Said an Ethics of Language - Said on Foucault

8/9/2019 Said an Ethics of Language - Said on Foucault

1/11

An Ethics of Language

The Archeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language by Michel FoucaultReview by: Edward SaidDiacritics, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Summer, 1974), pp. 28-37Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/464989 .

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2/11

Michel

Foucault. The

Archeology

of

Knowledge

and

The

Discourse on Lan-

guage.

New York:

Pantheon

Books,

1972.

Since

the

publication

of

Les

Mots et les

choses

(the

title of its

1971

English

translation

is

The Or-

der

of

Things)

in

1966,

Foucault's work has

been

revisionist

in

character

and concern.

For not

only

have his

three

essays

on

Nietzsche

and

Deleuze,

his

two

later books

L'Archdologie

du

savoir,

and

L'Ordre

du

discours,'

all

been

about thinkers

and

thought,

revising,

reordering,

reinterpreting

what had

been

written,

ordered

and

interpreted

differently

from

them;

but also

Foucault

now

turned

his

thought

back towards

his own

previous

work. Thus

it

appeared

in 1969

that The Order

of

Things

and

Madness

and

Civilization

had

tried

"to

measure

the

mutations

that

operate

in

general

in

the field

of his-

tory;

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

anthropological

constraints

[.

.

.].

These

tasks

were

outlined

[in

those two

earlier

books]

in a rather

dis-

ordered

way,

and

their

general

articulation

was

never

clearly

defined"

(p.

15).

Also

part

of

this

revisionist

phase

has been Foucault's disenchantment

with the

idea of an

author,

a

concept

he

has

found

grossly

incapable

of

dealing

with

the

trans-personal

authority

of texts

and

documents.

To

revise

has

not

meant

to

change

opinions

about which

authors are more

sig-

nificant than

others,

although

one can assume

that

that

too

has

happened

to Foucault.

To revise

for

him has

meant

primarily

to understand

more

closely

the

pro-

cess of

knowledge,

its

formation,

dispersion,

trans-

mission and

permanence,

in

terms

of

"anonymous

rules" that are extremely precise and specialized.

Moreover

he

has

been

at

pains

to show that

during

the

course

of this

understanding

he

has been released

not

only

from

obligations

to

the

history

of

ideas,

but

also

from the

conventional

biography

of

great

men

and

the

narration of

important

events.

All

told

then

a

good

deal

of

Foucault's

revision

has been

negative,

and his

description

of

those

anonymous

rules

is fre-

quently

an itemized

list

of what

they

are

not. Usu-

ally,

however,

the

negatives

are

pronounced

against

what

he

refers

to as

anthropology,

which

is the

very

thing

that

Nietzsche had called

anthropomorphism:

the

habit

of

making

all

knowledge

in

the

image

of

man

or, worse,

making every

item

of

knowledge

re-

ducible

to

an

original

human act

without

which

the

item would otherwise have no cognitive status.

Foucault's self-revision

is

theoretically

consis-

tent with one of the

principal

themes

of his histor-

ical

research,

the

disappearance

in

contemporary

knowledge

of man's

role as central

subject,

author

and

actor.

But

why

not also

practically

consistent?

Because Foucault

is,

as I have elsewhere

said,

far

too

clearly

the

unusually impressive

author

of his

work. This is an

unhesitating compliment

to him

as

a

stylist

of

thought,

yet

I

intend it also as a

way

of

Edward

Said,

Professor of

English

and

Comparative

Lit-

erature at

Columbia,

is

teaching

at Harvard this

year.

Edward Said

J i r T It

O

I L G Q J ( J

making

very

doubtful his

theoretical

ambition

to

find

himself,

as

he

would

like,

"on the other

side

of

discourse."

An

anonymous

writer he

clearly

is

not.

Nevertheless

the

ambition

to write

as

if

from the

standpoint

of

anonymous

rules

has been worth main-

taining

since,

according

to

Foucault,

he

now knows

that

discourse

"is

made

up

of

a

limited number

of

statements for which a group of conditions of exis-

tence can

be

defined."

Among

these conditions an

author is

not

necessarily

one

of

the most

important.

To

understand this

we

need

only

recall that Freud's

account of

the

Unconscious

and its

behavior

is

not

completely

dependent

for its

intelligibility upon

the

neurotic

patient.

The author of neurotic

thoughts

does not

authorize,

except

in

a

limited

way,

the

en-

tire

system

of

coherence

by

which

his

thoughts

can

be understood.

Similarly,

Marx's

description

of ide-

ology envisages

no

particular

individual;

as

a

philo-

sophic

idea

it has

a

force

(in

Marxist

discourse)

that

need not

always

be referred back to

Marx's

biogra-

phy.

"Discourses are

composed

of

signs;

but

what

they

do

is

more than

use

these

signs

to

designate

things. It is this more that renders them irreducible

to

the

language

and to

speech.

It is this 'more'

that

we must reveal and

describe"

(p.

49).

The

questions

Foucault has

been

asking

himself therefore are

as

i

These last two works

now

appear

together

in

English

as The

Archeology

of

Knowledge

&

The Discourse

on

Language.

The

first,

whose

French

original

appeared

in

1969,

is translated

by

M.

Sheridan

Smith,

and

the sec-

ond,

which

originally

appeared

in

1971,

is

translated--

less

carefully-by Rupert Swyer.

Unless

otherwise

noted,

page

references

appended parenthetically

to

quotations

from

Foucault are

taken

from

this one

volume

of

two

translations.

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3/11

follows: can

one describe intellectual

production

without

stopping

the

description

at

terminals

like

author,

Zeitgeist,

period,

texts,

ideas or

language?

What

gives

written

language

a

recognizable imprimt

6ver

and

above

the

signature

of its author? What in

short is

the

regularity

of

language

in

use

in

relation

to

which

an author is a

kind of

eruptive

irregularity?

In

raising

these

questions

Foucault,

I

suspect,

would

prefer

to

be

called

a teacher

rather than

an

author,

because

a teacher

exposes knowledge directly

before his students, he frees "a coherent domain of

description"

for and

with

his

students.

The

more

Foucault's

work

increases

in

volume

and

authority

the

more

he

has

agitated

to

diminish

the

author's

prerogatives,

the more also he has

become

a teacher

who

stands

in

"the field

of

coordination and sub-

ordination

of

statements in which

concepts appear,

and

are

defined,

applied

and transformed"

(pp.

182-

83).

Nowhere does Foucault

himself make the ex-

plicit

distinction

between author

and

teacher,

but

it

is

a

very

useful one nonetheless.

Primarily

a teacher

makes

explicit

what an author

hides inside the

flow-

ing

lines of his

language: namely

that

knowledge

is

dispersion,

strategy,

formation,

discontinuity.

