This content introduces Michel Foucault's "The Archaeology of Knowledge," arguing that disciplines like history are not neutral representations of the past but rather constructed mechanisms that shape our understanding of the world and ourselves, often by excluding or marginalizing certain perspectives.
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hey everyone back again today I'm
starting a four-part series on Michelle
fuko's the archaeology of knowledge
which I've actually covered before as
more of a conversational type broad
overview of the text with my buddy Alex
you can go and listen to that if you
want it's super useful uh for a more
laid-back breakdown discussion of the
themes of this book why it's important
and all that but now I think it's
important to also do more of a deep dive
dissection of the book because it's
super important if you want to
understand fuko's thought if you want to
understand discourse analysis and if you
want to really understand the world and
you want to understand the many ways in
which we come to delimit various
disciplines to say that there's this
thing called history and then there's
this thing called physics and then
there's this thing called mathematics
whatever Fuko quate simply here is
asking us to consider What mechanisms
are in place to allow allow disciplines
to emerge at all and these disciplines
then come to affect the way that humans
that people come to understand history
the world their neighbors and themselves
in so many ways now that was a big
Preamble before saying hi I'm David if
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this is happening or I'm recording this
against the backdrop of Israel's
Relentless Slaughter of Palestinians and
capture of pales inian land which has
been going on for more than 100 years
and I've done a number of episodes on
this providing a history to Zionism and
to Israel's occupation of Palestine and
the Palestinian people and
systematically denying Palestinians
rights denying Palestinians sovereignty
uh and autonomy to be able to live free
of military occupation free of the
violence that Israel inflicts against
Palestinians on a daily basis and it's
not just like some flare up in in
Israel's political party where some
would like to say oh since the the 90s
when there have been this Progressive
the early 2000s this Progressive
heightened uh like extreme political
extremism in Israel some people like to
say oh it's because of that when no this
this violence is embedded within the
very fabric of the Zionist logic and the
violence will continue so long as that
logic is allowed to uh to continue so if
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the ways I cope with the massive amount
of Rage I feel on a daily basis now
because of Israel's Relentless
violence okay kind of a long intro let's
let's jump into this just brief ly one
more thing like I said this is going to
be four episodes pretty much every
episode is going to cover each part of
the book Let's jump into Michelle fuko's
the archaeology of knowledge now before
starting this it's important that you
know we just ask some questions we ask
some questions what is history like what
what really is history I don't mean to
like editorialize or grandstand or
anything like that but like when you
really sit down for a moment and
question what history is uh I hope that
you'd you'd kind of in you know you'd be
dissatisfied with what you might have
previously believed so history is just
the presentation in in the most
reductive way the presentation of the
past now there are so many history books
right there are so many it would be like
almost impossible to read them all
almost it would be impossible to read
them all there's no possible way anyone
could do that and just think about your
own life think about your own life and
try to imagine how many books it would
take for somebody to recount your entire
life it'll probably take thousands of
books because you need to add
interpretation you need to add so many
different nuances and understandings of
who you are you'd you'd inevitably have
to consider so many other factors that
would require their own history books to
figure out how they have affected you
and shaped who you are and so if you
just think about that for a moment think
about the difficulty in recounting your
own life and this is just putting aside
the impossibility of anyone to truly
understand themselves like we know this
from the psychoanalyst like the
difficulty that's always presented to us
when we try to convey our feelings our
understanding of ourselves we run into
some serious roadblocks we are limited
by language which is a nitian point from
n and I'll explain in a minute don't get
scared I'll explain what I mean by that
in a minute but now imagine the entirety
of human history the entirety of since
we've been human as far as like our
physiological structure maybe about
100,000 years maybe a little more I mean
something like that and
imagine the kind of hubris that is
required for us to think that we somehow
have a grasp of history and I'm not
saying we we shouldn't study it of
course we should but it's it's kind of
audacious for us to think that we can and
and
auspicious favorable to success in
thinking that somehow we can properly
represent history when history as we
know it is comprised of millions of
people doing so many different things in
so many different places influenced by
so many other different things that it
already seems like somewhat of an
impossible task and the problem gets
really it gets compounded when we
consider the many millions and millions
of people who are just erased in history
when you open up your textbooks uh your
history textbooks chances are if you're
in North America most of the people
you're going to be reading about are
white dudes just a fact are were white
dudes the only people in history no were
