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11th out of 117 books
—
49 voters
The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language
Madness, sexuality, power, knowledge-are these facts of life or simply parts of speech? In a series of works of astonishing brilliance, historian Michel Foucault excavated the hidden assumptions that govern the way we live and the way we think. The Archaeology of Knowledge begins at the level of 'things said' and moves quickly to illuminate the connections between knowledg...more
Paperback, 246 pages
Published
September 12th 1982
by Pantheon
(first published March 27th 1969)
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Aug 24, 2010
David
marked it as maybe-later
Recommended to David by:
Peter Mendelsund
Shelves:
france
I might as well admit it up front. The reason I bought this book last week was that the cover was hot. Hot as in attractive. It wooed me. (No, it's not this 1980s green-and-purple nightmare you see on your computer monitor now. As usual, most of the Goodreads librarians are too busy playing hall monitor and tossing Otis's salad in the Goodreads Feedback group to attend to cover design updates. So we're left with this cover. An unusually competent librarian has since added the cover and it appear...more
I mean, it's amazing, but it is also kind of boring.
якби життя мішеля фуко не перервалося ще в середині вісімдесятих років і якби для цього філософа мав значення індекс цитованості, то він став би у нас в україні наприкінці хх та на початку ххі століття одним з найбільш часто цитованих в науковій літературі авторів, без згадування якого не обходиться жодна публікація, котра так або інакше стосується постмодерну. як і декілька авторів, чиї імена подібні у незмінності та частотності на камлання: дерріда — дельоз — барт — бодріяр, — фуко перейшов у...more
In this book Foucault wished to both show his own way of looking at things and to distance himself from his previous more structuralist leaning book on the same subject, THE ORDER OF THINGS. The book is more of an interesting insight into how Foucault did research for then it is a way of showing how someone else can go about imitating his style of post-structural archeology.
Foucault tries to outline throughout the book both how and the importance distancing histories from subjects and eras. He...more
Foucault tries to outline throughout the book both how and the importance distancing histories from subjects and eras. He...more
The ideas are fantastic. But to be frank, the writing is somewhat maddening. At first the repetitiveness is helpful in that it ensures that you're quite clear as to the argument. But then it's just... repetitive. Admittedly, there are some variations on the theme, but towards the end I found myself rather wishing he'd wrap it up. I'm giving it four stars because the ideas are important and worthwhile, but I can't in all honesty recommend the book.
EDIT: I have to revise my statement. Just now, re...more
EDIT: I have to revise my statement. Just now, re...more
This book is great. Someone called it boring. Fool! It's the clearest thing Foucault has ever written, while still dipping into the occasional grammatically-challenged (albeit poetic) run-on sentences and drama I have always known and loved. It's best read as the closing of a series of books in which Foucault is analyzing (while trying to formulate a way of analyzing) institutions. It works well on its own but if you really want to see where Foucault is coming from read, in order: Madness and Ci...more
i am to-read this book because i like to be simultaneously amazed and kind of bored.
I hate to say that the Emperor has no clothes and perhaps this wasn't the best book to begin my Foucalt journey with; however... I found it to be completely rediculous, meticulous, superfluous, and unnecessary. Certainly there are nuggets of lucid and intriguing points buried in his winding and verbose prose. The reality is that no one should have to take the time currently required to make sense of what he is attempting to say (language and words have power). Even for a frenchman in translation...more
I think it's helpful to think of this book, which I admit I struggled through, as something of the introduction to the methodology that would later result in relative page-turners like Discipline and Punish and the three volumes of The History of Sexuality. Of course, Foucault himself would hate this: One of his arguments is that scholars remain committed to the antiquated notion that authors repeat themselves across their texts. Ultimately, the point is that in excavating history we should seek...more
Dense. Dense. Dense. Also pretty brilliant. I had to slog through this one just to make sure the main ideas I'm building off of for my thesis aren't being misrepresented (a recurring nightmare of mine...[at my thesis defense] 'So, did you actually read Foucault?'). This man's mind works so differently from others', and because he's so crazy smart, he spends most of his time justifying the possibility of his ideas. I have a hunch that an abridged version of this one would be all of 50-odd pages,...more