More-

over

the

teacher's

place

of

business

is

the

class,

a

site of exteriority, whereas the author's locale, a

page,

is

far

less visible

as

activity

(which

it

is),

and

much

more

his

private property.

All this

is

a

political

motif

running

through

Foucault's

Archeology

as

he

turns

the

teacher's

openness upon

the author's

ac-

cumulated reserves

of

power.

Class

struggle

within

knowledge

pits

man-the-author as historian

(whose

security

is

"the

destiny

of

rationality

and

the

teleo -

ogy

of

the

sciences,

the

long,

continuous

labor

of

thought

from

period

to

period,

the

awakening

and

the

progress

of

consciousness,

its

perpetual

resump-

tion of

itself,

the

uncompleted,

but

uninterrupted

movement

of

totalizations,

the

return

to an

ever-

open

source,

and

finally

the historico-transcendental

thematic,"

p.

39)

against

a

revolutionary

teacher

whose

vocabulary

replaces history

of ideas

with

"archeology,"

documents

with

"monuments,"

texts

with

"discourses,"

language

with

"statements"

(enonces).

The teacher's aim

is

an

attempt

to

reveal discursive

practices

in their com-

plexity

and

density;

to show

that

to

speak

is to do some-

thing-something

other

than

to

express

what

one

thinks;

to

translate what one

knows,

and

something

other

than

to

play

with

the

structures

of

a

language

(langue);

to

show

that to add a statement to

a

pre-existing

series

of

statements

is

to

perform

a

complicated

and

costly ges-

ture,

which

involves

conditions

(and

not

only

a situa-

tion,

a

context,

and

motives),

and

rules

(not

the

logical

and

linguistic

rules

of

construction);

to show

that a

change in the order of discourse does not presuppose

'new ideas,' a little invention and

creativity, a different

mentality,

but transformations n a

practice,

perhaps

also

in

neighboring practices,

and in

their common articula-

tion.

(p. 209)

Thus

the

teacher

deprives

the

sovereign subject

(or

cogito)

"of

the exclusive and instantaneous

right"

to

change

discourse.

What

has

become more clear than

ever

in

Foucault's

revisionist assault

upon

scholarship

is the

particular

will to

knowledge pushing

his work for-

ward. On

the one

hand,

in his most

recent series of

lectures

at the

College

de

France he has been

study-

ing

the

regular

transformations which a

"polymor-

phous"

appetite

for

knowledge

can

undergo;

on

the

other

hand,

the

trajectory

of his own

intellectual

project

has

re-formed itself

to

accommodate

certain

actualities in research

elucidated

by

his

practice.

I

think

it is

imperative

to

understand

that his

vocabu-

lary

of

working

terms-monument,

archeology,

statement,

discourse,

etc.-is not

a

fussy

way

of

de-

claring

his

originality,

but

is rather a

design

to

meet

the actualities and the desires of will to knowledge

in

general,

and his

own search for

knowledge

in

par-

ticular. If

his most recent work

appears

to

be

more

explicitly political

and

revolutionary

than the

work

that

brought

him

great

fame,

then that

is

because,

I

think,

he has

only

lately

apprehended

the latent

pub-

lic

quality

of his historical

investigation

in

Madness

and

Civilization

and The

Order

of

Things.

Probably

the

May

1968

events

in

Paris

played

a

major

role

in

bringing

him out

from behind

his

work: two

espe-

cially

important

and

extended

interviews,

in

which

Foucault

began

to draw forth

the

political meaning

of

"archeology,"

date from that

period.

One

is

"R6ponse

'a

une

question," Esprit,

No. 5

(May

1968),

pp.

850-74;

the other is

"R6ponse

au

Cercle

d'6pis-

t6mologie,"

Cahiers

pour l'analyse,

9

(Summer

1968),

pp.

9-40.

From

then

on,

I

believe that Foucault's

inter-

ests are dominated

by

a

symptomatic

group

of

pres-

sures on him

(one

can

just

as

well call

them desires

or condititons

or

obsessions).

Taken

all

together

these

pressures

have

kept

him

responsible

for

the

goals

and

the

results

of

his

research,

and

responsive

to the

encroachments on him

of

the

academy,

the

community

of

radicals,

the

injustices

of

contempo-

rary

society,

and his

own

popularity.

The

first

of

these

pressures

is the

simplest

to state and

the

hardest

to deal with. It

is the historian's need

to see

history

as a mass of historical

documents

intended,

necessi-

tated, by certain condititons, not as chance produc-

tions

willed into

existence

by

the flukes

of

genius

or time.

An

intellectual

rejection

of

the

watery

ra-

tionale

usually

employed

in

determining

the

setting

of a text in time and

place,

this

pressure

enables

Foucault to

search for

rigor

in

explanation

where

none had

been

possible previously.

Yet in

order

to

resort

neither

to

mechanically

determinist

explana-

tions nor to

simple

causal

arguments,

Foucault

re-

draws

the terrain in

which,

as

a

historian,

he

can

function

systematically.

To

asnwer

the

question

why

did X

(not A)

say

Y

(not

B)

on

occasion

Z

(not W),

X,

Y, Z,

A,

B

and W

must

be

re-defined

as

belonging

wholly

to an

historically

and

particularly

apprehensible

or-

der. This order Foucault calls discourse. Hence:

"The

question

posed by

language analysis

of

some

discursive fact

or other is

always:

according

to what

rules has

a

particular

statement been

made,

and con-

sequently

according

to what

rules could other

sim-

ilar

statements

be made? The

description

of the

events of discourse

poses

a

quite

different

question:

how is it

that

one

particular

statement

appeared

rather than

another?"

(p.

27).

Obviously

statement

is

the

key

word

here,

and

consequently,

as we shall

see,

Foucault

must make the

nature

of

the statement

coherent both

from the

standpoint

of

its

retrospec-

diacritics/Summer

974




4/11

tive historical

analysis

and of its

rationally

intel-

ligible

method of

production.

However

the

place

of

discourse,

its

setting,

in which

statements

occur,

is

specified by

Foucault as the

archive. The retrieval

of

the archive from

its own time and

place

in the

past

and

its

description

is

what,

with

only

the most

unavoidable

geological analogy

intended,

he

calls

archeology.

The next pressure has already been implied in

my

initial definition of discourse

and archive.

Par-

adoxically history

no

longer

can

be

conceived

of

as

a

domain which

is

entirely,

or

even

mainly, temporal

(if

by

time one

means,

generally,

the

linear

succes-

sion of dates and

events).

Foucault

begins

The

Archeology

of

Knowledge

with a

stocktaking

of the

extent

to

which recent

historical research

is about

"the

great

silent,

motionless bases

that

traditional

history

has covered

with a

thick

layer

of

events"

(p.

