Darlene Sybert raises another interesting aspect of The Order of Things--
its stance toward literature. I found this to be ambiguous in F's work,
richly so. Two well-informed books have chapters that place F's shifting
approaches in relation to his attitude toward and use of the literary--
the transgressive "text" that undoes philosophical certainties through
the ontology of language-- and also his plain old inspiration from
certain literary authors, like Raymond Roussel, Pierre Klossowski,
Blanchot, etc. These two books are John Rajchman's _Michel Foucault: The
Freedom of Philosophy_ and Simon During's _Foucault & Literature: Towards
a Genealogy of Writing_.
Rajchman's book is lucid and his periodization of F's work is
persuasive. But it is also a short book, a little over 100 pages, which
lends itself to a bit of simplifying at times. To simplify even further:
he argues that early F was grounded in literary theorization of
transgression, etc., but later F historized this and turned away from
"language as text" toward "discourse".
During's book complicates this without disagreeing with it. While F's
focus did change, the "literary" transgressive undercurrent remained--
it's just became even more private, a level of interest that escapes most
readers. (I'm really having to simplify During here.) An apt quote from
During about _The Order of Things_:
"It is important to recognize that the methods and organization
of that work belong partly to literary history, partly to a criticism
anxious about its own secondariness to transgression, and partly to a
polemics for a literary avant-garde which claimed that its writing
represents the freshest, least mystified possibilities given to the epoch."
--Erick Heroux
its stance toward literature. I found this to be ambiguous in F's work,
richly so. Two well-informed books have chapters that place F's shifting
approaches in relation to his attitude toward and use of the literary--
the transgressive "text" that undoes philosophical certainties through
the ontology of language-- and also his plain old inspiration from
certain literary authors, like Raymond Roussel, Pierre Klossowski,
Blanchot, etc. These two books are John Rajchman's _Michel Foucault: The
Freedom of Philosophy_ and Simon During's _Foucault & Literature: Towards
a Genealogy of Writing_.
Rajchman's book is lucid and his periodization of F's work is
persuasive. But it is also a short book, a little over 100 pages, which
lends itself to a bit of simplifying at times. To simplify even further:
he argues that early F was grounded in literary theorization of
transgression, etc., but later F historized this and turned away from
"language as text" toward "discourse".
During's book complicates this without disagreeing with it. While F's
focus did change, the "literary" transgressive undercurrent remained--
it's just became even more private, a level of interest that escapes most
readers. (I'm really having to simplify During here.) An apt quote from
During about _The Order of Things_:
"It is important to recognize that the methods and organization
of that work belong partly to literary history, partly to a criticism
anxious about its own secondariness to transgression, and partly to a
polemics for a literary avant-garde which claimed that its writing
represents the freshest, least mystified possibilities given to the epoch."
--Erick Heroux