Lesson plan 1 for the third week

The preface to Foucault’s first major work, Folie et de´raison: Histoire de la folie a` l’aˆge classique, tried to set out some methodological concerns.³ Foucault argues that what he is writing is a ‘history of limits [limites]’ (DE I, 161), a history of boundaries. His research examines a realm ‘where what is in question are the limits rather than the identity of a culture’ (DE I, 161; MC xiii). Each limit-experience – an experience, such as madness, which inhabits the frontiers of our culture – ‘marks a limit which signifies, at the same time, an srcinal division’ (DE I, 161).

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This interest in the limits of experience – of transgres-sion, of the crossing of boundaries, of the mapping of uncharted space, of the path between the known and the unknown – works on two main levels, the level of the imaginary and the level of the real. Foucault stresses that he

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undertakes his inquiry ‘under the sun of the great Nietzschean search’ (DE I, 162), and the link to the approach of The Birth of Tragedy is clear throughout.

In an interview around the same time he also indicates the influence of the historian of religions, Georges Dume´zil. Dume´zil is important because of his understanding of structure, of social segregation and exclusion. In Histoire de la folie Foucault is interested in seeing how the physical divide of segregation and exclusion interrelates with the experience of madness, with science and rationalist philosophy (DE I, 168; FL 8). This relationship of the real and the imaginary – of the practical and the theoretical – underpins his studies throughout.⁵

The language that Foucault uses in works of his archaeological period – Histoire de la folie , The Birth of the Clinic , The Order of Things , The Archaeology of Knowledge – is often overtly spatialized, making use of terms such as limit, boundary, transgression, and threshold.⁶In its understanding of the conceptu-alization of knowledge – of discourse and episteme – it bears comparison with the spatialized conceptions of Nietzsche and Heidegger. The particular terms that Foucault uses are also found in his contemporaneous essays on literature – mainly in the journal Critique – on figures such as Bataille, Blanchot,

Ho¨lderlin and Flaubert.⁷ As a particular example of the links between his literary and historical work, it is instructive to compare the books The Birth of the Clinic and Raymond Roussel , both published in May 1963. ⁸ The opening line of the former – ‘This book is about space, about language, and about death; it is a question of the gaze’ (NC v; BC ix) – could easily stand as a description of the latter (see RR 209; DL 166). ⁹

What is important about Foucault’s use of overtly spatialized language is that it enables him to free his histories from the teleological bias of alternative accounts. By conceiving of historical periods or epochs as bounded areas, he is able to investigate their limits or thresholds, and trace the potential of transgression, or egress.¹⁰ Foucault is occasionally described, therefore, as a thinker of discontinuity, in that he tries to locate abrupt shifts, or ‘breaks’ in the history of thought.¹¹ Instead, Foucault argues that he recognizes what appear to be obvious breaks, but tries to analyse how the shift occurred. For example, The Birth of the Clinic is concerned with less than half a century, but it is ‘one of those periods that mark an ineradicable chronological threshold’

(NC 199; BC 195). The work of Bayle seems like a ‘hilarious object of folklore’, whereas Pomme’s work, even if it contains errors, is ‘nevertheless part of the same type of knowledge as our own’ (PPC 100; see DE III, 142–4;

FR 53–5). His work is therefore a critical operation to investigate this, aiming:

To establish limits , where the history of thought, in its traditional form, gave itself an indefinite space . . . I would like to substitute the notion that the

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discourses are limited practical domains which have their boundaries [ fron-tie`res – borders/frontiers], their rules of formation, their conditions of existence . . . to which one can affix thresholds, and assign conditions of birth and disappearance. (DE I, 683–4; FL 41)

Similarly he conceives of madness and reason, sickness and health in spatial terms, and then examines the groups that inhabit the liminal areas. I will return to the analyses of actual spaces below, but first it is worth dwelling on Foucault’s use of spatialized language in his work on history, designated by two main rubrics – archaeology and genealogy.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Foucault uses the word archaeology in a number of early works, and it at first appears, as Sheridan suggests, to be almost just an alternative to ‘history’ as a means of distinguishing his approach.¹² Over the course of his work in the 1960s it becomes a central concept in his work. Foucault’s choice of the term

‘archaeology’, however, immediately invites misunderstanding. It is neither the search for an origin – in Greek arche – nor does it relate to geological excavation. Foucault claims that he is justified by ‘the right of words – which is not that of the philologists’ in using the term archaeology to describe his researches, as they examine the archive: ‘Archaeology describes discourses as practices specified in the element of the archive’ (AS 173; AK 131). In the sense that he understands his research it is closer to being an archiveology.

