Foucault’s Archaeological History

In this chapter, I provide an overview of FoucaultFoucault, Michel’s major works from the 1950s and 1960s and discuss their approach to historiography. I then outline why Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge is often misunderstood as purely descriptive and indifferent to scientific norms and the truth or falsity of statements. Contrary to this reading, I argue that Foucault’s archaeology not only appeals to but prominently addresses scientific norms and that it both widens and specifies the scope of BachelardBachelard, Gaston’s and CanguilhemCanguilhem, Georges’s historical epistemology by studying how true and false statements are possible against the background of what Foucault calls a positivity—the set of statements capable of bearing truth-value in a given historical moment. The apparent conflict between Bachelard’s and Canguilhem’s normative historical epistemology, on the one hand, and Foucault’s archaeological analysis of discursive formations, on the other, is resolved if we track their shared concern with the present. I therefore highlight how Foucault’s elaboration of the idea of writing a “history of the present” in fact effectively recaptures fundamental aspects of Bachelard’s and Canguilhem’s conception of recurrent history.