no, not in the sense that it's hard to read - I don't consider it to be
more difficult than "The Order of Things" or "Madness and Civiliization"
What I mean is that it requires a lot of work on questions like:
- How specific must rules of formation be? They should delimit one discourse from another, though must be broad enough to allow for all the variance possible within one discourse. What is the criterion used?
- How do these rules exactly work (if we presume that Dreyfus & Rabinow got it wrong)?
- What exactly is the relationship between power (as in Foucaults later texts, that is, a restructuring of the field of possible actions) and discursive practices?
Answering these question and "working" with the archeological method on the material I try to analyze is the hard part - at least for me, as I am trying to use the Archeology of Knowledge as a reearch tool.
What do you think? What's your approach on the Archeology?
Chetan Vemuri schrieb:
- How specific must rules of formation be? They should delimit one discourse from another, though must be broad enough to allow for all the variance possible within one discourse. What is the criterion used?
- How do these rules exactly work (if we presume that Dreyfus & Rabinow got it wrong)?
- What exactly is the relationship between power (as in Foucaults later texts, that is, a restructuring of the field of possible actions) and discursive practices?
Answering these question and "working" with the archeological method on the material I try to analyze is the hard part - at least for me, as I am trying to use the Archeology of Knowledge as a reearch tool.
What do you think? What's your approach on the Archeology?
Chetan Vemuri schrieb:
hard to work with in what way?
In that its difficult to read?
On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 1:56 AM, Frieder Vogelmann <f.vogelmann@xxxxxxx>wrote:
Yes, I do! I do like the book's style, but more important is the impact
of archeology as a method on Foucault's later texts. I'm thinking
especially on the two lectures on the History of Governementalité
(1978-1979), which is often misread as a piece of history of political
ideas. If one instead takes it to use archeology, the term "population"
acquires the importance it is given by Foucault when he claims it being
the operator that drove the transformation described in "The order of
things" (see the end of Lecture 3 on January 25th, 1978).
Bringing archeology back in also helps, I think, in giving up the
strange trend of breaking up "governementalité" in "gouverner" and
"mentalité" (at least this was a trend in the German and English
literature, ignoring the editor of the lectures, M.Senellart, who
explains it to be derived from "governemental"), which in turn makes the
study of Governementalités into a study of mentalities. Acknowledging
the archeological method, studying forms of governementalité means first
of all determining the "form of problematization" a specific political
rationality reacts to.
These are just two reasons I would put some emphasis on the Archeology
of Knowledge, though I admit that it is a book that is hard to work with.
Frieder
Chetan Vemuri schrieb:
So there's a debate over the usefulness of The Archaeology of Knowledgein
Foucault's oeuvre. Some feel its the black sheep of his work, a failedset
attempt at defining his methodology, others feel its a rich, fascinating
of studies of discursive practices. Some feel it is flawed, others thinkdull
not. This has been one of my favorite Foucault books yet many find it
and uninteresting._______________________________________________
Is there anyone else that defends its strong merits and value for
understanding Foucault's work in general?
Foucault-L mailing list