S&S Quarterly, Inc.

Guilford Press

The Order of Things, an Archaeology of the Human Sciences by Michel Foucault Review by: John Hartwell Moore Science & Society, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Winter, 1971), pp. 490-494 Published by: Guilford Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40401605 . Accessed: 27/07/2013 05:10
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

S&S Quarterly, Inc. and Guilford Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science &Society.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.59.62.83 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 05:10:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS
The Order An Archaeology of Things, oftheHumanSciences, byMichel Books(RandomHouse),1970.$10.00. Foucault. NewYork:Pantheon Pp. xxiv,387. of phito thehistory To understand of thiscontribution thesignificance of it the is to first heavylayers parochial necessary stripaway losophy, to whichencumber M. Foucault'svolumefrombeginning pretension of end. The mostgeneral is theillusionthatthewritings encumbrance debe a fewprominent intellectuals can Western accurately European scribed as "thehistory ofthought" (p. 50)- as ifIslamicand Indiescholarhad no history. and as if unwritten philosophies shipwereunimportant, Frenchanon finding Even moreparochial is M. Foucault's insistence forBritish tecedents ideas,forexample:"Adam Smithdid not, therein Caninvent labouras an economic sinceit can be found fore, concept, and Condillac . . . ." tillon, Quesnay, (p. 222) Another distraction to be overcome is Foucault's recurring personifiafcationand reification of abstractions, whichis seriousas a literary fectation but disastrous In thisstyle of disas a metaphysical position. disembodied about Euideas are seen to be flitting course, philosophic and men of themselves to make sense scholarly rope,influencing trying and each other. For example, in speaking of the breakdown of Classical thought at the end of the 18thcentury, he says: "How is it that itself from detaches thesquaresit inhabited before-in thought general natural wealthand allows what less thantwenty grammar, history, years before had been positedand affirmed in the luminous space of underto toppledownintoerror, intotherealmof fantasy, intononstanding . . . Only thought itself at the root of its knowledge? reapprehending ownhistory couldprovide a foundation, of doubt,forwhat free entirely truth of thiseventwas in itself (pp. 217-18). Foucault's the solitary also allowshim to speak of livingcenstyle(or is it his philosophy?) as in thefollowing of ideas or of thesciences turies, passage:"Histories . . . credit the seventeenth and the eighteenth, with century, especially a new curiosity: the curiosity thatcausedthem, if not to discover the
490

This content downloaded from 128.59.62.83 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 05:10:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS

491

of life,at leastto give thema hitherto sciences unsuspected scope and (p. 125). precision" also givesthe book its greatest But Foucault's perspective grandiose three have enabledhim to distinguish abilities His abstractive success. characterize them and to in recent Europeanscholarship greatperiods intellectual modes. to their dominant according incisively very Foucault claimsto an calls he what method, "archaeological" Using culof Western in theepisteme "twogreatdiscontinuities havedetected Classical the ture: the first half-way through age (roughly inaugurates of the nineat the beginning and thesecond, theseventeenth century) of the modern the beginning marks teenth age" (p. xxii). century, of four in terms Renaissance He characterizes thought preexisting aemulatio, "similitudes" and analogy, (convenientia, prominent explicit Crolof Paracelsus, thewritings Porta, which and sympathies) permeated as Renaissance characterizes He others. lius and thought being preocof the subtleovertexpressions cupiedwitha searchfor"signatures," conthen man. He of naturalphenomena, including unity underlying succeeded which it, as withthe Classicism Renaissance trasts thought as it was is "... in theClassicalage,to makeuse of signs not, follows: theprimithem beneath to rediscover to attempt in preceding centuries, it is an attempt and retained, forever; sustained, tivetextof a discourse of thedeployment thatwill authorize thearbitrary to discover language and thelawsof its of itsanalysis terms itsspace,thefinal within nature (p. 62). composition" to three his attention Foucaultconfines theClassicalperiod, Within de Bestutt addressed Condillac, Port-Royal, Tracy, setsof problems by and othMelon,Cantillon, Tournefort, Linnaeus, Scipionde Grammont, wealth of the of the are (before ers.These analysis 2) study language, 1) it became and 3) natural it became"political history (before economy"), thatthe Classicalapproachto each of thesethree He asserts biology). thisopinion thesameand he elaborates was essentially proto-disciplines At least book. the of the heart in thetwohundred comprise pageswhich worth are about Classicalthought two of his generalizations quoting here: "All wealthis coinable;and it is by thatmeans that it enters in the same way that any naturalbeing was charinto circulationthatanyinits place in a taxonomy; find and could thereby acterizable, Iandividualwas nameableand could findits place in an articulated find its and could was that place, anyrepresentation signifiable gague; and differences" of identities in a system to be known, in order (p. 175).
and elsewhere:"... we know all there is to be known about Classical knowledgeif we understandthat it is rationalistic,that, since Galileo