3).

To

uncover

those bases

is

to

admit

that

an

"epistemological

mutation" has

overtaken

the

study.

of

history.

Its essential

point

is

what Foucault

and

others have

called

decentering,

which

is fundamen-

tally opposed

to

anthropological

and

humanistic

at-

tempts

to

write

total

history

radiating

out

from man.

For

the new

kind of

history

there

is no

quasi-divine

archi,

or

telos,

no

Weltanschauung,

no

smug

con-

tinuity,

no

immobile

structures

necessarily

to

be

found

in

it. The effects

of

ethnology,

linguistics,

psy-

choanalysis,

and

generally

of

Nietzschean

interpre-

tation have been

to

dissolve

the

priority

of

these

given

calendars

which

supposedly

typify

time.

Rather

the historian

must now write

general

history:

"a total

description

draws

all

phenomena

around

a

single

centre-a

principle,

a

meaning,

a

spirit,

a

world-

view,

an overall

shape;

a

general

history,

on the

con-

trary,

would

deploy

the

space

of a

dispersion"

(p.

10).

How else

is

one

to

deal

with

such

questions

as

the "apparently unmoving histories" of "sea routes

[...]

of

corn or

of

gold-mining

[...]

of

drought

and

of

irrigation

[...] crop

rotation

[...]

of the

balance

achieved

by

the

human

species

between

hunger

and

abundance"

(p.

3)?

No

longer

is the

historian

simply

to link

events

in a

causal

series;

he

must

now

ask

about

different

sorts of

series,

new

criteria

of

period-

ization,

differently

articulated

systems

of

relation

between

series.

Dates,

by

which

a

sequential

calendar

miming

the

line

of a

man's life

was

formerly

con-

structed and

given priority,

acquire

diminished

and

qualified

significance.

Recurrent

distributions

and

architectonic

unities,

displacements

and

transforma-

tions-these

are

the

spatial

indicators

of historical

activity

today,

and

it

is

Foucault's

goal

to formulate

a method sensitive to these indicators.

But the

linear

image

of

time,

based on the se-

quential

calendar

of a man's

life,

is itself abetted

by

"two models

that have

for so

long

imposed

their

image:

the

linear model

of

speech

(and

partly

at

least of

writing)

in which all events succeed one

an-

other,

without

any

effect

of coincidence and

super-

position;

and

the model

of the stream of conscious-

ness

whose

presence

always

eludes itself in its

open-

ness

to

the future

and

its retention

of the

past" (p.

169).

It

is to break

the

hold of these models

that

Foucault

describes

discourse and

archive,

with

their

own

forms

of

sequence

and succession. Here we

come

to the

third

and the most

complex

pressure up-

on the new

method. For

just

as

history

is not

tem-

poral

sequence,

because

the

birth-to-death

span

of

man's

life

is

an

adequate

measure neither

of

large

units

like

demographic expansion,

of

phenomena

of

rupture,

discontinuity,

coincidence,

and

complemen-

tarity,

so too

the

spatial dispersion

enacted

by

his-

tory

cannot be filled with

objects

that are

analogies

(disguised

or

not)

or

direct unmediated

representa-

tions of human life. Textual evidence, in other

words,

is

based

on historical

documents,

but these

documents are

formed and

persist

monumentally,

according

to

their own

laws,

and

not

according

to a

human

image.

A

text

does

not

simply

record-is

not

the

pure

graphological

consequence

of-an

im-

mediate desire

to

write. Rather it distributes

various

textual

impulses, regularly

and on

several

axes;

what

gives

these

impulses

unity

is

what Foucault

calls

a

discursive

formation,

bound

neither

by

an

individual

author,

a

"period,"

a

"work,"

nor an idea.

A

text,

to

those who

persist

in

making

of a

contingent

print-

ing

device an

ontological

unit

having

final

value,

is a

fundamentally

inconstant

epistemological

judgment.

The

background

for this

more

than

simply

relativist

thought

was

first sketched

in

detail

by

Fou-

cault in

the

final

pages

of

The

Order

of

Things.

He

remarked there how mimetic

representation

after

such

writers as

Sade,

Mallarm6

and

Nietzsche

could

convey

neither

their desires

nor

their

psychological

discoveries.

Concurrently

the

logic

of

syntax

as well

as

the linear

sequence

of

printed language

in

their

work is

assaulted

(and

found

wanting)

by

a

wish to

express

non-syntactic, non-sequential

thought.

To-

gether

with

these

writers, Marx,

Saussure

and Freud

put

forward

systems

of

thought

for

which no

image

was

adequate.

Thus

writing

could not have a

predic-

tive form

based

either

upon biological growth

or

up-

on

a

representative governing image.

Instead

writing

sought to constitute its own realm, inhabited entirely

by

words and

the

spaces

between

them. In turn

the

relations between

this

realm

and

empirical reality

were made

possible

according

to

particular strategies

and

enunciative functions. What

ideas one

has about

a text therefore

change

definitively

as one examines

a novel

by Virginia

Woolf,

or

a textbook

of

organic

chemistry,

or a

political pamphlet,

all

dating

from

roughly

the same

period.

The

Archeology

of

Knowledge

takes the

pro-

cess

of

defining

the realms of

language

and

"reality"

commonly

known

by

all

three

such

"texts"

a

step

closer to formalization. The

vocabulary

and

the

problematics

of that

kind

of

knowledge

are articu-

lated

by

Foucault with the

principle negative

aim of

avoiding descriptions equivalent to, or understand-

able in terms

of,

sense

impressions.

Since

no

image

is

capable

of

containing knowledge-formal

knowl-

edge

cannot be

immediately

seen,

heard, smelled,

felt,

or tasted-it

can

neither

be

produced

nor

sought

after

(desired)

in the

simple experiential

terms

of

daily

life. The

will to

knowledge expresses

itself

in

what Foucault

calls an

element

of

rarity

very special

to it. Hence the

pertinence

of Foucault's

choice

of

savoir over

connaissance

(English regrettably

trans-

lates both

as

knowledge)

for the

object

of his

study:

the former is unthinkable without reference to condi-

tions and

appropriations

that make it

knowledge,

the

latter-as

Foucault

says

in a

summary

of his

1970-




5/11

71 course of

lectures at

the

Collkge-is

best

studied

as

something

fundamentally

subjective

and

selfish

(interessde),

produced

as an event

of desire

(produite

comme

evenement du

vouloir),

and

determining

truth

by

falsification

(determinant

par falsification

l'eflet

de

vdritd).

