Archaeology and Knowledge

Abstract

In this chapter analyses Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge. To this end, it charts the entry of Kant and Hegel into French philosophy, the connotations of the Dreyfus Affair for the practice of critique, and the existential and Marxist interpretations of Hegel by Kojeve and Hyppolite. Following an outline of Foucault’s nominalist archaeology, The Order of Things is studied to show how he dethrones the Kantian and Hegelian formal a priori subject from his epistemological pedestal. Subsequently, Foucault’s alternative in The Archaeology of Knowledge of the historical a priori is considered. In response to the events of May 1968, however, Foucault situates an archaeology of knowledge within a genealogy of power. The chapter thus concludes with an analysis of the interrelationship between knowledge and power.