History, Discourse and Discontinuity

Author(s): MICHEL FOUCAULT and Anthony M. Nazzaro

Source: Salmagundi , SUMMER-FALL 1972, No. 20, Psychological Man: Approaches to an
Emergent Social Type (SUMMER-FALL 1972), pp. 225-248
Published by: Skidmore College

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History , Discourse and Discontinuity* -
BY MICHEL FOUCAULT

(Translated by Anthony M. Nazzaro)

Editor's note: A few years ago, the editors of the French
journal ESPRIT put to Michel Foucault a series of questions
for which he was to write a series of responses. He decided
instead to treat in depth one of the points raised, and by the
way to bring up a number of other questions surely worthy
of careful attention. The editors of this volume consider the
document prepared by M. Foucault a major contribution to
the consideration of problems with which we are deeply
engaged. Though it does not address itself directly to the issue
of Psychological Man, it represents an implicit critique of
perspectives developed in this volume, and recommends to us
alternative modes for getting at our central issues.
Here, then, is the question M. Foucault chose to deal with.
The essay that follows is his reply. - R.B.

Doesn't a thought which introduces constraint of the system and

discontinuity in the history of the mind remove all basis for a
progressive political intervention? Does it not lead to the following
dilemma:
- either the acceptance of the system,
- or the appeal to an uncontrolled event, to the irruption of
exterior violence which alone is capable of upsetting the system?

I have chosen the last of the questions put to me (not without

regret for abandoning the others):
1) because at first glance it surprised me, and because I became
quickly convinced that it concerned the very core of my work;
2) because it allowed me to offer at least a few of the answers
which I would have liked to give for the others;
3) because it gave expression to questioning which no theoretical
work can today eschew.
* First English translation of "Réponse à une question," ESPRIT, May, 1968.

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226 MICHEL FOUCAULT

I must admit that you h

what I have undertaken t
singled out the point of i
of the system and discont
recognize this almost enti
unjustifiable statement. W
ceeded in giving a definit
subscribing, but for whic
assume responsibility. I s
how strange and hardly j
this work, which Was no do
with no other law but its
to be able to stand by its
established norms, how di
However, two or three de
you propose bother me, p
to avoid) agreeing complet
First of all you use the w
pluralist. Here's what I
speak not only of my last
this is because together th
and chronological referen
each one constitutes a des
and therefore relates to th
I am a pluralist: the pro
the individualization of d
the discourses criteria wh
the linguistic system to wh
which has articulated the
familiar, are much more
or of medicine, or of gram
one speaking of? What ar
he can recognize at first
a loss to define? Some of
human history (medicine
have appeared recently (ec
perhaps disappeared (ca
endlessly added and the
strange units of sociology

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 History, Discourse and Discontinuity 227
ance have not ceased to start afresh). There are units
obstinately maintained after so many errors, neglect
innovation, so many metamorphoses and which sometim
such radical mutations that one would have difficulty in
them as identical to themselves (how can one affirm that
remains the same, uninterrupted, from the physiocrats t

Perhaps there are discourses which can at each moment

their own individuality (for example, mathematics can r
at each point in time the totality of its history); but in e
cases that I have cited, the discourse cannot restore the t
its history within the unity of a strict framework. The
two traditional recourses. The historical-transcendental recourse:
an attempt to find, beyond all historical manifestation and historical
origin, a primary foundation, the opening of an inexhaustible horizon,
a plan which would move backward in time in relation to every
event, and which would maintain throughout history the constantly
unwinding plan of an unending unity. The empirical or psycho-
logical recourse: seeking out the founder, interpreting what he
meant, detecting the implicit meanings which were lying silent and
dormant in his discourse, following the thread or the destiny of
these meanings, describing the traditions and the influences, fixing
the moment of awakenings, of lapses, of awareness, of crises, of
changes in the mind, the sensitivity or the interest of men. Now it
seems to me that the first of these recourses is tautological, the second
extrinsic and unessential. It is by marking out and by systematizing
their very character that I would like to attempt to individualize the
large units which scan simultaneously or successively the world of
our discourses.

I have retained three groups of criteria:

1) The criteria of formation. What permits us to individualize

a discourse such as political economy or general grammar, is not
the unity of an object; it is not a formal structure; nor is it a
conceptual coherent architecture; it is not a fundamental philo-
sophical choice; it is rather the existence of rules of formation for
all its objects (however scattered they may be), for all its operations
(which often can neither be superimposed nor linked together in
succession), for all its concepts (which may very well be incom-
patible), for all its theoretical options (which are often mutually

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 228 MICHEL FOUCAULT

exclusive). There is an in
time one can define a similar set of rules.

