Funny that Underwood mentioned his experience of "reading the wrong text"
of the local grunge band while interpreting "Las Meninas." I've read
that Foucault wrote "Las Meninas" as an entirely separate essay, but the
publisher insisted on incorporating it into _The Order of Things_. So in
that sense, we are reading the wrong text.
This gives the book an added aura of depth, because the chapter requires
us to interpret how it might fit in with the rest of the book. It
becomes a parable. And the painting to which it refers is reproduced
(often on the cover) in the book. So "Las Meninas" makes a subtle
transmutation from tangentially related essay to an Image of the book,
_The Order of Things_. This is much like Derrida's "logic of the
supplement." What was marginal becomes central. Is this accident
fortunate or ...?
Notice how differently Foucault's book might have been received if it
began with the first sentence:
"Up to the end of the sixteenth century, resemblance played a
constructive role in the knowledge of Western culture...."
I think that future editions of _The Order of Things_ would do better to
put "Las Meninas" either in an appendix or as an interlude between parts
I and II.
--E. Heroux
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