation based on the ideas or spirits of that historical period (p166-177). In other words, Foucault opposes metaphysical “totality”or “continuity”in history, and the history determinism. History, in Foucault’s understanding, does not exist the so called “ultimate goal,”nor is it in a “rational progress ”, but the one that plays the power transformation from one form to another. People, according to Foucault, are not the subject of history but the product of history, who are decided by the practice of discourse. History, essentially speaking, does not have subject at all. The objection to the existence of subjects in history means that all the concepts, knowledge, or ideas that related to their subjects are totally cut off, and the so called mainstream value standard, the rationality, the truth, or the progression, like madness, crimes, are constructed by specific practice of discourse in specific historical period, and are subject to possessing different meanings according to the change of the history, including modernity.
Modernity started from 18th century by the movement of enlightenment. It marks the birth of “the age of reason”. Kant and Hegel all suppost that reason is the original power of the advancement of history. Reason constructed the skyscraper of human civilization and will guide the history in a rational and advanced way. However, reason also takes the world wars, the Holocaulst, the economic crisis, the atomic bombs, and the increasingly enlarged gab between the poor and the rich. Similar to Frankfort school, Foucault also criticizes the control power of reason. When we use our reason to conquer the nature and other objects, we exert this control power to the every corner of the society, including the history. Foucault believes that reason is the result of the practice of discourse and power. There is not a pure, neutral, independent discourse that is not controlled by power. Reason does not just help to conceal the social caste, but also serve to establish this caste. Based on this, Foucault challenged sciences and disciples (p178-195). He proposes that the scholars in different disciplines established different discourse space by their own discourse skills, similar to Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigms. These different disciplines are connected and restricted by the relationship of discourse. From here , we could see the difference between Foucault and Marx,: Foucault criticizes Marx’s totality way of analysis, pointing out that practices are always local, regional, or not total practices, and should not be used as tool to construct truth. The reason he said this is because he analyzes knowledge, disciplines and sciences from the perspective of discourse, which makes him easily avoid the risk of arguing the feasibility of practice in constructing truth.

week 6

Foucault part3 Statement and Archive

In Foucault’s The Archeology of Knowledge, “statement” is an important concept to understand his idea of “discourse”. Concerning the concept of “statement”, Foucault did not give an explicit definition of it for the reason that “I wonder whether I have not changed direction on the way; whether I have not replaced my first quest with another; whether, while analyzing ‘objects’or ‘concepts’, let alone ‘strategies’, I was in fact still speaking of statements,; whether the four groups of rules by which I characterized a discursive formation really did define groups of statements. (p80)” However, one can still find fundamental connotation of“statement”through a series of comparison between statements, propositions, formulations and languages.


First of all, “statements” are not propositions (pp81), sentences (p82), or an act of formulation (p83). “statements”are not propositions, for a proposition can be expressed by several different statements, and these different statements are just using the different “propositional structure (p81)”to express the same proposition (For instance, “No one heard”or “It is true that no one heard”p 81 ). Also, the meaning of a statement is not settled. Like if Nietzsche say “God is dead”, the meaning of it is different from anyone else who also say “God is dead”. Or saying “God is dead”in 19th century has totally different meaning from saying it at present time. And “Statements” are not sentences, because it would not appear to be possible to define a statement by the grammatical characteristics of the sentence (for instance, a logical tree, a classificatory table of the botanical species, an accounts book, the calculations of a trade balance...p82 ). It is also farfetched to recognize“Statement ”as an act of formulation, since a statement can be formulated by various languages, and one formulation can be practiced by different grammar structure, and“more than a statement is often required to effect a speech act (p83) ”. It is like we use Chinese, French, or English to report the same piece of news, though we use different grammar structures and linguistic symbols, we are still reporting the same content or meaning.


Secondly, statements do not exist in the same sense in which a language exists. (p85) “if there were no statements, the language would not exist; but no statement is indispensable for a language to exist...the language exists only as a system for constructing possible statements...(p 85).” A statement could have different subjects. For instance, it could be Nietzsche saying “God is dead”, it could also be some else giving the same statement. In different time or space, the position of subject can be taken by any different subjects. However, it is not important that who this subject is, but it is important that what kind of circumstance/ time or space that this subject exists and how this circumstance make this subject state in this way.


Thirdly, the function “statements”lies in the changing relationship between sentences, propositions, or other statements. In other words, a statement is described by specific network where this statement exists, and this network in constantly changing.
Lastly, statements do not exist abstractly, but materially (p88), “this materiality that characterizes the enunciative function reveals the statement as a specific and paradoxical object, but also as one of those objects that men produce, manipulate, use, transform, exchange, combine, decompose and recomposes, and possibly destroy(p105)”, and it is such materiality that determines the controlling position of subjects to statements.

week 5

Foucault: The Archaeology of knowledge

Part 1, Part 2

The word “Archeology” originates from Greek word “arkhaiologia”, the combination of “arkhaio” (ancient) and “logia” (logics, studies). So “Archeology” refers to the study of ancient things (see wiktionary: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/archaeology ).

It is very interesting that Foucault use “archeology” in his book to express the actually opposite meaning. His “archeology ” is different from the traditional meaning or our common understanding on “archeology”: the traditional archeology is one of the branches of history, while Foucault’s “archeology”, to my understanding, is “anti-history”. If the key point of traditional archeology is “continuity” or “linearity” in time, then Foucault’s emphasis on his archeology is “discontinuity” or “non-linearity”. According to Foucault, traditional form of history is to “memorize the monuments of the past, transform them into documents and lend speech to those traces which, in themselves, are not verbal…(p7)” , however, “in our time, history is that which transforms documents into monuments(p7),” in other words, “history is trying to define within the documentary material itself unities, totalities, series, relations. (p7)” However, Foucault’s archeology refuses or I may say is trying to challenge these concepts of history. He contends that those “pre-existing forms of continuity, all syntheses that are accepted without question, must remain in suspense (p 25)”, because the current knowledge, disciplines or culture that we have accepted with no doubt or thought to be proper are just the product of certain historical periods, which might be soon /“in foreseeable future ”out of use (p26).

Foucault even poses more penetrating questions to the existence of all the knowledge emerged in human history. “What are they? How can they be defined or limited? What distinct types of laws can they obey? What articulation are they capable of ? what specific phenomena do they reveal in the field of discourse? (p 26).”He is pretty sure the risks and danger of doing this, like he said in chapter 2: “instead of providing a basis for what already exists, instead of going over with bold strokes lines that have already been sketched, ...one is forced to advance beyond familiar territory, far from the certainties to which one is accustomed, towards an as yet uncharted land and unforeseeable conclusion...(p39)”.

Foucault also stresses the importance of freedom that should be granted to “discourse”, which according to him, is the not just the simple combination of letters or words, and which should not be circumscribed by some regulations or meanings of languages. “Discourse” is the medium that connects people and the world, and the relation between people and the world can also be described as a relation of discourse (p45). There is nothing or no knowledge can exist independently from discourse and “discourse” in Foucault’s discussion, is not just historically pluralistic but synchronically pluralistic as well.

Image source: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2514/3802658435_813ed2df0f_o.jpg