Die Archäologie des Wissens ist Foucault's Versuch, nach der Tat, theoretisch zu beschreiben die Methode, die er (verwendet in seinen ersten drei Bücher der Geschichte Madness and Civilization, Die Geburt der Klinik, und Die Ordnung der Dinge ). Dies ist also nicht die Vorlage einer formalen Theorie) gebaut logisch aus Axiomen, sondern die Beschreibung einer bestimmten Art von Umgang mit der Geschichte (eine "Art des Sprechens" über die Geschichte. Archäologische Untersuchung soll Diskurs beschr...more
Basically IE-addicted Michel builds a thesis out of fragments (like describing the totality of a culture from the remains of it sitting in a junk store; are you really making a thesis or is it another grab-bag, okay please skleletize an argument path, oh, you can't? Then Michel your work is merely ranting. It may be entertaining for the brainy, but it's still not truly organized). Foucault is another remnant interpreter (structuralists minus Piaget, all post-structuralists), studying gestures an...more
Initial review: what the fuck did I get myself into
Finished review: Well, after a month of metro riding and two round trip bus rides to New York and back, I finally finished this. It is probably the densest, heaviest reading I've ever done -- I feel like to really understand what was going on, for the first two sections of the book, I would have had to chart out individual points per sentence. Foucault packed a ridiculous amount of detail into these 200-odd pages, which made for a very slow read...more
Finished review: Well, after a month of metro riding and two round trip bus rides to New York and back, I finally finished this. It is probably the densest, heaviest reading I've ever done -- I feel like to really understand what was going on, for the first two sections of the book, I would have had to chart out individual points per sentence. Foucault packed a ridiculous amount of detail into these 200-odd pages, which made for a very slow read...more
i swear, once your done reading foucault you feel as if you've taken in something deep. but the whole time im reading im like get to the point - sometimes he does. discourse, yup. this book has his famous remarks in the intro: "don't ask me who i am, don't ask me to stay the same blah blah... i hate that line. sounds like some hippie on a mundane acid trip. no wonder he moved to san francisco.
This is no doubt one of the most important methodological texts written for the humanities. The applications are endless. Foucault's apparatus is somewhat bulky and almost unusable in places. I do not think that the entire book could be applied to one specific project. I see this as more a tool bag from which a scholar might take out particular tools to help see histories and discourses in different ways. In this way, The Archeology of Knowledge is not so much a work of theory, as it is a method...more
After the almost breezy style of "Discipline and Punish" and "Madness and Civilization" as well as the other fragments of Foucault I'd read, this was pretty challenging. It's an interesting approach he develops, and because it frames his more specific researches (into the asylum, the prison, etc.), you really get an idea of his larger project. Furthermore, there's plenty of evidence in here that Foucault is not a nihilist, but rather has a method and a praxis. Useful weaponry against d-bag conse...more
I was going to give this three stars because much of it floated well above my head (especially the third part) but the last two paragraphs were so lucid and worth it that I bumped it to four stars. Still, from what I did get out of it, I understand Foucault and his method much better than before.
The Ur text, especially the appended text of Foucault's inaugural lecture at the College de France. Essential for understanding the divide between our discursive selves and the non-discursive reality that silently surrounds us.
This was an incredibly dense book to get through. His thought takes some real study to understand. I'm a bigger fan of his histories of sexuality and punishment, but maybe that's because I read them subsequent to this when I could understand him better.
One of my dear friends told me that she believed Foucault had made feminism possible for women. He also made me want to put a stick in my eye, while I was reading this book. Really, Foucault? Do you really have to be so damned inscrutable??
The rewards for making it to the end of Archaeology of Knowledge are so worth it, though. In his own way, Foucault pokes and prods until he completely convinces you that disciplines are little more than arbitrary, fragile, man-made constructions--artificial bo...more
The rewards for making it to the end of Archaeology of Knowledge are so worth it, though. In his own way, Foucault pokes and prods until he completely convinces you that disciplines are little more than arbitrary, fragile, man-made constructions--artificial bo...more
One of Foucault's more difficult works, but a must read for anyone who wishes to understand his thought. It is absolutely foundational in how Foucault conceives of history and change.
An important bit of theory on the subjective nature of all history, and how we might best understand it by approaching it with an archeologist's mindset and methods.
Interesting, but too in-depth unless you really want to get at the philosophical underpinnings of his Archaeological method. Read The Order of Things instead.