Therefore

knowledge

(savoir)

is that of which

one

can

speak

in

a

discursive

practice,

and

which is

specified

by

that fact: the domain

consti-

tuted

by

the

different

objects

that

will

or will not

acquire

a scientific status

(the knowledge

of

psychiatry

in

the

nineteenth century is not the sum of what was thought

to be

true,

but

the

whole

set

of

practices, singularities,

and

deviations

of

which

one

could

speak

in

psychiatric

discourse);

knowledge

is also

the

space

in

which the

subject may

take

up

a

position

and

speak

of the

objects

with

which he

deals

in

his

discourse

(in

this

sense,

the

knowledge

of clinical

medicine

is

the whole

group

of

functions

of

observations,

interrogation, decipherment,

recording

and

decision that

may

be exercised

by

the

sub-

ject

of

medical

discourse); knowledge

is

also the field

of coordination and subordinationof statements n

which

concepts appear,

and are

defined,

applied

and

trans-

formed

(at

this

level,

the

knowledge

of Natural

History,

in the

eighteenth

century,

is

not the

sum of

what was

said,

but

the

whole set of

modes

and

sites

in

accordance

with

which

one

can

integrate

new

statement

with the

already said); lastly, knowledge is defined by the possi-

bilities of use and

appropriation

offered

by

discourse

(thus,

the

knowledge

of

political

economy,

in

the Clas-

sical

period,

is

not

the

thesis

of the different

theses sus-

tained,

but the

totality

of its

point

of

articulation

on

other discourses or

on

other

practices

that are not dis-

cursive).

There are bodies

of

knowledge

that are inde-

pendent

of the

sciences

(which

are

neither their

histor-

ical

prototypes,

nor their

practical by-products),

but

there is no

knowledge

without

a

particular

discursive

practice;

and

any

discursive

practice may

be defined

by

the

knowledge

that

it

forms.

(pp.

182-83)

Knowledge

is

specified

by

discourse,

and

vice

versa.

The

tautology

does not

matter,

if

only

be-

cause

what it

thereby

banished

is

a

conception

of

knowledge as the free-floating, spontaneous emana-

tion of

genius

and/or individual

hard

work. Fou-

cault is not

the first

modern to

attack

this romantic-

ally

humanist vision

of

knowledge, although

I think

he

does more to

regularize

the

irregularities

of

knowledge,

to

specify

knowledge

that

is,

than most

others.

The

importance

of

the attack has

gone

far

too

long

unnoticed,

however,

especially

in

the

United

States. In

the first

place

romantic

knowledge

(con-

naissance),

signifies

property quite

narrowly,

the

property

of the

big

brain

whose

inspiration

knowl-

edge

therefore seems.

Secondly

it

is

antidemocratic,

not in

any

vague

counter-culture

sense,

but rather

in

the sense

that

permits

its votaries to wave

the

ban-

ner of

science and

knowledge

and,

at the

same time

to conceal the privilege-but not the rigor or real

science,

which

are absent-that

entitles them

to

act

as

thought-producers.

In March

1972 Foucault be-

gan

explicitly

to

speak

of

an

interplay

of

desire,

power

and interest

as

being

the

radical intellectual

target

in

the

struggle

to uncover

the hidden

strategies

of

social

power

(L'Arc,

number

49,

p.

9).

The con-

tinuity

between such a

statement and

Foucault's

at-

tack

upon

anti-democratic

epistemology

in

The

Archeology

is

plain.

Thirdly,

and this

realization I

believe

is

necessitated

by

the first

two,

romantic

knowledge

is

anti-intellectual and

anti-rational. Yet

nowhere

does

Foucault

say

as a result

that

knowl-

edge

(savoir)

is

immediately

accessible to

introspec-

tion,

to

direct

questioning,

or

even

to

consciousness.

What

he does

say

is

that

knowledge

is

produced,

dis-

seminated and

reformed

in

ways

that can be

intelligi-

bly

specified

and

characterized,

albeit with

difficulty.

In one or two

places

Foucault

carefully

distinguishes

between his

archeological

method and

Chomsky's

methods

(never

mentioned

by

name)

of

linguistic

analysis

based

upon

the

generative

model.

While

both theories appear to have a strong libertarian

thrust,

archeology,

by

seizing,

out of the mass

of

things

said,

upon

the

statement defined as

a

function

of realization of

the

verbal

performance, distinguishes

itself from a

search

whose

privileged

field is

linguistic competence:

while

such

a

description

constitutes a

generative

model,

in order

to

define the

acceptability

of

statements,

archeology

tries

to

establish rules of

formation,

in order to

define

the

con-

dition of their realization.

(p.

207)

The

opacity

of

this

disclaimer

thins

out

a

bit

if

it

is

read with the

following,

earlier,

passage

in

mind:

"it is

vain to

seek,

beyond

structural,

formal,

or in-

terpretative

analyses

of

language,

a domain

that is

at

last

freed from all

positivity,

in which the

freedom

of

the

subject,

the labour of

the human

being,

or

the

opening up

of

a transcendental

destiny

could

be ful-

filled"

(p.

112).

Positivity

and

specification:

these

make

up

the

tough,

almost

material,

rind of

knowledge.

Yet like

an

archive

(as

understood

conventionally) they

are

not

wholly corporeal

either,

for

they

inhabit a

spe-

cial

medium

of

rarity. Mainly,

positive

and

specifi-

able

knowledge

is

regular,

it absorbs

discontinuity

and

individual

effort,

it

conceals its

structure,

it is

eminently capable

of

being

there,

even

if

it

is not

visible,

and it

is

repeatable.

This is

not as

unimag-

inable a

constellation

of features as its

seems.

Fou-

cault has assembled

together

various

characteriza-

tions made by other writers, some of whom he names

and

acknowledges,

others

he

probably

did

not

have

in

mind. It is

a useful

exercise to

describe a few

of

these correlative

discoveries made

by

others.

They

have the

virtue

of

placing

Foucault

against

a

rela-

tively

familiar

background

where,

if

my

irony

is not

mis-interpreted,

the almost

oppressively

novel

vocab-

ulary

of his

methodology

itself

seems

more

regular.

Nevertheless

one

must

note

that Foucault's own

thought

about

originality

is

highly

ambivalent.

I

shall

return to that

critical

problem

a

little later.

One

brings

Foucault

together

with

Thomas S.

Kuhn,

Georges

Canguilhem

and Michael

Polanyi

only

with

trepidation.

Nevertheless I have

ventured

to do so

and find

the

attempt

instructive. All of

these writers on the structure of scientific knowledge

stress

the

regularity

of

that

knowledge,

that

is,

the

shared

paradigms

discussed

by

Kuhn that

comprise

a

"research

consensus." This

consensus enables further

research,

accommodates or is

radically

altered

by

anomaly,

and

always,

according

to

Kuhn,

performs

the function of

providing

in

ongoing

time

"a

new

and

more

rigid

definition of

the

field"

of scientific

research. "Men

whose

research

is

based on

shared

paradigms

are

committed to

the same rules and

standards

for scientific

practice.

