Foucault, Michel - The Archaeology of Knowledge (Introduction)

Part I

Introduction (3f)

Foucault begins by documenting a shift in what history is focusing on, from particular events/ideas to an attempt to define the underlying systems behind those ideas. The focus started to be on the discontinuities and how they fit into a structure. The question then becomes: how different is different? Furthermore, while history starts looking for unified systems, philosophies in other disciplines are dealing with "How the same does something have to be in order to be unified?"

(6f) History used to deal with documents and attempted to reconstruct the past out of the document(s). Now, history is attempting to dissect the document into its parts and then find how those parts relate to one another. History used to turn the monuments of memory into documents, now it is turning documents into monuments. History used to take a series of events and attempt to connect them through relationships. Now, it is questioning the series and what belongs in that series (before even attempting the relational aspects). The nature of discontinuity has changed as well: rather than attempting to obliterate through discussion discontinuity from history, discontinuity is highlighted. The idea of total history, wherein the nature of civilization is distilled, begins to vanish and the idea of general history arises, wherein the form(s) of relation(s) between different historical series can be distilled. Finally, new history has problems with methodology, which doubtless existed before, but are now in the forefront: how are documents treated, how are they related, how much statistics plays in it, etc.

(11f) In history, there has been a particular distaste for dealing with the Other. This is because history has been an attempt to identify a unified human consciousness and to enshrine it as evolving constantly, but within a specific system wherein it progresses toward something better. History kept humans (specifically consciousness) at its center. Marx began to decentralize it by focusing on economics rather than humans, explaining human actions not as acts of will alone, but influenced by economic factors. History stopped being the sacralized citadel it had been, and became alive.

(14f) He puts forth his objectives, which are as follows:

• To show the changes within "historical thought" which are happening on their own, not to specifically introduce the idea of structuralist history
• His use of systems and structures is not to support them, but rather to bring them into question.
• To attempt to take anthropological concerns (that is, humans and human consciousness) out of the center within a historical method.

(16f) He explores problems within his previous works.

In the introduction, Foucault attempts to point out that "old history" used to use documents to propose a series of events between which it attempted to establish (usually causal) relationships. "New history" attempts to dissect the documents (giving a history of the document, in one sense) and then attempt to obscure distinct events into larger systems operating over time. This is an interesting comparison to biblical studies, wherein the documents have been dissected for decades if not centuries. The later shift in biblical studies has been shifted back toward whole documents. An attempt to "decentralize" the bible from biblical studies is something which would probably nearly cause a riot. How would this be done? Likely this question is a bit naive at this point, so perhaps a better one might be: What does it mean that biblical studies hold the Bible as central to its study? What questions would this status invalidate?

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Harper Colophon Books: New York, NY, 1972.