Another author whose entire oeuvre, essentially, changed the course of my life as a critical thinker. When I read this, I had been in a sort of Jane Austen / the Romantic poets phase for quite some time, and I was utterly bored with literature, with studying literature, with repeatedly canvassing the same tired books. Then I found Garcia Marquez and Foucault, I discovered the genuine critical theory of literature, and I embarked upon an infatuation with semiotics, (post)structuralist, and postmo...more
Among other things I like the book for the way it traverses meanings to reveal newer sense in words, and that in almost every sentence.
The Discourse was much better than Archaeology, which was a real slog. From: http://marklindner.info/blog/2007/12/...
Dec 26, 2008
Jeannette
is currently reading it
Beautifully written. An examination into the archeology of our construction of knowledge and who is allowed to speak.
pretty damn interesting. a lot of big words, which the way foucault uses them is pretty cool. i guess it would seem that this is the one where he becomes "post"-structuralist, umm kindof rips it to shreds...
A really difficult read, but not because the concepts are particularly difficult. Just dry, slow, repetitive, and not much fun. Probably better off reading a summary, article, maybe even the Wikipedia page to get a grasp of this one.
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أحيانا وأنا أقرأ هنا أتمنى أن أدخل في الزمن وأعود إلى فوكو وأصرخ في وجهه : إييييييش قاعد تقووووول؟؟؟؟ ، وأحيانا أتخيل نفسي مع المترجم في صراع ، وكثيرا، كدت أن أمسك وجهي، وهاتك ياتلكيييييم، هههههه الكتاب دا لازم أرجعله عشان أفهم، أنهيته، لكني مش متأكد إني بالفعل قرأته، لذلك، سأتوقف عن التقييم حتى أقرأه مجددا
;///
٢
اخر ثلاث سطور من الكتاب: ( الخطاب ليس هو الحياة: وإن زمنه ليس زمانكم، فيه لا تتصالحون مع الموت، ومن الممكن أن تكونوا قتلتم الله تحت ثقل كل ماقلتموه، لكن عليكم أن لا تعتقدوا أنكم سوف تص...more
أحيانا وأنا أقرأ هنا أتمنى أن أدخل في الزمن وأعود إلى فوكو وأصرخ في وجهه : إييييييش قاعد تقووووول؟؟؟؟ ، وأحيانا أتخيل نفسي مع المترجم في صراع ، وكثيرا، كدت أن أمسك وجهي، وهاتك ياتلكيييييم، هههههه الكتاب دا لازم أرجعله عشان أفهم، أنهيته، لكني مش متأكد إني بالفعل قرأته، لذلك، سأتوقف عن التقييم حتى أقرأه مجددا
;///
٢
اخر ثلاث سطور من الكتاب: ( الخطاب ليس هو الحياة: وإن زمنه ليس زمانكم، فيه لا تتصالحون مع الموت، ومن الممكن أن تكونوا قتلتم الله تحت ثقل كل ماقلتموه، لكن عليكم أن لا تعتقدوا أنكم سوف تص...more
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Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas. He held a chair at the Collège de France with the title "History of Systems of Thought," and lectured at the University at Buffalo and the University of California, Berkeley.
Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences and the prison sys...more
More about Michel Foucault...
Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences and the prison sys...more
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“You may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying, you will make a man that will live longer than he.”
—
14 people liked it
“Are you going to change yet again, shift your position according to the questions that are put to you, and say that the objections are not really directed at the place from which you are speaking? Are you going to declare yet again that you have never been what you have been reproached with being? Are you already preparing the way out that will enable you in your next book to spring up somewhere else and declare as you're now doing: no, no, I'm not where you are lying in wait for me, but over here, laughing at you?'
'What, do you imagine that I would take so much trouble and so much pleasure in writing, do you think that I would keep so persistently to my task, if I were not preparing – with a rather shaky hand – a labyrinth into which I can venture, into which I can move my discourse... in which I can lose myself and appear at last to eyes that I will never have to meet again. I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.”
—
12 people liked it
More quotes…
'What, do you imagine that I would take so much trouble and so much pleasure in writing, do you think that I would keep so persistently to my task, if I were not preparing – with a rather shaky hand – a labyrinth into which I can venture, into which I can move my discourse... in which I can lose myself and appear at last to eyes that I will never have to meet again. I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.”
Aug 21, 2010 07:46am
Based on this book... no.
Aug 23, 2010 08:18am