LES MOTS ET LES CHOSES (1966) / THE ORDER OF THINGS

PREFACE

Inspiration for the book came from Borge’s imaginary Chinese encyclopaedia: it is a symbol of alien categories of classification. It raises the question: what are the categories of our own classification? How do we order phenomena? F answers with an analysis of the fundamental cultural codes which we unconsciously impose upon experience.

PART I

1 Las Meninas (3ff)

F interprets the painting as “the representation of classical representation,” of an epistemic system. The original subject is only present as a residue (in mirror). One might say that we, as the observers (subject), and the observed (object), take part in a ceaseless exchange, ever reversing roles. When we look at the painting, it looks back at us. However, is it looking at us, or are we standing in the place of the King and Queen who are reflected in the mirror on the opposite wall?

 

2 The Prose of the World (17ff): Renaissance Episteme

I The four similitudes (17ff): Order based on resemblance (convenience; emulation; analogy; sympathy)
• world is full of resemblances (via 4 similitudes)
• task of scholarship is to discover hidden resemblances; infinity of commentary; repetition
• words are signs of things in the world

II Signatures (25-26)

III The limits of the world (30ff)

IV Writing things (34ff): Language
1. part of the world: Babel / Ramus/ Preeminence of Written Language
a. failure to distinguish "what is seen and what is read": Aldrovandi's Historia serpentum et draconum
b. Importance of Commentary

V The being of language (42ff): Knowledge as essentially incomplete commentary on similarities

3 Representing (46ff): The Classical Episteme

• observation and verification/criticism, not repetition, truth vs. falsehood
• words represent ideas
• tabluae and classification; world a place of differences not similarities; space eclipses time: e.g., natural history (life), analysis of wealth (labour), classical general grammar (language); looked at abstract human nature

F writes at much greater length on the classical episteme, devotion entire chapters to knowledge areas: (ch. 4) linguistics, (ch. 5) natural history, (ch. 6) economics. Representation is the centre of the classical episteme (mid 17th -18th C). The main structures are taxinomia and mathesis (cf. Linnaeus’ botany)

I Don Quixote (46ff)
A quest for resemblances/similitudes that do not exist between words and things. Words do not represent things. DQ demonstrates that truth is not to be found in the relation of written words to the world, but rather in the relation between the words themselves (48).

II Order (50ff): identity and difference

III The representation of the sign (58ff)
1. exist in and for the mind
2. separate rather than unite things
3. privilege of conventional over natural signs
4. transparent and duplicated representation
5. impossibility for Classical thought to represent representation

IV Duplicated representation (63ff)
Language:
• transparent function of representing ideas
• linearizes simultaneity of thought

V The imagination of resemblance (67ff)
Resemblance is on the side of imagination.

VI Mathesis and ‘taxinomia’ (71ff)
1. mathesis:
• ordering of simple natures, about measurement and order
• tends to exclude genesis; knowledge of order held history in abeyance

2. taxinomia: ordering of complex natures, principles of classification and tabulation

 

Specific Classical Sciences of this Episteme
4 Speaking (78ff): Classical Episteme in General Grammar

• time/history eclipses space (tabulae): biology (function over structure), processes of production, historical philology (evolving roots); empirical man is the main subject matter of the discourses of life, labour and language; man is the space of knowledge; he is an affect of 3 overlapping epistemes
• language as a system of signification; language becomes an object of study
• words link with words via the rules of a grammatical system, not the rules of discourse

I Criticism and commentary (78ff)

Language is preeminent in the sense that it has the task and power of "representing" thought (78). Words do not duplicate thought on the outside. They merely recall thought (79); they indicate thought. We cannot express out pure thoughts, only representations of them.

II General grammar (81ff): study of verbal order: taxonomy of a way of representing
Four key features

III The theory of the verb (92ff): attribution: connection of representations; verb "to be"

IV Articulation (96ff): expressing of content

V Designation (104ff): denotation

VI Derivation (110ff): etymology; rhetoric; spatiality

VII The quadrilateral of language (115ff): the name at the center

 

5 Classifying (125ff): Classical Episteme in Natural history

I What the historians say (125ff):

II Natural history (128ff): critique of history of ideas

III Structure (132ff): object of constrained sight; pattern of surfaces and lines

IV Character (138ff): essential nature of things

V Continuity and catastrophe (145ff): gaps in ideal order due only to accident

VI Monsters and fossils (150ff): lack of concept of evolution

VII The discourse of nature (157ff): lack of concept of life

 

6 Exchanging (166ff): Classical Episteme in Analysis of wealth

Relation of money as mere sign to represented value
• money as pledge: controversy over the guarantee
• Physiocrats vs. "utilitarians": controversy over origin of value

I The analysis of wealth (166ff)

II Money and prices (168ff)

III Mercantilism (174ff)

IV The pledge and the price (180ff)

V The creation of value (189ff)

VI Utility (196ff)

VII General table (200ff)

VIII Desire and representation (208ff)

PART II

7 Limits of (Classical) Representation (217ff)

The Classical sciences share a common structure: in each case they are structured by general grammar, and grounded in the notion of representation.