That

commitment

and the

apparent

consensus it

produces

are

prereq-

diacritics

Summer

974




6/11

uisites for

normal

science,

i.e.

for

the

genesis

and

continuation of a

particular

research tradition"

(The

Structure

of

Scientific

Revolutions.

Chicago:

Univ.

of

Chicago

Press,

rev. ed.

1970;

p.

11).

If new

problems

emerge

as anomalies

it

is

because

they

are

in

disharmony

with "the

background provided

by

the

paradigm"

(p.

65).

Within the

paradigm,

as

Canguilhem

showed

in a

very

early study

that

pre-

dates Kuhn's Scientific Revolutions by nineteen

years,

criteria are formed

in

medicine,

for

instance,

that

determine

"the

normal"

and

"the

pathological."

He

concludes

that

"every empirical concept

of illness

retains a

disciplined

relation

with

an

axiological

con-

cept

of

illness.

Consequently

it

is

not an

objective

method that characterizes

a

biological phenomenon

as

pathological.

It

is

always

the relation between ob-

server

and

individual

patient,

mediated

by

the

clinic,

which

justifies

the label

pathological"

(Le

Normal

et

le

pathologique.

Paris:

P.

U.

F.,

rev.

ed.

1962;

p.

156).

Canguilhem dispels

the

subjectivist

fallacy

by

saying

that there

is

such

a

thing

as

objective path-

ology

so

long

as

it

is

understood

first

that

that

objec-

tivity

is

absolutely

tied to a

specific

biological

history

(with

its own time, events,

sequence,

sociology,

or-

der)

and

second,

that

the

object

of

objective path-

ological practice

"is

not

so much a fact as

a

value"

(p.

157).

In 1966

Canguilhem

refined

this view

by

say-

ing

that within a

science

like

pathology

there

are

norms

that

regulate

even

the

concept

of

error. Thus

"health

is

a

genetic

and

enzymatic

correction

of

an

error

[in

the

substitution

of

one

molecular

arrange-

ment

for another:

the

conceptual

structure of

bio-

chemistry

here

is

borrowed

from information-

theory].

To be

sick

is

to

have been

wrong,

wrong

not

in the sense

of

a

counterfeit

note

in the sense

of

a

false

brother,

but

in the sense

of a mistaken fold

of

the page, or of a wrong line of verse" (Canguil-

hem,

p.

208).

In

Personal

Knowledge (Chicago:

Univ.

of

Chicago

Press, 1958)-to

which Kuhn

re-

fers-and

in

his

Lindsay

Memorial

Lectures,

The

Study

of

Man

(Chicago:

Univ.

of

Chicago

Press,

1959),

Polanyi

demonstrates

that

what he calls

tacit

knowledge

can be

incorporated,

and

is indeed

an

important

part

of what

passes

for

"objective"

scien-

tific

research.

Tacit

knowledge

need

not be

immedi-

ately

formulable

in a set

of

rules;

nonetheless it

is

consentual

and works

as

a

basis

upon

which

scien-

tific

research

conducts

itself. The

point

is that

even

the

apparently

contradictory

status of

explicit

and

implicit

knowledge,

as well

as the

discontinuity

be-

tween

them,

does

not inhibit

the

regularity

of

the

whole body of scientific knowledge at any given

time.

Kuhn's brilliant

analysis

of the

role

played

by

textbooks in

contributing

to the scientific

par-

adigm

stands

in a

fairly

close

relation to

Foucault's

account of

discursive

practice

"as a

body

of

anon-

ymous,

historical

rules,

always

determined

in the

time

and

space

that have

defined a

given

period,

and

for a

given

social,

economic,

geographical,

or

lin-

guistic

area,

the

conditions

of

operation

of the enun-

ciative

function"

(p.

117).

Foucault's

archeology

of

knowledge

scants

the

difference

between

science,

social science and

hu-

manities.

All of these divisions are

subject

to

the

laws of discursive

practice,

and the relations

between

them

are

equally

a

function

of

these

laws.

If

from

the

"archeological"

historian's

viewpoint,

a

society

can be

studied as

a

quasi-transcendental

form of dis-

course

(I

adapt

this

notion

from

Angus

Fletcher's

theory

of a

transcendental

art-form in his The

Tran-

scendental

Masque:

An

Essay

on Milton's

"Comus."

Ithaca:

Cornell

Univ.

Press,

1972),

then

the intra-

social

exclusions

and

incorporations

that

comprise

the penal system, the organization of university cur-

ricula,

the

structure of

the

political

bureaucracy,

in-

sofar

as

these

are

coherent

positivities,

are discursive

practices,

too.

Thus a

positvity

is

that

acted-upon

knowledge

which

can

be

rationally

ascertained

and

articulated,

no

matter

how

implicit

or

hidden it

may

first

appear

to be.

The

more one

reads

in

Foucault

the

more one

notices

the

extent

to

which

he

is sus-

picious

of,

and

attracted

to,

knowledge

whose

prac-

tice

conceals the

fact

of

its

fabrication.

He

has this

in

common

obviously

with

a

number of

modern

thinkers,

of

whom

Barthes

the

structuralist,

Lukics

and

Adorno,

the

neo-Marxists,

furnish

the

most

directly

relevant

analogies.

Barthes'

anatomy

of

myth

(in

Mythologies)

construes

the

bourgeois

habit

of appeals to immutable

"reality"

as a form of illu-

sionment,

by

which

what is

present

is

falsely

given

as

not-made and

always-there.

Lukics'

definition

of

proletarian

class-consciousness also

demonstrates

how

the

bourgeois

status-quo

masks a

discourse

or

a

theory

that

denies

its

own

self-preserving

activity.

And

Adorno,

whose

philosophical

investigations

of

contemporary reality

play

an

important

role

in Fred-

eric

Jameson's

excellent

Marxism and

Form

(Prince-

ton:

Princeton Univ.

Press,

1972),

equates

the

so-

called

autonomy

of a

work

of art

in

class

society

with

the

class-derived

concealment of

work:

Works

of art owe their

existence to

the social

division

of

labor,

to

the

separation

of

mental and

physical

work.

In such a situation, however, they appear under the

guise

of

independent

existence;

for

their medium

is not

that of

pure

and autonomous

spirit,

but

rather

that of

a

spirit

which

having

become

object

now

claims

to have

surmounted the

opposition

between

the two. Such

con-

tradiction

obliges

the

work

of

art

to

conceal

the

fact

that

it is

itself a human

construction.

