Archeology of Knowledge

Rating:
Summary: Another (difficult) chapter in Foucault's oeuvre
Review: "Archaeology Of Knowledge" finds Foucault at his barest, trying to build up his own theory. Like others have said, it is fascinating to see how much he tries to encompass and how extremely difficult his own enterprise is. Foucault spends many pages trying to explain to us what he means by "discoursive formation", "object formation", "formation of concepts", etc., and the place where his own theory stands vis-?-vis a so-called "history of ideas". You can learn lots from this book, because, like myself, sometimes you get lost in Foucault's magistral writing, his fabulous way of weaving history and thus cannot clearly follow his own particular method of research. If you want to see some of his (earlier, almost stricly discourse-oriented) key concepts clarified, reading this book will prove very fruitful. As always, you're left with a lot of questions and with a distinctive feeling of "now what?". But then again, that's what's so utterly beautiful and engaging about Foucault... he forces you to think for yourself and provides you of the right tools to do it.
I read the spanish translation of this book so I can't comment on the english one, but the contents of this book are priceless.

Rating:
Summary: Indispensible
Review: Do not be fooled by those who dismiss this as a mere curiousity in Foucault's oeuvre. This difficult work is absolutely essential for understanding his central concept of 'discourse'. All of his works are better understood after a careful reading of this difficult work; this is true even for the later 'geneaological' works.

Rating:
Summary: Indispensible
Review: Do not be fooled by those who dismiss this as a mere curiousity in Foucault's oeuvre. This difficult work is absolutely essential for understanding his central concept of 'discourse'. All of his works are better understood after a careful reading of this difficult work; this is true even for the later 'geneaological' works.

Rating:
Summary: Answers and Questions
Review: Foucault suggests that the very idea of order as such, along with the larger idea of episteme, which through implication that "The Order of Things" was organized around cultural totalities, was a mistake. In this book Foucault makes a huge reversal. We know also that outside "The Archaeology of Knowledge" Foucault does not limit himself to discourse, even though it remains central. And within it, he clearly allows for primary relations between institutions, techniques, social forms, etc., which are not discursive in nature. We are left with weak answers. Maybe, because "The Archaeology of Knowledge" really deals with knowledge, discursive relations are sufficient. Knowledge is found for the most part in texts, documents, books. Maybe we can excuse the oversight by the fact that it was only after "The Archaeology of Knowledge" that Foucault clarified the intimacy of power and knowledge and went beyond the early view that power in knowledge simply controlled and excluded discourse. Moreover, how do we deal with the problem of savoir and connaissances - granted one finds there the visible/invisible couple, the question of epistemic knowledge (savoir) and accumulated knowledge (connaissances), the concept discursive practice, the critique of systems, and the Center (or, the principles of the Author, the Origin, and so forth). But, by what right, do we introduce the axis of fact, and the dimension of knowledge production? Are they not interpreters' inventions? I'll say this much, as much as "The Archeology of Knowledge answers it begs more questions. Let me just close by saying to be fair to Foucault that it was an "in-between" book - assessing where he came from and outlining where he was going. Complicated? Yes, but a valuable resource in understanding "Discourse" - good luck.

Miguel Llora

Rating:
Summary: On The Uses And Disadvantages...
Review: Of Funk Soul Brotherhood For Life

Foucault's *Archaeology Of Knowledge* could well be viewed as the culmination of years of effort invested in getting people to stop calling him a structuralist: what we have here is a "series" of pragmatic reflections (on a body of prior work too "theoreticist" to be properly so comprehended, for which see the "Discourse on Language" economically appended to this volume). If you are looking for the traditional intellectual high, even the one promised under the name "Foucault", this is not the book to turn to -- it "represents" Foucault's attempt to reconcile his rather fantastically illiberal analyses of modern social systems producing knowledges with the responsibilities of his new office as colleague of France. This is to say, the task of "overhauling" Foucault's idiosyncratic and frequently challenging appropriations of contemporary thought from *all* disciplines cannot begin here; really, what you are being offered is light entertainment.

If so, and if the millions of readers who are now today living were not lying when they reported this to be an impossibly rebarbative read, what possibly purpose is there today to tarrying with Foucault's early-70s "positivities"? Well, to my mind this is still an exemplary document in one respect: namely, as a lexicon for the description of effects worked by *Informatik*, i.e. a "playbook" for non-misleading descriptions of MIS projects and prospects -- and thusly the fun and frolicking caused by Foucault's rather effortless later efforts, including the deliciously intransigent consternation provoked by the recently-translated College de France lectures are not as suggestive as his linguistic difficulties here in terms of the tasks facing "knowledge workers" in situations where more than the sky is promised. This would a good book to buy someone trying to get work as a software engineer.

