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Salmagundi
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History , Discourse and Discontinuity* -
BY MICHEL FOUCAULT
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226 MICHEL FOUCAULT
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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 227
ance have not ceased to start afresh). There are units
obstinately maintained after so many errors, neglect
innovation, so many metamorphoses and which sometim
such radical mutations that one would have difficulty in
them as identical to themselves (how can one affirm that
remains the same, uninterrupted, from the physiocrats t
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228 MICHEL FOUCAULT
exclusive). There is an in
time one can define a similar set of rules.
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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 229
does not coincide with the constitution - by Marx - of an an
society and of history.1 The Epistemic is not a general
reason; it is a complex relationship of successive displacement
Nothing, you see, is more foreign to me than the quest fo
straining sovereign and unique form. I do not seek to detect,
from diverse signs, the unitary spirit of an epoch, the general f
its conscience: something like a Weltanschauung. Nor ha
scribed either the emergence and eclipse of a formal structur
might reign for a time over all the manifestations of though
not written the history of a transcendental syncope [??
finally, have I described thoughts or century-old sensitivitie
to life, stuttering, struggling and dying out like great pha
like souls playing out their shadow theater against the back
history. I have studied, one after another, whole sets of di
I have characterized them; I have defined the play of ru
transformations, of thresholds, of remanences. I have com
them, I have described clusters of relationships. Wherever
deemed it necessary I have allowed the systems to proliferat
*******
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230 MICHEL FOUCAULT
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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 231
penetrate into things, to capture from them the language
secretly enclose, nor to bring it to light; but to extend a
transcription where the form, the number, the size and the d
of elements can be translated in a univocal manner);
- new form of localization and of circulation of the discourse in
society (the clinical discourse is not formulated in the same places,
it does not have the same recording procedures, it is not diffused, it
is not cumulative, it is not conserved nor is it contested in the same
way as the medical discourse of the 18th century.).
All these changes of a type superior to the preceding ones define
the transformations which affect the discursive areas themselves:
mutations.
(3) Finally, the third type of changes, those which affect simul-
taneously several discursive formations:
- reversal in the hierarchical order (the analysis of language had,
during the classical period, a directing role which it has lost, in the
first years of the 19th century, to the advantage of biology);
- change in the nature of the directing role (classical grammar, as
a general theory of signs, guaranteed in other areas the transposition
of an instrument of analysis; in the 19th century, biology assures the
"metaphorical" importation of a certain number of concepts: organ-
isms - organization; function - social function; life - life of words or
of languages);
- functional displacements: the theory of the continuity of beings
which, in the 18th century depended upon the philosophical dis-
course, is taken over in the 19th century by the scientific discourse.
All these transformations of a type superior to the two others
characterize the changes peculiar to epistemic itself.
Redistributions.
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232 MICHEL FOUCAULT
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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 233
continuous" category for the no less abstract and general one
"continuous." I am attempting, on the contrary, to sho
discontinuity is not a monotonous and unthinkable void b
events, a void which one must hasten to fill (two perfectly
metrical solutions) with the dismal plentitude of the cause or
suppleness and agility of the mind; but that it is a play of s
transformations different from one another (each one havi
conditions, its rules, its level) and linked among themselves ac
to schemes of dependence. History is the descriptive analysi
the theory of these transformations.
*******
A last point on w
the expression: "
write a history o
do not study th
to their gramma
field which they
so? What do you
them and to recon
a durable transla
What do you seek
the men who hav
tarily or unbekn
imperceptible sup
like the beginning
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234 MICHEL FOUCAULT
in relation to what is sa
inaudible when a word doesn't occur in the text.
So that what I am doing is neither a formalization nor an exegesis.
But an archeology: that is to say, as its name indicates only too
obviously, the description of the record. By this word, I do not mean
the mass of texts which have been collected at a given period, or
chanced to have survived oblivion from this period. I mean all the
rules which at a given period and for a definite society defined:
1) the limits and the forms of expressihility: what is it possible to
speak of? What has been constituted as the field of discourse? What
type of discursivity has been appropriated to such and such a domain
(what has been designated as the subject; what has one wished to
make a descriptive science of; to what has one given a literary formu-
lation, etc.)?
2) the limits and the forms of conservation: what are the terms
destined to disappear without any trace? Which ones are destined, on
the other hand, to enter into the memory of men through ritualistic
recitation, pedagogy and teaching, entertainment or holiday, pub-
licity? Which ones are noted for being capable of re-use, and toward
what ends? Which ones are put in circulation and in what groups?
Which are those which are repressed and censured?