(p. 408)

Jameson

continues Adorno's

argument

as

follows:

"There

is thus

given

within

the

very concept

of work

-either in

the form

of

the

division of labor in

gen-

eral

or in

the more

specialized

types

of

production

characteristic of

capitalism-the

principle

of a cen-

sorship

of

the

work

process

itself,

of a

repression

of

the

traces

of

labor on the

product."

Yet if

the work

process

is

not to remain

occult,

a certain order must be assumed for it. How, if one

does not

wish to

employ

crude sensationalist meta-

phors,

can

one

depict

rational

work as

a

process

hav-

ing significant

material

consequences?

How does one

deal with

the

problem

of

showing

discourse

in its

persistence

to be

what Foucault

has called a

material-

istic

incorporeal?

Val6ry's

Leonardo

comes

to

mind

here.

What

interests

Val6ry

in Leonardo

is not

his

biography

but

his

constructive

power

as

a

mind.

Construction

itself has its own

logic

whose

basis

is

an

"intervention

in natural

things."

The initial

step

in

a construction

is

a decision to move

away

from

nature and into

the

constructive element.

(There

is

an

interesting study

of Leonardo's use of

sketches




7/11

that

develops

this

theme

further

than

Valry:

E.

H.

Gombrich's

"Leonardo's

Method of

Working

out

Compositions"

in his

Norm and

Form:

Studies

in

the

Art

of

the

Renaissance

(London:

Phaidon,

1966).

Thereafter

Val6ry

meditates

upon

Leonardo's

architectural

projections

for

monuments

which,

al-

though

they

have no

empirical equivalent,

neverthe-

less

have

a

special

empirical validity.

Leonardo saw

"the air

[as

being]

full of

infinite

lines,

straight

and

radiating,

intercrossing,

and

interweaving

without

ever coinciding one with another." In this element of

rarity

Leonardo

puts

his

monuments:

The

monument

(which

composes

the

City,

which

in turn is

almost

the whole

of

civilization)

is

such

a

com-

plex

entity

that our

understanding

of

it

passes through

several

successive

phases.

First

we

grasp

a

changeable

background

that

merges

with

the

sky,

then

a

rich

tex-

ture of motifs

in

height,

breadth,

and

depth,

infinitely

varied

by perspective,

then

something

solid,

bold,

resis-

tant,

with

certain

animal

characteristics-organs,

mem-

bers-then

finally

a

machine

having gravity

for

its

mo-

tive

force,

one that

carries

us

in

thought

from

geometry

to

dynamics

and

thence to the most

tenuous

speculations

of

molecular

physics.

(Valkry.

Collected Works.

Prince-

ton:

Princeton Univ.

Press,

1972;

vol.

III,

pp.

49-50)

"In our time,"

says

Foucault,

"history

is that which

transforms

documents

into

monuments"

(p.

7).

Val-

6ry's

account

of the

constructed monument corre-

sponds

to

Foucault's

concept

of

the duration

in

his-

tory

of

texts as

monument: the historian's

discipline

is

archeology

("the

intrinsic

description

of the

monu-

ment")

which

also

passes

through

several

successive

phases.

A

document's

monumentality

can

only

emerge

when

discourse

is not elided

with

reality.

The

time

of its

construction,

the time

of

monumen-

tal

duration,

the

time

of its

analysis:

these

three are

correlates

that

tend

differently

to

repeat

each

other

without

being

copies

of

nature

or of

an

ideal.

Monu-

mentality

is

the

general

mode of

presence

of dis-

course, although

in

the

special

sense of the word

in-

tended

by

Foucault

(like

Valery

before

him)

monu-

mental

presence

does not

exclusively

mean

empirical

visibility.

A

library,

for

instance,

is

one

particular

mode of

presence

for

discourse

as

monument:

as vis-

ible

objects

the books in

the

stacks

are less

important

than

the

infinitely

interwined

lines

that

connect

the

books

to

each

other

and

keep

the word on the

pages.

Moreover in

the

conception

of

books and

language

as a

universe that

Borges

has

made

cur-

rent,

each

discourse

becomes

a sort of

cross-refer-

ence to

every

other discourse. In such

a universe

there

is

no

determinable

origin

and no final

goal,

since

repetition

underlies

cross-reference. Foucault's

philosophical

affinity

with Gilles

Deleuze derives

from this interest in repetition, although recently the

affinity

has

become

political

as

well.

Deleuze's

Dif-

ference

et

repetition (Paris:

P.

U.

F., 1968)

goes

a

very long

way

towards

laying

forth a

philosophy

of

repetition

with which

Foucault,

whose

recognition

that

there

is

no

Origin

is

pre-supposed

by

his

interest

in

repetition

and

discourse,

has

publicly agreed.

What

makes such

comparative

abstractions like dif-

ference and

repetition

clear in

Deleuze's otherwise

very complex

argument

is his

way

of

describing

those

things

as

forms of action.

"Repetition

[in

time]

is a condition of action

before it becomes a

concept

of reflection"

(Deleuze,

p.

21).

Using examples

from

Marx,

H61derlin,

Vico,

and

Nietzsche,

Deleuze

con-

structs before

his

reader the drama

of

repetition

that

is

capable

of

producing

the

absolutely

different.

Aside from

being

an

appealingly

surprising

volte-face,

this

argument

reveals

the

extent

to which

repetition,

as a device

or a mode

or a

philosophic

habit,

is

not

the

opposite

of

originality

in the romantic

sense

of

that

word. If as

a

concept

or a

description, original-

ity

concealed an

appeal

to

some

extra-positive "priv-

ilege" (the Muse, inspiration, a "raptus") it also

contained

an

anxiety

about the value of what

one

was

saying.

As

Vico was

one of the first to

argue,

all utterance

is

a

form

of

re-inscription:

hence

orig-

inality

is

a far more unstable

quality.

Instead,

it

and

creativity

belong

inherently

to what

Harold

Bloom

calls

misprision,

one

of whose

signs

is

parody,

the

form of

writing

relied

upon

to a

great

extent

by

many

of the modern

masters like

Eliot,

Mann

and

Joyce.

This

deliberate

mis-taking

characterizes

in-

ventiveness.

Far from

being

the

-realization

of

an

"interiority"

like

inspiration,

discourse

for

Foucault

is

only misprision

and

exteriority:

"it is

a

practical

domain

that

is

autonomous"

(p.

121).

Therefore,

"the time

of discourse

is not the

translation,

in

a

visible chronology, of the obscure time of thought"

(p.

121).

Here we

can

begin

to

understand how

repetition

produces

difference.

Discursive

language

is

like

a

repertory

theatre

that

stages

numerous

spectacles.

