Michel Foucault

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language. Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon, 1972. Print.

Summary:

The appendix section we read, The Discourse on Language, was initially a lecture in which he wants to consider what has been considered truth in the past and the relationship of dominant forces that have used power to control the conceptions of truth. In this work Foucault reminds reader of the power in language and that language can fail because one is not aware of the power structures that are contained within language. There is agency in language, but when using language this agency is lost due to the power struggles within language itself; it is a corrupted tool. Foucault reminds readers of his previous statements on primary and secondary texts before then pointing to a new principle regarding “the author as the unifying principle in a particular group of writings or statements, lying at the origins of their significance, as the seat of their coherence” and which differs from other writings he has done about the author (221). Then he critiques disciplines as a from that constricts and confines within a “theoretical field” (223). He uses the example of a monster or madman and draws a comparison to people who are distrusted or feared for speaking truth (or using or creating) outside of the discipline’s confines. Foucault is clear that educational structures reinforce (or create) what the people in power want to impart (227).

Response:

One of the lines that stuck with me the most was this one: “Every educational system is a political means of maintaining or of modifying the appropriation of discourse, with the knowledge and the powers it carries with it” (227). Although this concept was not entirely new to me, the compactness of it here echoes some of the conversations I have had in other classes about this topic. It is probably good that I am bothered by this and feel complicit in an educational structure of power. That sentence made me remember that I need to be aware of how I function within the system and what it is I am supporting, either through my own curriculum or through the university, department, and their missions. At first it really depressed me to be a part of a system, but now I am more mindful of this system, even though I know I cannot escape it.

Connections/Questions:

When Foucault writes about the ordering and classification of a discourse, this is reminiscent of Heidegger and enframing. The ongoing nature of change and modification reminds me as well of Britton’s acknowledgment of Standard English being allowed to be multiple and adapt (221). Foucault raises questions about disciplines and knowledge. This makes me think about debates and questions of how writing or rhetoric should be labeled, such as Quintillian’s response in book nine of Institutes of Oratory. By trying to label something, it places it within what Foucault would call a “theoretical field,” adding confines to it. Foucault’s focus on power and relationships or hierarchies also connects to Adorno and Horkheimer as well. They both want to bring to light forces that are unseen but that influence.

Quotations:

“Yet, maybe this institution and this inclination are but two converse responses to the same anxiety: anxiety as to just what discourse is, when it is manifested materially, as a written or spoken object; but also, uncertainty faced with transitory existence, destined for oblivion—at any rate, not belonging to us; uncertainty at the suggestion of barely imaginable powers and dangers behind this activity, however humdrum and grey it may seem; uncertainty when we suspect the conflicts, triumphs, injuries, dominations and enslavements that lie behind these words, even when long use has chipped away their rough edges” (216).

“And yet, a century later, the highest truth no longer resided in what discourse was, nor in what it did: it lay in what was said” (218).

“Disciplines constitute a system of control in the production of discourse, fixing its limits through the action of an identity taking the form of a permanent reactivation of the rules” (224).

“History has long since abandoned its attempts to understand events in terms of cause and effect in the formless unity of some great evolutionary process, whether vaguely homogeneous or rigidly hierarchised” (230).