Foucault describes the archive as ‘the general system of the formation and transformation of statements [e´nonce´s]’ (AS 171; AK 130). An e´nonce´ is a technical or formal statement, made within a particular discipline – Linnaeus’

Genera Plantaruma is made up of e´nonce´s , the forms of a verb in a book of Latin grammar are e´nonce´s , as are algebraic formulae (AS 109; AK 82). The e´nonce´ is neither the same kind of unit as a sentence, a proposition, or a speech act, nor is it the same as a material object. It is ‘neither entirely linguistic, nor exclusively material . . . it is caught up in a logical, grammatical, locutory nexus’ (AS 114–15; AK 86). This last definition is important as the rules of discourse function in a similar way to those of logic and grammar. Just as in ordinary speech we need to obey the rules of grammar and logic, within a technical conversation we have to situate our e´nonce´s within the rules of the discourse. ‘An e´nonce´ belongs to a discursive formation as a sentence belongs to a text, and a proposition to a deductive whole’ (AS 152; AK 116). The e´nonce´s actually permissible at any given time are only a fraction of those logically and grammatically possible: the discursive formulation of the subject

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also acts as a limit. This is why, for example, Bayle makes sense to us today, whilst Pomme ‘speaks to us in the language of fantasy’ (NC v–vi; BC ix–x);

why Borges’ ‘certain Chinese Encyclopaedia’ provokes such laughter (M&C 7;

OT xv).

For an e´nonce´ to be accepted within a discipline – even before it can be pronounced true or false – it must ‘fulfil complex and serious demands’, it must be, in Canguilhem’s phrase, ‘within the true’ (OD 35–6). This is an important point, as it proves that a discourse conditions the possibility of all e´nonce´s – whether they are true or false. We cannot judge Pomme’s e´nonce´ as true or false, it fails at a lower level than that, it is simply ‘fantasy’. This becomes clearer in Foucault’s discussion of the ‘positivity of a discourse’ that

‘characterises its unity throughout time . . . it defines a limited space of communication . . . positivity plays the role of what might be called the historical a priori ’ (AS 166–7; AK 126–7). Foucault accepts that juxtaposing these two words produces a ‘rather startling effect’, as the standard under-standing of a priori is that it is ahistorical, absolute. Foucault’s term does not simply mean that the a priori is also endowed with a history, rather he is introducing a notion of pluralism into the history of ideas, in that there have been several a priori structures in various disciplines, that conditioned possi-bilities in those subjects.¹³This bears definite comparison with the understand-ing of the history of science found in Nietzsche and Heidegger. Foucault is, like Nietzsche and the later Heidegger, historicizing the Kantian question.

Foucault’s understanding of the historical a priori does not function as ‘a condition of validity for judgements, but a condition of reality for e´nonce´s ’ (AS 167–9; AK 127–8).¹⁴In other words he is not looking to see whether e´nonce´s are true, but how they are possible.

In The Birth of the Clinic Foucault examines the area of physical illness, and argues that there has been a shift in how things have been seen. Today, medicine is generally accepted to be based upon clear, objective, scientific knowledge: the body and diseases seen with an unblemished empirical eye.

However, it has not always been so, and medicine is not based on pure experience free of interpretation, but is structured by a set of beliefs relative to the period, a grid of a priori conceptions. For the nineteenth century physician the patient (their age, sex, and personal history) got in the way of the disease, so this interference has to be bypassed, through the abstraction of the gaze [ le regard ]. The Birth of the Clinic is therefore the archaeology of this ‘medical gaze’, it looks to establish how it arose and what made it achievable. ¹⁵

In The Order of Things this understanding is put to work across a sweep of disciplines, examining the knowledges of life, language and wealth through three broad historical periods, which Foucault calls epistemes. Interestingly, he finds examples of the shift from one episteme to another in literary works. ¹⁶

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Between the Renaissance and the Classical epoch, Don Quixote’s adventures

‘form the boundary [ tracent la limite ]: they mark the end of the old interplay between resemblance and signs and contain the beginnings of new relations’

(M&C 60; OT 46). The birth of modern culture is found in the work of the Marquis de Sade, especially in Justine and Juliette (M&C 222; OT 210).

