Order of Things

is an exploration of how certain discourses make themselves persuasive: what is necessary for a certain discourse to become accepted.

But as a substantive matter, it is true that even The Order of Things, which is perhaps Foucault most structuralist book, is not properly structuralist. The purpose of the work, in line with Foucault’s earlier statements about his central question, is to explore how certain discourses make themselves persuasive: what is necessary for a certain discourse to become accepted.

is seemingly structural, but what is of importance is not the structures, codes, or systems, but the rules of formation, which were never formulated in their own right, but are to be found only in widely differing theories, concepts, and objects of study.

To be sure, in The Order of Things, the specific conditions of different periods take on a structuralist flavor. This is reflected in his project of unearthing what he calls the “code of knowledge” (1970:ix) or “system” (1970:x) of given periods-of revealing what he calls “a positive unconscious of knowledge: a level that eludes the consciousness of the scientist and yet is part of scientific discourse, instead of disputing its validity and seeking to diminish its scientific nature” (1970:xi). These are the unconscious, but shared rules that scientists from different disciplines converge on during a period. These common rules are a code, a language, an episteme. “It is these rules of formation, which were never formulated in their own right, but are to be found only in widely differing theories, concepts, and objects of study, that I have tried to reveal, by isolating, as their specific locus, a level that I have called, somewhat arbitrarily perhaps, archaeological” (1970:xi).

is a book arguing that we alterations from one epoch to another in the most basic conceptions of what knowledge is, changes so profound as to render inquiry at one time incommensurable with work in the ‘same’ field at another: Thus nineteenth-century biology really has a deeper kinship with, for instance, nineteenth-century philology than with eighteenth-century biology, so drastically different have become the varying ‘epistemes’ or models of what knowledge itself is across the centuries.

Foucault argued that we must recognize alterations from one epoch to another in the most basic conceptions of what knowledge is, changes so profound as to render inquiry at one time incommensurable with work in the ‘same’ field at another (see Spanos 1993: 132–80). Thus nineteenth-century biology really has a deeper kinship with, for instance, nineteenth-century philology than with eighteenth-century biology, so drastically different have become the varying ‘epistemes’ or models of what knowledge itself is across the centuries.

order of things, n.All

order of things