The Archaeology of Knowledge by Michel Foucault
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
In many ways, this book serves as a pause for Foucault. It’s a mostly incomplete work in the sense that he describes what he has done and what he is going to do. And that’s all. So I guess I am saying this is very much a kind of aesthetics manifesto, or a discipline manifesto.
This book is also extremely influential for cultural criticism, as it highlights an approach to discourse, citing what discourse is and how discourse is to be understood as its own field.
What makes this book annoying, and in my opinion incomplete, is that while Foucault is able to say what he is intending to do and what level of “cut” Foucault is taking to be the object of study, Foucault is still unable to unexplain how or why this occurs or of what benefit it will be. In a real way works like Madness and Civilization and The Order of Things allows Foucault to see a connection of language that is a consistency in its own right, but he is unable to account for how to really understand what this level of slice means or how it fits in.
All he is able to say at this point is, look what this new and strange view of things is. Now that I see it, watch me go forth.
In a way, Foucault studies where he knows best. Discourse. Language. Knowledge that formulates itself and in that formulation shapes itself and its object of study. Where or how or why this happens is beyond Foucault. And that is kind of annoying. This discursive approach is a calibration to its own (in)consistencies, seemingly for its own sake. The Order of Things while more mysterious is far more ambitious that this work, which in a way, is a backwards step for Foucault to re-orient his approaches.
I suppose that in its time, this was cutting edge. This book was a major influence. Now it feels like staring at shadows.
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