This

figure

connects

Foucault

with

Kenneth

Burke's dramatistic

analysis

of

literature,

although

Foucault

holds that

discursive

practice

is neither

benign

nor

necessarily

artistic:

effectiveness

is its main criterion of

success. Effec-

tiveness can

be

judged

in

several

ways

but

Foucault

is

right,

I

think,

not

to

make

effectiveness

dependent

upon

so

fickle

a

perception

as

the

retrospective

crit-

ic's.

Yet

neither is

effectiveness

passive conformity

to

a

sort

of

general

will.

Discursive

practice

is

modified

constantly by

each

statement made within

it, just

as

in Kuhn's

discussion

of

the research

paradigm

every

research

worker

re-articulates a

special aspect

of the

paradigm

and

extends

and refines it further.

We

must

still

ask,

however,

where discursive

practice

actually

takes

place,

how is its

effectiveness measured

or

realized,

and

what sort of

activity

it is

really.

In

answering

these

questions

in The

Archeology

of

Knowledge

Foucault

admits that

what

he

supplies

is

not

yet

a

theory

but

only

a

possibility

(pp.

114-15).

One

ought

to be

willing

to

accept

this

qualification

if,

in

exchange,

the

possibility provides

enough

of an

indication

that a

possibility

now is not

just

an

excuse

for

the absence of

theory.

In

other

words,

is

a

possi-

bility

described at

length

forceful

enough

to

prepare

the ground for a theory? I think it is, in this case.

For Foucault is

proposing

a method for

under-

standing

social

behaviour

as what

it

is

that

people

must do in

order to

speak

and

write as

contributors

to an

ongoing system

of

the

values,

discoveries,

er-

rors,

and institutions that

we call

knowledge

(savoir).

Since

knowledge

is neither

a

mysterious jumble

of

ideas nor a fact

of

nature,

and since it is

not some-

thing

that

one

has

but

something

that one

does,

it

is

best

conceived

of

initially

as

occupying

a

group

of

hypothetical

spaces.

One of

them

might

be where

one stands in order

to

speak,

another

might

be from

dkccri

IS/Summer

1974




8/11

where he draws forth the elements

he

combines

to

make

a

statement,

another

might

be where he

puts

his

statement,

and a fourth

might

be where

his

state-

ment

is

either

preserved,

modified,

accumulated,

or

passed

on.

Surrounding

all

these

places

is a set

of

general

boundaries,

or

limits,

that holds all the

other

spaces

in.

This

constraint

is

the

dpistm&e,

which,

when

it is

specified

as

an

actively

populated

expanse

of knowledge-acts at a given moment in history, is

not an

open space

but rather

a

system

of

distances.

Thus in

the

eighteenth

century,

for

example,

the

dis-

tance between

religion

and

psychology

as

discipline

is

closer

than

it is a hundred

years

later. The

whole

map

of

such relations

is what

Foucault

means

by

dpistime.

This

is

very

different

from

describing

a

Zeitgeist,

or

an

ideology,

or

a

Weltanschauung.

What

distinguishes

dpisteme

from

them

is not

that

all

are

unconscious

or

communal,

but

that

only

the

episteme

is not

an

implicit

belief-system

sometimes

projected

by

individuals

or

institutions. Rather

the

dpistmrne

"is

a

constantly moving

set

of

articulations,

shifts,

and

coincidences

that are established

only

to

give

rise

to

others"

(p.

192).

The rules

collectively

governing

these move-

ments of the

dpistem'-governing

their

appearance

as

events,

for the

dpistime

is

usually

described

by

Foucault

as

a set

of

moving

constraints

that

estab-

lish an

outer

limit of

knowledge-make

discourse

possible.

The

historical

economy

of discourse is

the

archive:

The archive is

first

the

law

of

what

can be

said,

the

system

that

governs

the

appearance

of statements

as

unique

events.

But

the archive

is also

that

which

deter-

mines

that

all these

things

said

do not accumulate

end-

lessly

in

an

amorphous

mass,

nor are

they

inscribed

in

an

unbroken

linearity,

nor do

they disappear

at

the

mercy

of

chance external

accidents;

but

they

are

grouped

together in distinct figures, composed together in accor-

dance

with

multiple

relations,

maintained or blurred

in

accordance

with

specific

regularities.

...

The archive

is

not

that

which, despite

its

immediate

escape,

safeguards

the event

of the

statement,

and

preserves,

for

future

memories,

its

status

as

an

escape;

it is that which

em-

bodies

it,

defines at

the

outset

the

system

of

its

enunci-

ability.

Nor

is the

archive

that

which

collects the

dust

of statements

that

have

become inert once

more,

and

which

may

make

possible

the

miracle of their

resurrec-

tion;

it is

that

which

defines

the mode of occurrence

of

the

statement-thing;

t is

the

system

of

its

functioning.

Far

from

being

that

which

unifies

everything

that

has

been

said in

the

great

confused

murmur of

a

discourse,

far

from

being

only

that

which

insures

that

we exist

in

the midst

of

preserved

discourse,

it is

that

which

differ-

entiates

discourses

in

their

multiple

existence

and

speci-

fies them in their own duration. (p. 129)

Discourses

exist

within

the archive.

They

are

special-

ized modes

of utterance

(clinical

discourse,

for

in-

stance,

or

sociological

discourse)

that

must

not

be

confused

with

simple

jargon.

A discourse

is

syste-

matic,

and

it has

epistemological,

social,

political,

economic

and historical

relations

with other

dis-

courses in

the archive.

Most

important,

the

discourse

is

not

dialectical-"without

flaw,

without

contradic-

tion,

without

internal

arbitrariness"

(p.

114)-and

is made

up

of

statements,

which

"bear an

enuncia-

tive function"

(p.

115).

We are

back

to

effectiveness,

and it

now be-

comes

possible

to

see

that Foucault

is

most

interested

in

defining

the statement:

the

dpisteme',

the

archive,

even

discourse,

all

these

are

analytic

instruments

more or

less

invented

by

the

archeologist

in

order

to

approach

the

statement,

in

order

to

provide

a

suitable

terminology

for

apprehending

the

statement,

which

is

after

all

the

very

mode

and

presence

of

effectiveness.

For Foucault the

statement

is

not

a

sentence necessarily, nor any unit describable by

grammar

or

logic.

Moreover

since

it

is in and of

discourse

it

cannot be

something

latent

that

is real-

ized

by

discourse. The

more

Foucault

enumerates

what a

statement

is

not,

the

more it

is

evident

that

a

statement

is difficult

both to

make

and to describe:

it is

rare.

The statement is not

just

another

unity-above

or be-

low-sentences

and

propositions;

it

is

always

invested

in unities of this

kind,

or even in

sequences

of

signs

that do not

obey

their laws

(and

which

may

be

lists,

chance

series,

tables);

it characterizes not

what

is

given

in

them,

but

the

very

fact that

they

are

given,

and

the

way

in which

they

are

given.