I The age of history (217ff)
The last years of the 18C are broken by a discontinuity similar to the type of thought that destroyed Renaissance thought. The 18C way of knowing is eclipsed by another positivity from which we have not yet entirely emerged.

Transitional figures
II The measure of labour (as measure of value) (221ff): Smith

III The organic structure (as taxonomic character) of beings (226ff): Larmarck

IV Word inflection (as representational) (232ff): William Jones
Language was conceptualized in terms of being a discourse; i.e., as a representation of human thought. Words were studied with respect to their representative values within this larger discourse.

V Ideology and criticism (critique of representation) (236ff): Kant

19C: the End of Discourse
A new dimension is introduced, viz. the purely grammatical analysis. Language no longer thought to be ordered as the links of thought require. Rather, scholars recognized that language is organized, not based on representation, but in terms of an inflectional system of phonic modifications, irrespective of representation/meaning. Language is no longer analyzed in terms of the thought that it represents. From now on, it is recognized that there is an interior mechanism for change, irrespective of meaning. The representative value of language has become a glittering, visible, exterior (236).

VI Objective Synthesis (243ff)
The displacement of representation radically changed the nature of western thought. The condition for coherence (unity, connection) in language is outside of representation: "The very being of that which is represented is now going to fall outside of representation itself" (240).

8 Labour, life, language: The Modern Episteme

I The new empiricities (i.e., empirical sciences) (250ff): human conditions

• Order: dynamic historical categories of explanation are imposed
• Signs: failure of representation
• Language: impure medium; literature as showing being of language
• Knowledge: fragmentation into 3 realms: formal; empirical; philosophical

F’s main point is that man/humanity becomes the main subject matter of the empirical sciences. They are all analyses of human finitude. The modern episteme overdid it by forgetting that man is also the fulcrum of knowledge.

II Ricardo (and Marx) (economics as process of production) (253ff)
• labor as source of value

III Cuvier (and Darwin) (biology: function overcomes structure) (263ff)
• organic structure is the key to life as functional system

IV Bopp (philology, evolving roots) (280ff)
• words as elements of grammatical system

In the 19C, it is not that words ceased to have meaning, or that words ceased to 'represent' a thought of the mind. But this representative role was no longer constituitive of the word in its very being. It is not the representative value of a word that allows it to take its place in a sentence, but its ability to link itself to other words. Language is no longer a system of representations, but one of pure grammar. Though language can indicate ideas, as though it is pointing to them, it does so only in so far as it is the object of the action of grammar.

V Language becomes object (294ff)
In the classical period, language was a form of knowledge, and knowing was form of discourse (295). Thus, through the medium of language, things could be known, not because language was interwoven with the world (as in the Renaissance), but because through it, one could sketch of an order of representation based on one's thoughts (295).

In the 19C, language became an object (not a form) of knowledge. To know language is no longer to come close to knowledge. This demotion of language was compensated for in 3 ways:

1) Language was still used as a medium of scientific discourse. Scholars tried to neutralize language so that it could become an exact reflection of non-verbal knowledge. Here we find the positivist dream of keeping language strictly to the level of what is known, as if the users of language did not belong to the essence of language (296).

2) There was a corresponding attempt to try not to submit to the demands of language: this led to denouncing the grammatical habits of our thinking, and a denouncing of the myths that animate our words (298). There is an attempt to destroy syntax and to shatter the tyrannical modes of speech. They recognized that we are governed and paralyzed by our language (cf. Nietzsche, The Twilight of Idols, French trans. p. 130). Thus, we have methods of interpretation which attempted to make language speak as near as possible to what is meant without it (pure of all words); this led to the discovery of the unconscious. This is opposed by formalism which attempted to impose upon language from above it (as it were) what it is possible to say (299). This contrast between these 2 tendencies would seem to invite us to choose between the past which believed in meaning, and the present, which has discovered the significant.

3) Appearance of Literature: i.e., the isolation of a particular language whose peculiar mode of expression is designated as literary (e.g., Homer, Bible, Dante). Literature and myth leads one back to "the untamed, imperious being of words" (300); literature becomes progressively differentiated from discourse; it creates its own space that ensures a (ludic) denial of these values. Strangely, at the point when language becomes the object of knowledge (study of grammar), we see language appear in its opposite modality. This is a language that contains no sound, and has no interlocuter; it has nothing to say but itself (300); this signals a return to exegesis.

9 Man and his doubles (303ff): Modern Philosophy

• Conditioned man is nevertheless a subject of knowledge

I The return of language (303ff)
With the eclipse of the classical period, words have become weighed down with their own material history, and discourse subordinated. This is the threshold of modernity. When words ceased to intersect with representations and to provide a spontaneous grid for the knowledge of things, modernity begins (304-6).