This content downloaded from 128.59.62.83 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 05:10:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

492

SCIENCE

AND

SOCIETY

and Descartes,it has accorded an absolute privilegeto Mechanism,that it presupposesa general orderingof nature,that it accepts the possibilradical to discoverelementsor origins,but ity of an analysissufficiently that it alreadyhas a presentiment, beyond and despite all theseconcepts and of the movement of life,of the densityof history, of understanding, of disorder, so difficult to master,in nature" (p. 303). When Foucault comes to characterizethe modern period, however, and to contrastit with the Classical period, he focuseson the most imfor the inventionof an anthroportantissue in the book: the necessity It is this thesis which has so much attentionto Foucault drawn pology. in America, beginningin 1966 when this book was firstpublished in Frenchas Les motset les choses. Foucault does not mean the academic discipline By "anthropology/' on "man's very essence by that name, but ratherphilosophicreflection relation his with imminence of death) " (p. 225), the finitude, time, (his particularlyas these questions have arisen within philology, political economy,and biology. He sees a philosophical imperativeoperatingat the Classical-Modernmargin because "It is probably impossibleto give value, or to displace them in the diempirical contentstrancendental withoutgivingrise,at least silently, rectionof a constituent subjectivity, to an anthropology ..." (p. 248). Foucault challenges as myth the assince Socrates" sertionthat the studyof man is "the oldest investigation and instead maintains that anthropology "is probably no more than a kind of riftin the order of things." and seemsto hope for,the demiseof anthropologiFoucault predicts, cal speculation and the reestablishment of Discourse as a central con"a based on of cern, pure theory language" (p. 38). Before writingoff as solution to a philosophicdilemma, anthropology merelya temporary wise to examine Foucault's methodology, however,it is certainly which, accordingto him and despiteall appearances,is "noi structural analysis." Whateverlabel one chooses to apply to Foucault's work,it is clear and particularly like Claude Levi-Strauss, that, like other structuralists Foucault uses a very distinctive methodology.He proceeds initiallyby froma large body of data those elementswhich serve to supextracting of that data. Just as Levi-Straussseport a particularcharacterization lects some mythsand ignoresothersin establishing a symbolicstructure formythicthemes,Foucault quotes and paraphrasesonly a few writers from each of his periods, and emphasizes only certain aspects of the work of each author. There are no methodologicalsafeguardsagainst biasing the sample (such as, in this case, an exhaustivestudyof all the worksof one author or all the writings of a particulardecade) and so,

This content downloaded from 128.59.62.83 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 05:10:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS

493

withthebreadth of data as theparticular strucunless we are as familiar of be his word that a data can characterized must we turalist, accept body in a particular way. is to findan unsusThe nextmethodological stepof structuralism For Foudata in interstices of as characterized. the the pectedanomaly the existence of whichis takenfor is anthropology, cault,the anomaly of Asdiwal's it is things like the direction granted;for Levi-Strauss, strucBoror hut in or an travels arrangement. Typically, mythic aperture dilemma of cultural a some as turalists then the explain anomaly symptom of the anomaly. The taskof the to the creators whichwas unknown and the dilemma of in the detail nature is to explain structuralist, then, of the total a is in fact necessary to showhowtheapparent part anomaly structure. so that creates theanomaly, itself which But it is thecharacterization of reassertion the is of the the functional anomaly merely explanation thatwas cantedor arbitrary on a foundation real or naturalstructure exists dilemma The transcendental-empirical from itsinception. certainly tend indeed assertions and for in Foucault's him,anthropological mind, constituent of a the direction in to "displace subjeccontents] [empirical intellectuals ofWestern a wholegeneration Butwhether similarly tivity." subconhowever and whether of thisdilemma, feltthe presence they, that dilemmathe to solve an anthropology sciously, similarly postulated is quite another question. intellectualism of French to relatethehistory It is perfectly possible withtherefore and does Foucault as the without characterizing periods must resolved be which dilemma a transcendental-empirical out finding One approachwould be to examinethe anthropology. by inventing and the generalsocio-cultural Frenchphilosophy between connections with wereassociated thatthe Physiocrats milieu.Even Foucaultadmits and entremerchants whilethe utilitarians the landowners represented an approach, such eschews he But callingit "the specifically preneurs. a social of "But though ofa doxology": groupcan membership province of choseone system thought always explainwhysuchand sucha person to be thought thatsystem theconditions thananother, rather enabling of thegroup" (p. 200). in theexistence resides never of thought" as the "autonomy And so we are back to suchquestions am I of convinced, the of "laws and hypothesized development thought." that that"thought believes exists," thisbook,thatFoucault after reading With and supermaterially. he believes superorganically thought operates conown of but of a matter not My him,it is epistemology. style just a sure that I am and from victions this,however, are quite different

This content downloaded from 128.59.62.83 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 05:10:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

494

SCIENCE

AND

SOCIETY

of thequestions couldeffectively illuminate many "doxology" competent raisedby MichelFoucault. New YorkUniversity Washington Square,New York
JOHN HARTWELL MOORE

New York:CamWortman. The Crisis ofRussianPopulism, byRichard $6.50. Press 1967. Pp. xii, 211. (American University Branch), bridge Harvard The Familyin SovietRussia,by H. Kent Geiger. Cambridge: 1968.$11.95.Pp. xii, 381. Press, University Nationalon theNon-Russian SovietHistorians The GreatFriendship: Carolina North of Hill: Tillett. Lowell ities,by University Chapel 468. 1969. Press, $12.50.Pp. x, The RootsofRussianCommunism, byDavid Lane. NewYork:HumanitiesPress, 1969.$11.50.Pp. xv,240. The FirstCongress of the Toilersof the Far East. London: Hammer45s.Pp. 242. smith Books,1970. from and freedom political Despitetheirvauntedclaimsto objectivity American toe most historians a careful line. Three of pressure, political thevolumes underconsideration, in theU.S.,havesomescholpublished content. but their "official" their conclusions often contradict merit, arly The Crisis of Russian Richard Wortman's is a of study Populism worthy narodniksthe reformer-agronomist and threenon-political EngeFgart the novelists and Zlatovratskii. Uspenskii (The choiceof thisunlikely threesome smacks of wrarmed-over schoolpapers.)His analysis graduate is sensitive and subtle, butalsosubjective and sociologically He simplistic. follows his subjects' whichrun the gamut psychological peregrinations, ofpopulist howthey to reconcile tried their attitudes, showing hopesfor Russia'sfuture withtheir of Russia'spresent(the 1860s-70s) awareness . Theirsympathy forthepeasants and their to with the attempts grapple of the obshchina led to guilt feelings(the reimportance eventually , disillusionment pentantnoblemanEngeFgart) (Uspenskii) or reacromanticism . who the For those tionary (Zlatovratskii) enjoyreliving of the Russian book is recomthis agonizing introspections intelligentsia It is also a valuableantidote mended. to thepopularviewsof Populism as a nihilistic-anarchistc of terrorists. movement For my own part,I wishthatsomeone would tryto developa typology of narodnichestvo. Forstarters, one couldconsult thecategories of socialism in the outlined

This content downloaded from 128.59.62.83 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 05:10:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions