Karen Dooley writes:
At the moment I'm reading The Archeology for more or less the first time
and am striving to work out the difference between an `object' and a
`concept'. Can anyone he*lp me with this?
Karen,
Below I briefly paraphrase /summarize a section of F's _AK_ from around
32- 37, English trans:
[Author is] trying to describe relations between statements. The problem
of whether unity of a discourse is based not so much on permanence and
uniqueness of an object (since objects change so much--see preceding
paragraph on 32) as on the space in which various objects emerge and are
continuously transformed. The unity of the discourse on madness would
not be based on existence of object "madness" but rather be the interplay
of rules, 32-33, that make possible the appearance of objects during a
given period of time. The unity in question is not a determined form of
statements, but rather the group of rules, 34, which have made purely
perceptual descriptions possible. Discursive unity might be best sought
not in the coherence of concepts, but in their simultaneous or successive
emergence, in the distance that separates them and even in their
incompatibility. Instead of seeking an architecture of concepts general
and abstract enough to embrace all others and to introduce them into same
deductive structure; one would analyze the interplay of their appearances
and dispersion, 35. Principles for individualization of a discourse to
be sought in the dispersion of the points of choice that the discourse
leaves free--in the different possibilities that it opens of arousing
opposed strategies, making it possible with particular set of concepts,
to play different games, 36-7.
[end paraphrase/summary from F]
There is no "object" madness. What there is is a set of rules that
produce the object "madness," or, if you like, a set of rules that
interprets already-existing behavior as "madness" at one time, "divine
insight" at another, "laziness" over there, etc. The *difference* between
an object and a concept, it seems, is that the object is produced or
squeezed out of the concept. Notice, then, that F adopts a deductive
procedure.
At the moment I'm reading The Archeology for more or less the first time
and am striving to work out the difference between an `object' and a
`concept'. Can anyone he*lp me with this?
Karen,
Below I briefly paraphrase /summarize a section of F's _AK_ from around
32- 37, English trans:
[Author is] trying to describe relations between statements. The problem
of whether unity of a discourse is based not so much on permanence and
uniqueness of an object (since objects change so much--see preceding
paragraph on 32) as on the space in which various objects emerge and are
continuously transformed. The unity of the discourse on madness would
not be based on existence of object "madness" but rather be the interplay
of rules, 32-33, that make possible the appearance of objects during a
given period of time. The unity in question is not a determined form of
statements, but rather the group of rules, 34, which have made purely
perceptual descriptions possible. Discursive unity might be best sought
not in the coherence of concepts, but in their simultaneous or successive
emergence, in the distance that separates them and even in their
incompatibility. Instead of seeking an architecture of concepts general
and abstract enough to embrace all others and to introduce them into same
deductive structure; one would analyze the interplay of their appearances
and dispersion, 35. Principles for individualization of a discourse to
be sought in the dispersion of the points of choice that the discourse
leaves free--in the different possibilities that it opens of arousing
opposed strategies, making it possible with particular set of concepts,
to play different games, 36-7.
[end paraphrase/summary from F]
There is no "object" madness. What there is is a set of rules that
produce the object "madness," or, if you like, a set of rules that
interprets already-existing behavior as "madness" at one time, "divine
insight" at another, "laziness" over there, etc. The *difference* between
an object and a concept, it seems, is that the object is produced or
squeezed out of the concept. Notice, then, that F adopts a deductive
procedure.