3) the limits and the forms of memory such as it appears in the
different discursive formations: which are the terms which everyone
recognizes as valid or questionable, or definitely invalid? Which
ones have been abandoned as negligible and which ones have been
excluded as foreign? What types of relationships are established
between the system of present terms and the body of past terms?
4) the limits and the forms of reactivation: amongst the discourses
of previous epochs or of foreign cultures, which are the ones that are
retained, which are valued, which are imported, which one tries to
reconstitute? And what does one do with them, what transforma-
tions does one impose upon them (commentary, exegesis, analysis),
what system of appreciation does one apply to them, what role does
one give them to play?
5) the limits and the forms of appropriation: what individuals,
what groups, what classes have access to such a kind of discourse?
In what way is the relationship between the discourse and he who
gives it, and he who receives it institutionalized? In what way is
the relationship of the discourse to its author shown and defined?
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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 235
How does the struggle for the taking over of the discourse take p
between classes, nations, linguistic, cultural or ethnic collectivities
It is against this background that the analyses which I have beg
are set; it is towards it that they are directed. I am writing, ther
fore, not a history of the mind, according to the succession of
forms or according to the thickness of its deposited meanings. I
not question the discourses concerning what silently they me
but on the fact and the conditions of their manifest appearance;
on the contents which they may conceal, but on the transformati
which they have effectuated; not on the meaning which is main
tained in them like a perpetual origin, but on the field where th
coexist, remain and disappear. It is a question of an analysis of t
discourses in their exterior dimensions. From whence arise three
consequences:
1) Treat the past discourse not as a theme for a commentary which
would revive it, but as a monument3 to be described in its charac-
teristic disposition.
2) Seek in the discourse not its laws of construction, as do the
structural methods, but its conditions of existence.4
3) Refer the discourse not to the thought, to the mind or to the
subject which might have given rise to it, but to the practical field
in which it is deployed.
*******
Excuse me for b
slight changes in
we may speak ab
of the systems a
discourses.'9 Do n
I seek to avoid t
infinitum. But p
to the wall. I must answer.
Certainly not the question of whether / am a reactionary; nor
whether my texts are (in themselves, intrinsically, through a certain
number of well-coded signs). You ask me a much more serious ques-
tion, the only one, I believe, which can legitimately be asked. You
question me on the relationships between what I say and a certain
political practice.
3 I borrow this word from M. Canguilhem. He describes, better than I have
done myself, what I have wished to do.
* Is it necessary to specify again that I am not what is called a "structuralist"?
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236 MICHEL FOUCAULT
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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 237
themes of the origin, the subject and the implicit meaning
undertake - a difficult task, very strong resistance indeed p
- to liberate the discursive field from the historical-transcen
structure which the philosophy of the nineteenth century has i
on it.
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238 MICHEL FOUCAULT
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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 239
formation and transformation of "things said." It is the
these "things said" that I have undertaken.
4) Finally, the last critical task (which sums up and em
the others) : freeing from their uncertain status this ensemb
ciplines which one calls history of ideas, history of sciences, h
thought, history of knowledge, of concepts or of consci
certainty manifests itself in several ways:
- difficulties in limiting the domains: where does the h
sciences end, where does the history of opinions and bel
How are the history of concepts and the history of notion
to be separated? Where lies the boundary between the hi
knowledge and that of the imagination?
- difficulty in defining the nature of the object: does on
history of what has been known, acquired, forgotten, or
of mental forms, or the history of their interference? Does o
the history of characteristic features which are held in c
men of one period or of one culture? Does one describe a
spirit? Does one analyze the (ideological or genetic) h
reason?
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240 MICHEL FOUCAULT
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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 241
of all those secret meanings in which thoughts and
enveloped.
*******
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242 MICHEL FOUCAULT
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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 243
has transformed not the meaning or the form of the discou
the conditions of its emergence, insertion and functioning
transformed the mode of existence of the medical discourse.
has come about through a certain number of operations de
elsewhere and which I sum up here: new criteria to designa
who receive by law the right to hold a medical discour
division of the medical object through the application of a
scale of observation which is superimposed on the first without
it (sickness observed statistically on the level of a pop
new law of assistance which creates a hospital space for ob
and surgery (space which is organized, furthermore, accord
economic principle, since the sick person benefitting from
must compensate through the medical lesson which he gives
for the right of being cared for by the obligation of being e
and this goes up to, and includes, death); a new mode of reg
of preserving, of accumulating, of diffusing and of teachi
medical discourse (which must no longer express the exper
the physician but constitute, first of all, a document on illn
functioning of the medical discourse in the system of admin
and political control of the population (society as society is co
and "treated" according to the categories of health and path
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244 MICHEL FOUCAULT
It seems to me, that starting from such an analysis, one can under-
stand:
1) how to describe a whole group of relations between a scientific
discourse and a political practice, the details of which it is possible
to follow and whose subordination one can grasp. Very direct relations
since they no longer have to pass through the conscience of the
speaking subjects nor through the efficacity of thought. Yet, indirect
relations since the data of a scientific discourse can no longer be
considered as the immediate expression of a social rapport or of an
economic situation.
