TOPIC
Inspired by Borges’ abstract Chinese encyclopaedia, a symbol of unusual and random categorization, Foucault studies and questions the limitations and validity of the concepts of order and classification. He mentions that order exists in every culture, already deeply embedded in our thoughts, making it seem natural rather than something to be imposed upon. Foucault also explores the constraints and possibilities of knowledge and language, using archaeological inquiry and episteme.
ARGUMENT
Foucault argues that there is an obscure and hidden relationship between ordering codes and the reflections upon order itself, i.e., the code that manages who we interact with and the ways we construct our thinking about these codes. His intent is to analyse the “pure experience of order and of its modes of being” (Foucault, 1989, p. xxiii), and how it has developed since the sixteenth century.
Foucault claims that, things and thoughts are catalogued within a series of orders and are differentiated by culture. He studies the cultural remains of the past to comprehend how it came to develop a particular system of classification. He states that “in any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one episteme that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice.” Foucault uses the term episteme to represent the architecture of human thought which is present at any given time.
AIM and MEANING
The aim of this preface is to study the rules of language and order, that make knowledge possible and how these rules and therefore the knowledge change due to circumstances over time. These established rules of order are based on preconceived notions, which means that there is no certainty in the validity of this knowledge. Therefore, Foucault encourages the readers to deconstruct these rules and to reflect on other ways of organising and classifying the world.
REFERENCES
Foucault M. ([1966] 1989) ‘Preface’ in The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. United Kingdom: Routledge, pp. xvi-xxvi.