II The place of the king (307ff)
Before the 18th C, man did not exist (307). The profound vocation of classical language was to create a picture (table/grid). Language exists only in order to order and communicate thought (311). But when language becomes philology (in 19C), the study of language is not the study of thought, but the study of the historically changing grammatical rules of linking words.

III The analytic finitude (312ff): limits of knowledge become ground of knowledge
Man is studying himself; i.e., his own way of creating language. At this point, man is not only the subject you knows, but the object of knowledge: he is now the observed spectator (312).

IV The empirico-transcendental (double) (318ff): type of knowledge

Overlapping series of transcendentalism versus naturalism

Transcendental vs empirical: Man as having a transcendent potential for arrive at all knowledge vs Man as fact to be investigated.

V The ‘cogito’ and the unthought (322ff): scope of knowledge
• Man a basis of all intelligibility vs Man as a being surround by what he cannot understand.

VI The retreat and return of origin (328ff): history of knowledge
• Man as a being who can recover his own origin in history, vs man as a artifact or creation of history.

VII Discourse and man’s being (335ff): Death of man
• exit from closure of modern philosophical anthropology

When the tide of the next episteme comes, man as a space of knowledge will be washed away. The modern episteme is history, not order. It unfolds itself as an analytic of (empirical) man’s finitude. Instead of studying abstract human nature, attention moved to reality in the facts of life, labour and language. But this research into empirical man presupposed a level of transcendental reason (i.e., a critical standard with some external bearing). Therefore the modern episteme rests on a “strange epirico-transcendental doublet”. The preconditions of supposedly transcendental knowing are the same as empirical knowing (i.e., life, labour, language).

Kant’s subject/object double has continually excited effort to reduce the binary pair to one side or the other. This is the notion of Man as sovereign but also enslaved (OT 314-18). Left side represents humanism. Right side represents empiricism. Foucault rejects this subject/object by decentering both and living in ambiguity.

VIII The anthropological sleep (340ff)

10 The Human Sciences (344ff):
man unconsciously representing his own being-conditioned

I The three faces of knowledge (344ff)
• psychology: function and norm (biological model)
• sociology: conflict and rule (economic model)
• literary studies: meaning and system (philological model)

II The form of the human sciences (348ff)

Epistemic status of the human sciences:
• modes of knowledge, but not sciences
• proliferation of models and controversies

III The three models (355): History and the Counter-sciences

• beyond man, the collapse of the modern episteme?

Signification Versus System
System (grammar) makes signification possible.

Psychology: is fundamentally a study of people in terms of functions and finding the norms which permit them to function (357).

Sociology is fundamentally a study of people in terms of conflicts and rules.

Philology (once a matter of discovering hidden meanings became linguistics): attempts to clarify the system which makes possible significations.

These 3 sciences interlock and can be used to interpret one another. For example, literature can be analyzed in terms of these secondary models; i.e., in terms of psychology (function/norms) and sociology (rules/conflict). In the 19C, there was a shift causing signification, function, conflict and (meaning) to recede, and the give greater importance to norm, rule and system.

1) When function is stressed over rule, normal and non-normal functions were accepted side by side; pathological psychology.
2) When conflict is stressed over rule, it was assumed that certain conflicts could not be overcome, and irrational forms of belief were accepted along side rational beliefs
3) When signification was weighted more than system, a division was made between significant and non-significant. (360)

These 3 categories can structure the entire field of the human sciences (life, labour, language). The conflict/rule pair ensure the representability of need (362). So language will signify in relation to function/norm (psychology) and conflict/rules (sociology), as well as signification/system. There is an attempt to bring (unconscious) systems, rules and norms to light (consciousness). An unveiling of the non-conscience is constitutive of all the sciences (364)

IV History (367ff): limiting scope of the human sciences

When dealing with what is representation, we treat as object what is in fact the condition of the possibility of representation. Man is not so much the subject of history as he is subjected to the histories of human life, economics and languages. He is subject to the pure events these histories contain. Humanity is not linked by a single history. Since man is a living, working, speaking, man, any content of history is the provenance of psychology, sociology and the study of languages (370).

Even before knowing it, man has been subjected to the determinations that can be expressed in pyschology, sociology and the analysis of languages. The more history attempts to transcend its own rootedness in its historicity, beyond historicity, the more there the history of which it is apart appears through it. The subject and object are bound together in a reciprocal questioning of one another (372); by the progressive unveiling of the unconscious by the conscious (object and subject), both are subjected to an erosion. All knowledge is rooted in a life, society and language that have a history (372).

V Psychoanalysis, ethnology, linguistics (373ff)

• psychoanalysis: general conditions of possibility of unconscious representations
• ethnology: specific cultural conditions of possibility of unconscious representations
• "linguistics" [cf schizoanalysis]: formal linking of psychoanalysis and ethnology

Psychoanalysis and ethnology are countersciences in search of the other (very self-critical).

VI In conclusion (386)

OT proclaims the eclipse of man as a ground for thought. His knowledge is culture-bound, epoch-relative, eroded by time; otherwise, knowledge is no more than the persistence of self-delusion.