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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 245
clinique [The Birth of the Hospital]), and to a whole gro
"interdiscursive" changes which were simultaneously produce
several disciplines (substitutions for an analysis of the order
taxonomical characters, of an analysis of solidarities, of functio
of successive series, which I have described in Les mots et les
[Words and Things]).
4) how phenomena which one is in the habit of placing i
foreground (influence, communication of models, transfer and
phorization of concepts) find their historical condition of poss
in these first modifications: for example, the importation, i
analysis of society, of biological concepts such as those of organism
function, of evolution, even of sickness, played, in the 19th ce
the role which one recognizes (much more important, much
ideologically loaded than the "naturalist" comparisons of prec
periods) only in proportion to the regulation given to the m
discourse by political practice.
Through this very long example I am anxious to show yo
one thing: how what I am attempting to bring out throug
analysis - the positivity of discourses, their conditions of exis
the systems which regulate their emergence, their functioni
their transformations - can concern political practice; to sho
what this practice can do with it; to convince you that by out
this theory of the scientific discourse, by making it appear
ensemble of regulated practices, being articulated in an analy
fashion upon other practices, I am not just enjoying myself by ma
the game more complicated for certain spirited souls. I am try
define in what way, to what extent, to what level the discour
particularly the scientific discourses, can be objects of a p
practice, and in what system of dependency they can be in r
to it.
Allow me once more to call you to witness the question I ask:
Isn't this politics well known which answers in terms of thought or
conscience, in terms of pure ideality or psychological traits, when
one speaks to it of a practice, of its conditions, of its rules, of its
historical changes? Isn't this politics well known which, since the
beginning of the 19th century, stubbornly persists in seeing in the
immense domain of practice only the epiphany of a triumphant
reason, or in deciphering in it only the historic-transcendental destin-
ation of the West? And more precisely: does the refusal to analyze
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246 MICHEL FOUCAULT
I should like to c
- A progressive p
and the specified
only ideal necess
individual initiativ
- A progressive
possibilities of tr
these transform
abstraction of ch
- A progressive p
of the subject in
tions: it defines
subjects can occup
- A progressive
the result of mu
but rather that
political discours
the other practice
- A progressive
does not find i
"sovereign critic
diverse scientific
practices linked t
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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 247
susceptible to certain transformations) are part of a system
lations with other practices.
This is the point where what I have been trying to do
ten years now encounters the question which you are ask
I ought to say: that's the point where your question - w
legitimate and pertinent - reaches the heart of my own un
If I were to reformulate this undertaking - under the p
your questioning which has not ceased to occupy me for a
months - here is, more or less, what I would say: "To dete
its diverse dimensions, what must have been in Europe,
seventeenth century, the mode of existence of discourses a
larly of the scientific discourses (their rules of formation,
conditions, their dependencies, their transformations), in
the knowledge which is ours today could come to exist
more precise manner, that knowledge which has taken as
this curious object which is man."
I know, almost as much as any other person, how "thank
research can be - in the strict sense of the term - how i
it is to approach the discourses not from the sweet, mute and
conscience which is expressed in them, but from an obscur
of anonymous rules. I know how unpleasant it is to brin
limits and the necessities of a practice, whereas one was in
of seeing unfold in a pure transparency the play of g
liberty. I know how provoking it is to treat as a cluster
formations this history of discourses which, until now, w
by the reassuring metamorphoses of life and the intenti
tinuity of the past. Finally I know how unbearable it is
analyze, combine, recompose all these texts which have now
to silence, without the transfigured face of the author b
discernible in it, inasmuch as each person wants to put, th
putting of "himself" in his own discourse, when he unde
speak: what! so many words piled up, so many marks
much paper and offered to innumerable eyes, such a gre
preserve them beyond the gesture which articulates them
profound reverence determined to preserve them and inscribe
the memory of men - all this, so that nothing will rema
poor hand which has traced them, of this anxiety which
appease itself in them, and of this completed life which h
left but them for survival? Discourse, in its deepest dete
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248 MICHEL FOUCAULT
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