Foucault is concerned with:

In what way, then, our culture has made manifest the existence of order, and how, to the modalities of that order, the exchanges owed their laws, the living beings their constants, the words their sequence and their represent-ative value; what modalities of order have been recognized, posited, linked with space and time, in order to create the positive basis of knowledge [connaissances] as we find it employed in grammar and philology, in natural history and biology, in the study of wealth and political economy. Quite obviously, such an analysis does not belong to the history of ideas or of science: it is rather an inquiry whose aim is to rediscover on what basis knowledge [connaissance] and theory become possible [emphasis added];

within what space of order knowledge [ savoir ] was constituted; on the basis of what historical a priori , and in the element of what positivity, ideas could appear, sciences be established, experience be reflected in philosophies, rationalities be formed, only, perhaps, to dissolve and vanish soon after-wards. I am not concerned therefore, to describe the progress of knowledge [connaissances] towards an objectivity in which today’s science can finally be recognised; what I am attempting to bring to light is the epistemological field, the episteme in which knowledge [ connaissances], envisaged apart from all criteria having reference to its rational value or to its objective forms, grounds positivity and thereby manifests a history which is not that of its growing perfection, but rather that of its conditions of possibility [emphasis added]; in this account what should appear are those configurations within the space of knowledge [ savoir ] which have given rise to the diverse forms of empirical science [connaissance empirique]. Rather than a history in the traditional meaning of the word, this is an ‘archaeology’. (M&C 13; OT xxi–xxii)

The archaeological analysis allows Foucault to trace the change in these knowledges, examining how the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had general grammar, natural history and the analysis of wealth; whilst the nine-teenth century had philology, biology and political economy:

Archaeology, addressing itself to the general space of knowledge, to its configurations, and to the mode of being of the things that appear in it,

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defines systems of simultaneity, as well as the series of mutations necessary and sufficient to circumscribe the threshold of a new positivity. (M&C 14;

OT xxiii)

The use of spatial language throughout these works is pronounced. Rather than conceive of historical changes as a linear development, Foucault suggests that the ‘domain of the modern episteme should be represented rather as a volume of space open in three dimensions . . . [an] epistemological trihedron’

(M&C 358; OT 346–7). These examinations lead Foucault to one of his most celebrated formulations, suggesting that ‘the human is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end’.

If those arrangements [ dispositions] were to disappear as they appeared, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility . . . were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of Classical thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that the human would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge [limite] of the sea. (M&C 398; OT 387)

Some key issues arise from Foucault’s archaeological period: first, does his analysis of epistemes constitute a global study, and is he able to escape the problem of subjectivity; and second, are his studies structuralist? Concerning the first, Foucault suggests that archaeological analysis is always limited and regional: ‘Far from wishing to reveal general forms, archaeology tries to outline particular configurations’ (AS 206; AK 157). Whilst it is true that most of his studies do look at limited areas – historically and geographically bounded – at times he does try to make the broad sweep. The Birth of the Clinic , looking at medicine, for about 50 years, and at the French example, is arguably a more successful study than The Order of Things , which studies three areas, across almost 400 years, and across the Western world. Foucault denied this, but the comparative study in the latter work set him up for refutation by counter-examples that did not follow the same epistemic shifts (see AS 207–8; AK 158–9).