"Moreover, at the end of such an enterprise, one may not recover those unities that, out of methodological rigour, one initially held in suspense: one may be compelled to dissociate certain oeuvres, ignore influences and traditions, abandon definitively the question of origin, allow the commanding presence of authors to fade into the background; and thus everything that was thought to be proper to the history of ideas may disappear from view."

Rating:
Summary: Archaeology, the Archean, the Archaic, and the Archive
Review: The Conclusion of this book (Chapter V) is perhaps the most interesting. Foucault appears to be corresponding with an undisclosed someone, wether with himself as a self critique, or with a critic. I won't put asside the possibility he is coversing with someone from the Tavistock Inst.; as Tavistock Publications Lim. was the first place of translation for this text. If he had not suceeded, in his archaeology of knowledge, an undermining of structuralism, with the thesis on human discourse, then perhaps it is because of a lack of conviction on part of this "someone" or on part of himself.

Understanding the implication of Foucault's thought process from a first read requires a refflective reader and in many ways requires a far-reaching mind from the start. This work is composed of a terminal plethora of architectures and teleological plethoras of exemplifications from science and history. Economics, stats, documents, records, and items from all discourses are examined and presented as artifacts of discursive knowledge. The Archeaology itself is the thematic for the Archive, and the archive is the preservatory of knowledge, that such discursive knowledge is preserved is archaeology. Foucault's task then is to undermine the archives of knowledge and present that knowledge back upon the structural framework of rational discourse. With observational power and radical ability, Foucault goes beyond the framework and invisibly subordinates it's needs to be observed and it's intention to be ritcheous (ritcheous in all that it accounts for, and ritcheous of the observer.) From the most primordial archean, to the revival of the primal archaic state, to the archaology of all knowledge, Foucault shows that in a way discourses built upon historical facts are like artifacts themselves. Here in the conclusion we see that the problematic of language (langue) as the derivational principal of discourses, cannot be made paletable (literaly!)

And so the audition fails because language or the "langue" is not sufficiently constructed for what it represents in discursive practice. At the zenith of the teleological project, when temporal conceptualization extinguishes itself from being quantified into being qualified, at the last quarter of the era, perhaps this work will be gleamed from the resevoire and conrgessively discussed.

Rating:
Summary: Archaeology, the Archean, the Archaic, and the Archive
Review: The Conclusion of this book (Chapter V) is perhaps the most interesting. Foucault appears to be corresponding with an undisclosed someone, wether with himself as a self critique, or with a critic. I won't put asside the possibility he is coversing with someone from the Tavistock Inst.; as Tavistock Publications Lim. was the first place of translation for this text. If he had not suceeded, in his archaeology of knowledge, an undermining of structuralism, with the thesis on human discourse, then perhaps it is because of a lack of conviction on part of this "someone" or on part of himself.

Understanding the implication of Foucault's thought process from a first read requires a refflective reader and in many ways requires a far-reaching mind from the start. This work is composed of a terminal plethora of architectures and teleological plethoras of exemplifications from science and history. Economics, stats, documents, records, and items from all discourses are examined and presented as artifacts of discursive knowledge. The Archeaology itself is the thematic for the Archive, and the archive is the preservatory of knowledge, that such discursive knowledge is preserved is archaeology. Foucault's task then is to undermine the archives of knowledge and present that knowledge back upon the structural framework of rational discourse. With observational power and radical ability, Foucault goes beyond the framework and invisibly subordinates it's needs to be observed and it's intention to be ritcheous (ritcheous in all that it accounts for, and ritcheous of the observer.) From the most primordial archean, to the revival of the primal archaic state, to the archaology of all knowledge, Foucault shows that in a way discourses built upon historical facts are like artifacts themselves. Here in the conclusion we see that the problematic of language (langue) as the derivational principal of discourses, cannot be made paletable (literaly!)

And so the audition fails because language or the "langue" is not sufficiently constructed for what it represents in discursive practice. At the zenith of the teleological project, when temporal conceptualization extinguishes itself from being quantified into being qualified, at the last quarter of the era, perhaps this work will be gleamed from the resevoire and conrgessively discussed.