the only people were they the only
people who did anything meaningful no
however this goes to show just as like a
a kind of Preamble just as a brief
illustration how history isn't just this
neutral thing that just looks at this
quote unquote neutral past and seeks to
represent it instead history might be a
way to convey certain interests to tell
certain stories about the past to shape
public Consciousness about the past in a
way to affect the future because if you
shape people's understandings of the
past you can shape their understanding
of the future and how they will act in
the future now I said that this was a
nian point what I'm what I mean by that
is I'm pulling from his in truth and
lying in a non-moral sense or an
extraoral sense depending on the
translation in which n says that so long
as we are using language we are kind of
deceiving ourselves
because he says that really the only
truth that we can find in language that
we arrive at through language is truth that's
that's
been separated from us it's an
artificial truth so he gives the example
of mammals and he says humans love to
content themselves with identifying
mammals out in the world but n says like
what really is a mammal I mean that's a
word we've given to describe certain
creatures on Earth and when we see a
thing that complies with the definition
and the specific characteristics and
attributes we associate with that
definition when we identify a creature
out in the world that fits those
criteria does that actually mean
anything to the creature itself or is
this just a way by which humans come to
categorize the world humans come to
capture the world humans come to
organize the world there's a really
great quote I think it's from I think
it's from I I love pronouncing French
people's names in French cuz the
comments the comments are always so
funny what like why are you pronouncing
it like that uh but Roland bars bars as
some would like me to sayand B has a
kind of an image he he provides us where
he says how many shades of green does a
newborn or a child capable of seeing
colors See
in the grass as they as they crawl
through the grass they probably see what
might be to us an infinite number of
colors yet it's something that as adults
were taught oh it's it's just green you
know the grass is just green or we can
use another example of tree tree is an
innocuous word right tree doesn't offend
anyone I hope but trees are an
interesting phenomenon because if I say
or if I tell you to imagine a tree every
single one of you listening and myself
has conjured up a different image of a
tree in our minds so n says that in this case
case
language per performs the function of
effacing differences and leaving only
this kind of pure artificiality in in
their wake what we have is the word tree
and it's meant to stand in for all of
these variations of trees it is meant to
actually kind of round off all the
differences and leave us just with with
this this pure artificiality in its wake
so language is always bound up in this
process of excluding things that's how
that's the only way we're able to use
language at all no two people have the
same image of a tree coming to their
mind or a chair or a computer or
whatever we use language as a way to
simplify the world but it's not a
neutral act it is very much bound up
with certain histories it is very much
bound up with certain interests in how
these words are going to be taken up and
what they are going to exclude in their
being um uttered uttered in their being
said but to go back now to the text
history is not even something that has
enjoyed a static kind of consistent
history history has undergone various
changes in the way that it was conducted
for a long time history was it sought to
find these broad Strokes in the past to
reduce entire eras entire periods to
like these singular World Views or ways
of understanding uh the Earth but of
course that in no way or societ
in no way did did these worldviews
actually capture everybody's views of
anything it just captured you know those
few people who could write things down
that historians could then read later
which is why there's like an fundamental
bias found within history itself where
we are only capable partly through
colonialism through the systematic
eraser of indigenous ways of knowing and
knowledges we have covered over all of
that in the West in favor of the written
word we only maintain those histories
we've only maintained those histories
that were written down which is just one
of many ways to actually collect history
there's also oral storytelling there's
storytelling through music and history
keeping through music and and and other
forms like that through navigation
through geography through so many things
that gets erased in favor of the written
word and so all of those knowledges that
have been kept in human history and I'm
using the term human history in like the
broadest sense of like all people at all
times just everyone in the past how much
of that has been erased how much of that
has been
forgotten by the academic Gatekeepers in
the realm of history in in their
appreciation of uh the written word so
history used to be really committed to
just finding out these singular homogeneous
homogeneous
worldviews it looked for
totalities Universal holes to grasp
entire periods and eras any deviation or
disperate event or event or phenomenon
or person that didn't comply would then
be situated within somehow it would be
like really shoehorned in there or it
would be seen as some coincidental
departure from that established Norm or
world viiew or era or period or whatever
now writing this in the late 1960s Fuko
began to observe actually a
transformation in the way that history
was being conducted in the Historical
Method that began to somewhat
problematize the previous efforts within