Foucault suggests that ‘instead of exploring the consciousness/knowledge [connaissance]/science axis (which cannot escape subjectivity), archaeology explores the discursive practice/knowledge [ savoir ]/science axis’ (AS 239; AK 183). It is clear that a distinction between connaissance and savoir is essential, although they are both usually translated as ‘knowledge’ in English. To explain his understanding of these terms, Foucault adds a note to the English edition:

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By connaissance I mean the relation of the subject to the object and the formal rules that govern it. Savoir refers to the conditions that are necessary in a particular period for this or that type of object to be given to connaissance and for this or that enunciation to be formulated. (AK 15n) ¹⁷

We can see how this understanding parallels the distinction Heidegger makes between ontic and ontological knowledge in Being and Time . For Heidegger, the question of being is an ontological question, which aims ‘at ascertaining the a priori conditions . . . for the possibility of the sciences which examine entities’ – ontic knowledge (GA2, 11).

Just as Heidegger read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason not as a theory of ontic knowledge (an epistemology) but rather of ontological knowledge (an ontology), so too must we understand Foucault’s archaeology as a theory of ontological knowledge (savoir ) rather than of ontic knowledge [ connaissance]. As I noted in Chapter One, in Kant and the early Heidegger, this investigation of the conditions of possibility is a radically ahistorical question. But Nietzsche’s hints in Beyond Good and Evil and the later Heidegger show that this investi-gation must be posed historically. This is precisely what Foucault’s research is concerned with: his refusal to set universal conditions means that this ontology is historicized as a historical ontology. One of Foucault’s most revealing pieces in this regard is his preface to the English edition of The Order of Things . Here he makes some important points about how his investigation should be seen.

First, he notes that the history of science gives pride of place to rigorous sciences such as mathematics, cosmology and physics, but other disciplines – such as those Foucault examines here – are perhaps thought of as too tinged with empirical thought: their history is thought to be irregular.

But what if empirical knowledge, at a given time and in a given culture, did possess a well-defined regularity? If the very possibility of recording facts, of allowing oneself to be convinced by them, of distorting them in traditions or of making purely speculative use of them, if even this was not at the mercy of chance? If errors (and truths), the practice of old beliefs including not only genuine discoveries, but also the most naı ¨ve notions, obeyed, at a given moment, the laws of a certain code of knowledge? (OT ix)

But instead of working at the levels usual for the historian of science, Foucault works at a lower level. The basic level of investigation for such historians is that of tracing the progress of discovery, the formulation of problems and the clash of controversy, a level that examines theories in their internal economy. This is what Foucault calls the ‘processes and products of

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the scientific consciousness’. However, the history of science also tries to look at the influences that affected that consciousness, its implicit philosophies: the unconscious of science. That is to say, historians of science look at the general rules of what constitutes knowledge within their field of study. But Foucault wants to go still deeper, to look at the ‘ positive unconscious of knowledge: a level that eludes the consciousness of the scientist and yet is part of scientific discourse’.

What was common to the natural history, the economics, and the grammar of the Classical period was certainly not present to the consciousness of the scientist . . . but unknown to themselves, the naturalists, economists, and grammarians employed the same rules to define the objects proper to their own study, to form their concepts, to build their theories. It is these rules of formation which were never formulated in their own right, but are to be found only in widely differing theories, concepts, and objects of study, that I have tried to reveal, by isolating, as their specific locus, a level that I have called, somewhat arbitrarily perhaps, archaeological. (OT xi)

It is unfortunate that we do not have the srcinal French version of this text – the version in Dits et e´crits is a retranslation of the English (see DE II, 7–13) – as the distinction between connaissance and savoir would appear to be central.

Foucault distinguishes between the ‘epistemological level of knowledge (or scientific consciousness) and the archaeological level of knowledge’, and therefore explicitly distances himself from working in the field of epistemology.

As I have suggested, his examination of the foundation of epistemology is, like Kant, ontology, but always a historical examination. Foucault is aware that this depersonalized analysis causes difficulty, specifically around the problem of the subject: ‘Can one speak of science and its history (and therefore of its conditions of existence, its changes, the errors it has perpetrated, the sudden advances that have sent it off on a new course) without reference to the

As I have suggested, his examination of the foundation of epistemology is, like Kant, ontology, but always a historical examination. Foucault is aware that this depersonalized analysis causes difficulty, specifically around the problem of the subject: ‘Can one speak of science and its history (and therefore of its conditions of existence, its changes, the errors it has perpetrated, the sudden advances that have sent it off on a new course) without reference to the