Foucault’s The Archaeology of Knowledge: A Quick Summary

In 1969, Foucault published the following book:

Foucault, Michel. 1969. L’archéologie du savoir. Gallimard, Paris. = Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge (trans. Allan Sheridan). Harper and Row, New York.

It seems to mark a new methodological perspective in his work (Merquior 1991: 77) and the point when Foucault was turning to Poststructuralism.

The Archaeology of Knowledge is an clear attempt to state and expound the fundamental “archaeological” method Foucault used in The Order of Things, History of Madness and The Birth of the Clinic. Foucault came in his later works to have a new method called “genealogy” (supplementing “archaeology”), which was supposed to show how systems of thought unearthed by “archaeology” were merely contingent accidents of history.

The emphasis in The Archaeology of Knowledge now seems to be on discourses or discursive formations (practices or statements that reign in a particular time), and the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche’s “genealogical” philosophy has become very important (Merquior 1991: 77).

Another new concept in The Archaeology of Knowledge is the archive, but one will be hard pressed to actually understand what Foucault means by this.

Let Foucault – in that wonderfully lucid prose for which he was famous – explain it to you:

“Between the language (langue) that defines the system of constructing possible sentences, and the corpus that passively collects the words that are spoken, the archive defines a particular level: that of a practice that causes a multiplicity of statements to emerge as so many regular events, as so many things to be dealt with and manipulated. It does not have the weight of tradition; and it does not constitute the library of all libraries, outside time and place; nor is it the welcoming oblivion that opens up to all new speech the operational field of its freedom; between tradition and oblivion, it reveals the rules of a practice that enables statements both to survive and to undergo regular modification. It is the general system of the formation and transformation of statements.

It is obvious that the archive of a society, a culture, or a civilization cannot be described exhaustively; or even, no doubt, the archive of a whole period. On the other hand, it is not possible for us to describe our own archive, since it is from within these rules that we speak, since it is that which gives to what we can say – and to itself, the object of our discourse – its modes of appearance, its forms of existence and coexistence, its system of accumulation, historicity, and disappearance. The archive cannot be described in its totality; and in its presence it is unavoidable. It emerges in fragments, regions, and levels, more fully, no doubt, and with greater sharpness, the greater the time that separates us from it: at most, were it not for the rarity of the documents, the greater chronological distance would be necessary to analyse it.” (Foucault 1972: 130).

Was that clear? Well, yes: about as clear as mud.

Here was a man trying to explain a crucial concept of his work, but does very little except reveal to everyone watching that the pretentious French emperor has no clothes.

The archive is not, apparently, our faculty of language. But, according to Foucault, the archive is “the general system of the formation and transformation of statements” (Foucault 1972: 130). But transformation of statements into what? Even more shockingly, we cannot even “describe our own archive”! So how do we know one even exists?

Merquior, who tries hard to see through the fog of Foucault’s gibberish, thought that the archive is a system for generating social meaning (Merquior 1991: 81), whatever that means. Foucault also regarded the archive as the historical a priori (Merquior 1991: 81), so whatever it represents it seems to be analogous to the epistemes of his previous work The Order of Things.

It seems that Foucault was soon arguing that “discourses” in any society were the product of control and rules and access to knowledge (Merquior 1991: 84). The stage was now set for Foucault’s idea that power creates knowledge.

Further attempts to make sense of The Archaeology of Knowledge seem like a complete waste of time to me – or at least I think there are probably much more productive things you could be doing with your waking hours.

Gilles Deleuze – another grand Poststructuralist charlatan – apparently drew the lesson from Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge that one should make no distinction between science and poetry! (Merquior 1991: 84). If anyone believes this outrageous idiocy, then by all means act on Deleuze’s sage advice and seek the services of a poet instead of using science-based medicine when you get sick! I am sure that will fix you right up...

Links
Gutting, Gary. 2003 (rev. 2013). “Michel Foucault,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/

Kelly, Mark. “Michel Foucault (1926–1984),” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://www.iep.utm.edu/foucault/

“Michel Foucault,” Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Merquior, José Guilherme. 1991. Foucault (2nd edn.). Fontana, London.

Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith). Pantheon Books, New York.

UKIP and the British General Election of 2015

The United Kingdom is due for a general election on 7 May, 2015, and there are signs that the British political landscape may be transformed by the UK Independence Party (UKIP) at this election:

Toby Helm, “Ukip on track for 100-plus second places across England,” 8 March, 2015.

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) is, according to some analysts, set to become a major political force, because it will come second in as many as 100 seats in the election. That means in subsequent local and general elections after 2015 it could then be on the point of gaining large numbers of seats – perhaps even becoming a coalition partner in any government elected in the general election of 2020.