history to just reduce entire peoples to
a singular worldview or to homogenize
all people and this is something that I
hope eventually one day we're able to
look back upon in the concept of Lake
Nations to undo the way that nationhood
the way that nationality has been used
to homogenize people to reduce them to
an artificial idea about what they
should be now he describes this
transformation the transformation from
history looking at Broad
temporalization from doing that to being
a little bit more looking at things a
little bit more specifically and problem
izing these periodizations these Dev and
the way it treats deviations and so on
he calls this the transformation or the
shift from Total history to General
history now General history is not
something to necessarily celebrate if
you know you're hearing this and you're
like oh well a more nuanced view
approach to history would probably be
good I mean you want to include more
perspectives right you want to include
more ideas you want more people involved
you don't want to reduce them to these Broad
Broad
temporalization but we really can't be
fooled here this new method did not do
away with the older one it simply
reappropriated it to account for really
exploding knowledges and New Media that
allowed more people to actually share
their experiences share their knowledges
share the histories that they knew on a
localized individual level suddenly
history was confront or the history as
far as like the study of history the
history discipline was confronted with
all all of these different testimonies
and it had to find a way to make sense
of them while also retaining its love of
reducing the past to what is manageable
to what is
organization organizable nice David in
short it found itself needing
to periodize all these new periods that
were being opened up and discovered to
meth methodize the methods of History to
establish what he calls a series of
series to find a way to insert a
homogeneous totalizing framework to
account for all of these new ideas for
all of these New Perspectives that had
historically just been totally ignored by
by
historians so in other words it was
looking for a new way to explain
ruptures to explain
discontinuities to explain disperate
events and deviations without abandoning
the Historical Method Al together it
couldn't get rid of that Historical
Method now we saw other things were
going on in different fields like if you
went outside of history there were there
were other big changes going on in other
fields so elsewhere in disciplines like
the history of philosophy or art or
science or literature where there is
like a historical component when you
study philosophy you're studying the
probably going to have to study the
Greeks St Augustine you know decal
you're going to read all these people
you're going to engage in the history of
philosophy science maybe not so much I
mean if if someone does a science degree
you're probably not learning about like
I don't know who's a if you're doing
biology you're probably not learning
about pum or Bale or something you know
the history within science is not really
as important when you're learning it
because a lot of that stuff is outdated
and it's actual practice today in any
case there are still people who study
like the history of science or the
history of literature so on
but in these other fields there was
another transformation taking place not
the same one found in history in this
transformation from Total history to
General history instead we saw the
abandonment of the search for Origins
homogeneous periods unitary eras in
favor of a new type of rationality so in
his words this approach seems to be
seeking and discovering more and more
discontinuities where as history itself
appears to be abandoning the eruption of
events in favor of stable structures so
what that means in non fukan English is
that he's saying that history was still
trying to locate to use these overall
homogeneous methods to homogenize
history to make sense of History because
otherwise I mean history is kind of
doomed from the start because it's
history is too big and expansive it has
to be selective but in that
selectivity it is going to reveal just
how committed it is to only certain
histories to only certain narratives
those that largely follow a European
Western um trajectory whereas these
other fields Fuko suggest we of the
history of science the history of
philosophy the history of literature he
said there was something else going on
and there was seem to be more of a
welcoming of of discontinuities of rupt
to be able to look at something that
didn't quite fit within a cannon within
an established field and they didn't try
to just make sense of it by being like
Oh uh the coincidence that we shouldn't
consider that uh or like oh it fits
within the cannon because of this reason
you know either of those methods either
of those approaches would uphold the
Cannon as being like absolutely
unchanging determinative of everything
else around it as like a kind of
gravitational black hole that shapes
everything uh everything around it and
and and fits everything within it these
other fields were instead they would
they would encounter something that
didn't quite fit in with a previously
established Cannon and instead of saying
oh uh that belongs outside or it belongs
inside for XYZ reasons these fields were
saying that's different I don't know
what that is let's explore it
and this isn't necessarily something
that Fuko is celebrating either I think
that he's giving it a little bit more
credit than the Historical Method but in
any case it represents an interesting
transformation and it sets the stage for
what will be his archaeological approach
so the archaeology of knowledge where
spoiler alert archaeology at least one
of its characteristics is to search for
discontinuities and to look at them as discontinuity
