Clare, thank you for responding to my query about the little excerpt from
Foucault!
I can't read French, and translation is always problematic, but yours is
certainly clearer and more suggestive of a meaning to me than the Sheridan
Smith translation - thank you.
I tend to think of discourses as three-dimensional entities, rather like
global amoeba, claiming vacant or disputed discursive space, and having
ever-changing surfaces, so 'dissolving' and 'solidity' are terms that I can
cope with. Even so, like you, I find it difficult to quite grasp Foucault's
point here, and it seems to contradict what he has said earlier in the
book. Surely archaeology does try to expose precisely those sorts of
(otherwise) seamless links and transitions? In parts of 'Archaeology',
transition points, and points of contact and exchange, are an explicit
focus of attention. I wonder if there is a qualifying statement in the
Conclusion.
Since one person dismissed my original query by saying that the sentence
was "perfectly lucid", are we perhaps missing something? Perhaps Stuart E,
John R, Tom D and others have a view about the passage, and context, in
question (?)
Kind regards,
Colin Holmes,
Western Sydney
Foucault!
I can't read French, and translation is always problematic, but yours is
certainly clearer and more suggestive of a meaning to me than the Sheridan
Smith translation - thank you.
I tend to think of discourses as three-dimensional entities, rather like
global amoeba, claiming vacant or disputed discursive space, and having
ever-changing surfaces, so 'dissolving' and 'solidity' are terms that I can
cope with. Even so, like you, I find it difficult to quite grasp Foucault's
point here, and it seems to contradict what he has said earlier in the
book. Surely archaeology does try to expose precisely those sorts of
(otherwise) seamless links and transitions? In parts of 'Archaeology',
transition points, and points of contact and exchange, are an explicit
focus of attention. I wonder if there is a qualifying statement in the
Conclusion.
Since one person dismissed my original query by saying that the sentence
was "perfectly lucid", are we perhaps missing something? Perhaps Stuart E,
John R, Tom D and others have a view about the passage, and context, in
question (?)
Kind regards,
Colin Holmes,
Western Sydney