Archaeological Description

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE HISTORY OF IDEASFoucault writes that his aim has been to develop a method that is ‘neither formalizing nor interpretative’ (AK 151, 177). In steering a path between structuralism and hermeneutics, he is implicitly following the programme for historical analysis that Serres proposed in 1961.30 But he is gripped by the doubt that the weighty apparatus he has put in place has served only to conceal that the form of analysis he proposes in fact remains within the framework of the history of ideas. Having set out the archaeological method, its terms and structures, Foucault therefore turns to consider what it means for the way historical analysis is actually conducted. In doing so, his overriding concern is to distinguish archaeology from the history of ideas.A history of ideas can take several forms and for this reason it is not easy to pin down. Foucault identifies two principal characteristics. First, it hands over the history of the developed sciences to specialist studies and takes as its focus the margins that have either contributed in one way or another to science, or else which never gained the authority of other branches of study and faded from view: the history of alchemy, of phrenology, or of newspapers, the history ‘of opinions rather than of knowledge’ (AK 153, 179). Second, it charts the boundaries between existing disciplines and the exchanges that have taken place across them, and it records the rise and fall of disciplines, the emergence and disappearance of themes.