It

has

the

quasi-invisibility

of the

"there

is,"

which is effaced

in

the

very

thing

of

which one can say: "there s this or that thing." (p. 111)

Perhaps

a

prefiguration

of

what Foucault means

by

a

statement

is

to be

found

in

the smile

of

the

Chesh-

ire

cat

or,

as he himself

says

in the

opening pages

of

The Order

of

Things,

in

the list

of

animals

given

in

a

Chinese

encyclopedia

referred

to

in "The

Analyt-

ical

Language

of

John

Wilkins"

by

Borges.

"Al-

though

the

statement

cannot

be

hidden

it

is

not

vis-

ible

either

[...]

it is

like

the

over-familiar

that con-

stantly

eludes one"

(pp.

110-11).

Another

important

aspect

of

the statement

is that it

is

correlative

with

a lack:

"There

may

in fact be-and

always

are-in

the conditions

of

emergence

of

statements,

exclu-

sions,

limits,

or

gaps

that

divide

up

their

referential,

validate only one series of modalities, enclose groups

of

coexistence,

and

prevent

certain

forms

of use"

(p.

110).

Thus a

statement

emerging

prevents

an-

other utterance from

emerging; conversely,

with

re-

gard

to a

whole series of

possibilities,

a

statement

emerges

to

be

something

else,

namely,

a

statement,

but not

an

idea,

or a

sentence,

or a

passing

remark.

At

all

events,

one

thing

at

least

must be

empha-

sized

here: that the

analysis

of discourse

[and

of state-

ments in

and

by

discourse]

thus

understood,

does

not re-

veal

the

universality

of a

meaning,

but

brings

to

light

the

action

of

imposed

rarity,

with

a

fundamental

power

of affirmation.

Rarity

and

affirmation:

rarity,

in

the last

resort of affirmation

[Swyer's

translation here

is

impos-

sibly garbled:

Foucault

says,

"the

rarity

of

affirmation"]

-certainly

not any continuous out-pouringof meaning,

and

certainly

not

any monarchy

of the

signifier.

(p.

234)

The

peculiar,

and I think the

crucial,

problem

of The

Archeology

of

Knowledge

is its

attempt

to

define effectiveness

without

theory,

that

is,

to

regard

practice

not

as a cause

of

effectiveness

but as

the

main

part

of it. To affirm with force even

as

one

ex-

cludes

much

else-this is

effectiveness.

Effectiveness

is also

to

modify

other effective

statements,

and

it is

also to

last,

to be

re-activated

(as

when a later

age

returns to

Marx or to

Freud),

to

be

consciously

ex-

cluded

(as

when The Wasteland

excludes Christian-

ity),

to be

re-appropriated

(as

in

his

essay

"Kafka




9/11

and his

Precursors"

Borges gives

Kafka

his

forgotten

patrimony).

Lest it

be assumed that statements

in discourse

during

a

given

epistime

make

up

a

unity

resembling

either

the

Great

Chain of

Being

or a

Hegelian

total-

ity

Foucault

goes

out of his

way

to

show that this

is

not

what

he has in

mind.

Two of his most com-

plex

chapters

in The

Archeology-"Contradictions"

and

"The

Comparative

Facts"-insist

yet

more

strongly

on

the discontinuous

nature

of statements

in the archive. To the archeologist discourse is a

space

of

dissension.

Eighteenth-century

Natural

His-

tory,

for

instance,

is

essentially

a

set

of "intrinsic

oppositions [...

.

distributed over

different

levels of

the

discursive

formation"

(p.

154).

These

opposi-

tions

articulate

divergence,

incompatibility,

and

ex-

clusion. "In

the

case

of

the

systematic analysis

of

plants

[in

eighteenth-century

Natural

History],

one

applies

a

rigorous

perceptual

and

linguistic

code,

and

in

accordance with a

constant

scale;

for

method-

ical

description

[during

the same

period],

the

codes

are

relatively

free,

and

the scales of

mapping may

oscillate"

(p.

154).

When;

however,

there are

no

contradictions-that

is,

if

one wishes

to

show,

as

Foucault

did in

The Order

of

Things,

that

eighteenth

century

General Grammar and Natural

History

are

related

after

all-there

is "a

region

of

interpositiv-

ity,"

which is

tangled

but

is

also a set of

fairly

well-

articulated

correlations.

Everything

I

have

so far said of Foucault in-

terprets,

rather than

summarizes,

his

archeology

as

simultaneously

the

expression

of radical dissatisfac-

tion

and radical

affirmation.

Let

us

take

dissatisfac-

tion and

doubt first. I think

he

is

correct to

judge

Western historical

understanding

as

being

based

very

generally upon

two forms of

explanation,

one

ver-

tical,

and

one horizontal.

Both

generally

work to-

gether

since both mix

the

temporal

and

the

spatial

modes.

Written historical

evidence

is

judged

to

be

a trace, which when it is explained vertically is con-

ceived of

as the

exterior residual

expression

of

an

interior,

or

underlying,

force, rationale,

meaning,

image,

or

idea.

When it

is

explained

horizontally

it

is

conveived of

as

having

been

preceded

by

some-

thing

that

gives

it

meaning:

other

events,

a succes-

sive line of

development,

an

Origin.

To Foucault

any

form of

understanding

that sends

one

away

to

given

or assumed

ontologically prior

forms such

as

an

author,

a

period,

an

idea,

a

source,

a

world-view

-in

short,

a

genealogy

of order-discounts

the

pres-

ence of

the

evidence,

its

sheer

persistence

as event

or as

evidence,

in

favor

of deterministic

hyposta-

tizations. Moreover

these determinisms assume

a

priv-

ilege

in

the

understanding

without account

being

taken of their very circumstantial nature. When

Nietzsche said that discussions of

poets

like

Homer

(about

whom

as

authors

nothing

was

known)

were

judgments

made

by

later

generations

and not at

all

accurate

descriptions

of

reality,

he was

saying

some-

thing

that

Foucault

would

agree

with

readily.

To

say

that

Shelley

wrote "Adonais" is not

sufficiently

to

describe the

fact

that

"Adonais" was written. In or-

der to do that one would

have to

grasp

first

of all

why

to the critic in 1973

it matters that the

poem

was

written

(and

this involves an

archeological

de-

scription

of

literary

discourse

today),

then to

grasp

how as

writing

the

poem

was

received,

modified

and

preserved

in

poetico-elegiac

discourse

in the

early

nineteenth

century.

While one

may

never to able

to

complete

such an

archeological

description-and

Foucault

is under no illusion

that it is

anything

but

interminable-its

stated

requirements

are at

Said an Ethics of Language - Said on Foucault

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