In explaining the work undertaken in The Archaeology of Knowledge (L’Archeologie du Savoir) Foucault relates what he is herein attempting to say with that which was said in his prior works (namely Madness and Civilization, Naissance de la clinique, and The Order of Things). These are his landmarks for the discourse (largely about discourse/discursive practices) he would seek to free ‘from all anthropologism’ (Archaeology trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith p. 17).
When I first read this (and the statement which follows), it thoroughly struck me that Foucault was learning the language with which to approach his research project. But what he published was still, though released/published, a series of thoughts incomplete of themselves. They were, as our words truly are, as likely to point the reader to the wrong stars as to provide a coherent means of navigating the waters with Foucault’s instruments. To be honest, I don’t understand what was wrong with these works (I have n’t read them as yet and might not even then be in the proper position to see the weaknesses in his own publishings Foucault saw or was made aware of) and so won’t illustrate the specific items. It is enough to hear Foucault admit:
It is mortifying that I was unable to avoid these dangers: I console myself with the thought that they were intrinsic to the enterprise itself…
~ibidem
The enterprise itself does not concern us here, but we must again note that it was not something Foucault was immediately able to recognize in his own writings – how to retool his language so that it better served his purposes and was free from the language used by ‘anthropologistic’ historical methods. The succeeding lines shout loudest where I can but underline:
“[W]ithout the questions that I was asked, without the difficulties that arose, without the objections that were made, I may never have gained so clear a view of the enterprise to which I am now inextricably linked. Hence the cautious, stumbling manner of this text: at every turn it stands back, measures up what is before it, gropes towards its limits, stumbles against what it does not mean, and digs pits to mark out its own path.”
~ibidem, p. 17 – emphasis mine
I could n’t identify more with such sentiments. We expect, too often, in reading some work that the author’s ideas are fixed and stable (why else should they put their author-ity at stake) and probably assume that all decisions are consciously made. Foucault exemplifies how this is not the case for he cautions the reader that he may in fact not be going about this in the best way. He only knows that this is what can be said at this moment in pursuit of this goal. At every moment he is questioning (and invites the reader to question) how the current assertion can be supported and what precisely that knowledge is serving. Hence he says:
I have tried to define this blank space from which I speak, and which is slowly taking shape in a discourse that I still feel to be so precarious and so unsure.
~ibidem
Not only does he know that his research may be misunderstood (and used to serve ends of which he does not approve), he suspects that the approach he takes may counteract his purpose. He may not only be misunderstood, he very well may misunderstand his own project! For all energies sacrificed to achieve a location from which to speak, an author such as Foucault may find that such a location is entirely unsuitable. It is unsurprising then that he is cautious, even halting, in his approach.
But if Foucault is unsure of his location, how is one to counteract his assertions? He gives voice to his detractors in saying:
‘Aren’t you sure of what you’re saying? Are you going to change yet again, shift your position according to the questions that are put to you, and say that the objections are not really directed at the place from which you are speaking? Are you going to declare yet again that you have never been what you have been reproached with being? Are you already preparing the way out that will enable you in your next book to spring up somewhere else and declare as you’re now doing: no, no, I’m not where you are lying in wait for me, but over here, laughing at you?’
~ibidem
Surely this is not a fair case if the author can perpetually evade her detractors by maintaining ‘I am not really there, but here – although, I can see why you thought so’. But such maddening displays are true to life. While we do speak from a location, we may not be the best author-ities to tell another where that location is. It is, rather, injudicious of us to expect that a writer to accomplish his ends by way of the simplest definitions. Instead, we find that we are grasping for landmarks by which to locate from whence the author is speaking – even as the author is attempting to do so!
Misunderstandings then, as I am attempting to use the term for this moment from wherever here may be, might also describe such landmarks. They are impressions by which we might just succeed in locating ourselves for long enough to utter some meaningful misunderstanding. If such is the case, we would do best to tread lightly and think from as many locations as possible as we attempt to engage in that discourse we (and the author) are pressing for.
For those who would attempt to follow such guidelines I offer Foucault’s words:
I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.
~ibidem
Try-ing---to-be---mis-under-stood 