That in turn will mean a strong impetus to take Britain out of the EU in the coming years.

A lot of people on the British Left seem to think taking Britain out of the EU would be a bad idea, but they are mostly deluded Leftists who have an unrealistic, utopian and even quasi-religious faith in the European Union. In reality, the Eurozone and European Union are in an existential crisis today, because they really are failed states.

The Eurozone and EU were constructed on the bankrupt ideas that (1) you can have a monetary union without a fiscal union, (2) you can run a successful economy on the fraud of New Consensus neoclassical economics and harsh neoliberalism, and (3) national democracy doesn’t really matter anymore.

This is why the Eurozone is the train wreck it is today. Peripheral nations have had depressions (e.g., Ireland and Greece) or severe recessions (e.g., Italy and Spain). Eurozone unemployment stands at about 11.2%. That is depression-level unemployment. And if you think this is bad, just look at Eurozone youth unemployment: it stands at about 22.9%. This is a catastrophe and outrage. It is sheer destruction of future generations.

Moreover, large numbers of Europeans – both on the Left and Right – are coming to hate the Eurozone and are increasingly skeptical about the European Union as well, because the EU is rightly perceived as being extremely anti-democratic and taking away the sovereignty of member states, even those states that do not use the Euro.

The rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) is largely a symptom of the collapse in public confidence in the Eurozone and EU.

A large part of UKIP’s new base of supporters seems to come from disaffected Conservative party voters. We can get a feel for why this is happening in the video interview below of Neil Hamilton, Deputy Chairman of UKIP.



It is obvious that opposition to the EU, its anti-democratic nature and mass immigration from the EU to Britain are major issues for the Conservative base of UKIP.

UKIP inspires an irrational hysteria from the British Left, and usually it is accompanied by cries of racism. No doubt there are some UKIP voters who are racist or xenophobic, but frankly I think the Left overestimates the numbers and influence of such people in UKIP. The British Left’s response to UKIP is often infantile.

Even UKIP’s hostility to immigration – at least by the leadership and in its party platform – is almost completely about open door, mass immigration from the EU nations, and how this poses economic and social problems for Britain. Those concerns do not prove everyone or most people in UKIP are racists or xenophobes, even though nobody denies that some such vocal and ugly people really do vote for the party. In reality, UKIP’s proposed reforms on immigration, as described on its party website here, would make the UK have an immigration policy rather like that of Canada or New Zealand. The last time I checked these nations were tolerant liberal democracies – not racist, fascist states. The fact is that the truly sinister far-right party in the coming election in the UK is the British National Party (BNP), not UKIP. I have little doubt that a UKIP government would be ugly, mainly because of its free market and Thatcherite bent, but things need to be kept in perspective.

The two issues that seem to concern most UKIP votes – the failed Eurozone and EU and its anti-democratic nature – should be of extreme concern to people on the Left.

For the fact is that UKIP’s rise is a sign of the utter bankruptcy of the British New Labour party as well – not just the Conservative party.

Everyone knows New Labour sold out and became a neoliberal party a long time ago (apart from a brief flash of sanity from about 2008–2010 when the party rediscovered some of its Keynesian heritage). But it is clear that New Labour supports the failed EU with a utopian passion too, and this will probably start hurting it politically in a serious way in the coming years.

Why, you ask? What should sound alarm bells is that Labour voters in significant numbers are abandoning the party and are now willing to vote for UKIP, as we can see here, here, here, here, and here.

A brief summary of this phenomenon can be seen in the video below with respect to the (1) Clacton and (2) Heywood and Middleton by-elections on 9 October, 2014 last year.



The Labour party needs radical reform. It needs to utterly abandon neoliberalism and rediscover Keynesian economics and social democracy. It needs to commit to creating full employment again. It also needs – at the very least – to support a fair referendum on Britain’s EU membership and most probably move to opposing the EU and accept that a majority of people in Britain probably want out of the EU completely. It needs to stand up for national economic and political sovereignty – not failed, anti-democratic, neoliberal utopian experiments like the EU.

If the Labour party does not change, it will become totally worthless, and a new left-wing party will have to rise to replace it. But there is no sign whatsoever of this happening.

More likely, the Left in Britain is doomed if New Labour continues down its path of neoliberalism and pro-EU fantasies.

The future of politics in Britain may well be a UKIP and anti-EU Conservative coalition, which will be ugly indeed since UKIP is likely to be Thatcherite on economics and will have a crazy libertarian wing.