The Formation of Concepts - 'The Archaeology of Knowledge' by Michel Foucault

Concepts are rarely placed in a virtual deductive edifice, but rather the field where concepts first appeared and were circulated can be defined as:

a)      Being organised in forms of succession –

-          in ordering of enunciative series – for example reasonings, inferences, descriptions, generalisations;

-          in ordering types of dependence of the statements;

-          the rhetorical schemata by which statements may be combined.

b)       Having forms of coexistence. These include -

-          a field of presence

which is the collection of statements acknowledged as forming the background to a field, established by relations in ‘experimental verification, logical validation, mere repetition, commentary, tradition, analysis of error, a search for hidden meanings.

-          a field of concomitance

which are statements belonging to different domains of objects but become relevant here as a source of analogy or as a higher principle to which it is possible to refer

-          a field of memory

which are statements no longer accepted or discussed as relevant to the concept, but which historically plays an important part in the formation of the concept.

c)       Identified by procedures of intervention which appear as –

-          techniques of rewriting (the changing way of defining chemical composition over the Classical period, for example)

-          methods of transcribing (a more versus less formal language use, for example)

-          modes of translating (qualitative into quantitative approximations, delimited, transferred, or systematised propositions, as appropriate).

Discursive formations are most defined by the links between these elements – the way the ordering of description might be related to the technique of rewriting. In this method it is not sought that we arrive at a valid and reliable analysis of any one particular concept – rather, we look for how recurrent elements of statements reappear, dissociate, recompose, extend, are absorbed into new logic, acquire new semantic content. We define at a preconceptual level the field by where the concept can exist, and the rules to which it is subjected.

Foucault gives an example from ‘The Order of Things’ analysing General Grammar in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where he identifies a schema of attribution, articulation, designation and derivation as useful for discovering:

1.       What forms of succession are possible in analyses of nouns, verbs, adjectives, phonetics, syntax.

2.       How a domain of validity including its normativity and actuality is constituted.

3.       What relations General Grammar has with Maths, Natural History, and so forth.

4.       How various conceptions are possible for statements such as ‘to be’, or for proper and common nouns, for example.

The preconceptual level is not a definition apropos reality or a horizon of ideality. It is not proposed at the level of the discourse itself  - rather it looks to and for the emergence of concepts. It is not a series of abstractions – rather the rules of formation emerge as apparent not only in the mind of individuals, but in the discourse itself, with uniform anonymity.

Ref:

Foucault, M. (1969). The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge.