Date: Sun, 13 Aug 1995 21:27:11 -0400 (EDT) From: John Ransom <ransom-AT-dickinson.edu> Subject: Re: foucault-digest V1 #34 Karen Dooley writes: At the moment I'm reading The Archeology for more or less the first time and am striving to work out the difference between an `object' and a `concept'. Can anyone he*lp me with this? Karen, Below I briefly paraphrase /summarize a section of F's _AK_ from around 32- 37, English trans: [Author is] trying to describe relations between statements. The problem of whether unity of a discourse is based not so much on permanence and uniqueness of an object (since objects change so much--see preceding paragraph on 32) as on the space in which various objects emerge and are continuously transformed. The unity of the discourse on madness would not be based on existence of object "madness" but rather be the interplay of rules, 32-33, that make possible the appearance of objects during a given period of time. The unity in question is not a determined form of statements, but rather the group of rules, 34, which have made purely perceptual descriptions possible. Discursive unity might be best sought not in the coherence of concepts, but in their simultaneous or successive emergence, in the distance that separates them and even in their incompatibility. Instead of seeking an architecture of concepts general and abstract enough to embrace all others and to introduce them into same deductive structure; one would analyze the interplay of their appearances and dispersion, 35. Principles for individualization of a discourse to be sought in the dispersion of the points of choice that the discourse leaves free--in the different possibilities that it opens of arousing opposed strategies, making it possible with particular set of concepts, to play different games, 36-7. [end paraphrase/summary from F] There is no "object" madness. What there is is a set of rules that produce the object "madness," or, if you like, a set of rules that interprets already-existing behavior as "madness" at one time, "divine insight" at another, "laziness" over there, etc. The *difference* between an object and a concept, it seems, is that the object is produced or squeezed out of the concept. Notice, then, that F adopts a deductive procedure.
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