2) The criteria of transformation or of threshold. I shall say that

natural history (or psycho-pathology) are units of discourse, if I
can define the conditions which must have been brought together
at a very precise moment of time, in order that its objects, its opera-
tions, its concepts and its theoretical options could be formed; if I
can define what internal modifications it was capable of; finally if I
can define from what threshold of transformation new rules have
been brought into play.
3) The criteria of correlation. I will say that clinical medicine is
an autonomous discursive formation if I can define the whole of the
relations which define it and situate it among the other types of
discourse (as biology, chemistry, political theory or the analysis of
society) and in the nondiscursive context in which it functions
(institutions, social relations, economic and political circumstances).
These criteria allow us to substitute differentiated analyses for the
broad themes of general history (whether it concern "the progress of
reason" or "the spirit of a century"). They allow us to describe, as
epistemic of a period, not the sum of its knowledge, nor the general
style of its research, but the deviation, the distances, the oppositions,
the differences, the relations of its multiple scientific discourses: the
epistemic is not a sort of grand underlying theory, it is a space of
dispersion, it is an open field of relationships and no doubt indefinitely
describahle. They allow us furthermore to describe not broad history
which would carry off all the sciences in a single swoop, but the types
of history - that is to say, what was retained and transformed -
which characterize the different discourses (the history of mathe-
matics does not follow the same model as the history of biology,
which does not follow the model of psycho-pathology either): the
epistemic is not a slice of history common to all the sciences: it is a
simultaneous play of specific remanences. Finally they allow us to
situate the different thresholds in their respective place: for nothing
proves in advance (and nothing demonstrates after examination
either) that their chronology is the same for all types of discourse;
the threshold which one can describe for the analysis of language at
the beginning of the nineteenth century has doubtless no counterpart
in the history of mathematics; and, what is more paradoxical, the
threshold of formation for political economy (noted by Ricardo)

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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 229
does not coincide with the constitution - by Marx - of an an
society and of history.1 The Epistemic is not a general
reason; it is a complex relationship of successive displacement
Nothing, you see, is more foreign to me than the quest fo
straining sovereign and unique form. I do not seek to detect,
from diverse signs, the unitary spirit of an epoch, the general f
its conscience: something like a Weltanschauung. Nor ha
scribed either the emergence and eclipse of a formal structur
might reign for a time over all the manifestations of though
not written the history of a transcendental syncope [??
finally, have I described thoughts or century-old sensitivitie
to life, stuttering, struggling and dying out like great pha
like souls playing out their shadow theater against the back
history. I have studied, one after another, whole sets of di
I have characterized them; I have defined the play of ru
transformations, of thresholds, of remanences. I have com
them, I have described clusters of relationships. Wherever
deemed it necessary I have allowed the systems to proliferat
*******

You say, a thoug

is a notion who
linguists - cann
does not appear
pluralist. My pro
of transformati
"change" in whi
This implies two
tinuity through
change (tradition
constraints of th
lively intensity
deviation. Next
change (the gen
appearance of a
care the transfo
* Translator's Note.
1 This fact, already pointed out by Oscar Lange, explains at once the limited
and so perfectly circumscribed place which the concepts of Marx occupy in the
epistemological field which extends from Petty to contemporary econometrics, and
the founding character of these same concepts for a theory of history.

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 230 MICHEL FOUCAULT

constituted the change. R

(general form, abstract el
a confused mixture of th
the transformations in the
(1) Within a given discur
which affect the objects,
options. Thus, one can d
of general grammar) : th
theory of verb-copula im
root and a verbal inflexio
to the verb of the theo
disappearance of the verb
(the concept of attribute
the changes by passing t
constructing a universal
the search for the hidden
the changes by passing to
of vowels or primacy of
the changes through perm
the theory of the verb on
changes by exclusion o
systems of representative
relationship which is rein
of a primitive language).
These different types of
the whole of the characteristic derivations of a discursive formation.
(2) Detecting the changes which affect the discursive formations
themselves:

- displacement of boundaries which define the field of possible

objects (the medical object at the beginning of the 19th century
ceases to be taken in a surface of classification; it is marked out in
the three dimensional space of the body);
- new position and new role of the speaking subject in the discourse
(the subject in the discourse of the naturalists of the 18th century
becomes exclusively a looking subject following a grid, and noting
according to a code; it ceases to be listening, interpreting, de-
ciphering) ;
- new function of language with respect to objects (beginning with
Tournefort the role of the discourse of the naturalist is not to

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 History, Discourse and Discontinuity 231
penetrate into things, to capture from them the language
secretly enclose, nor to bring it to light; but to extend a
transcription where the form, the number, the size and the d
of elements can be translated in a univocal manner);
- new form of localization and of circulation of the discourse in
society (the clinical discourse is not formulated in the same places,
it does not have the same recording procedures, it is not diffused, it
is not cumulative, it is not conserved nor is it contested in the same
way as the medical discourse of the 18th century.).
All these changes of a type superior to the preceding ones define
the transformations which affect the discursive areas themselves:
mutations.
(3) Finally, the third type of changes, those which affect simul-
taneously several discursive formations:
- reversal in the hierarchical order (the analysis of language had,
during the classical period, a directing role which it has lost, in the
first years of the 19th century, to the advantage of biology);
- change in the nature of the directing role (classical grammar, as
a general theory of signs, guaranteed in other areas the transposition
of an instrument of analysis; in the 19th century, biology assures the
"metaphorical" importation of a certain number of concepts: organ-
isms - organization; function - social function; life - life of words or
of languages);
- functional displacements: the theory of the continuity of beings
which, in the 18th century depended upon the philosophical dis-
course, is taken over in the 19th century by the scientific discourse.
All these transformations of a type superior to the two others
characterize the changes peculiar to epistemic itself.
Redistributions.

There you have a small number (about fifteen perhaps) of dif-

ferent changes which one can assign concerning discourses. You see
why I would prefer that one say that I have stressed not discon-
tinuity, but the discontinuities (that is to say, the different trans-
formations which it is possible to describe concerning two states of
discourse). But the important thing for me, now, is not to establish
an exhaustive typology of these transformations.
1 ) The important thing is to offer as the content of the wearisome
and empty concept of "change" a play of specified modifications.
The history of "ideas" or of "sciences" must not be the list of innova-

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 232 MICHEL FOUCAULT

tions, but the descriptive

effectuated.2
2) What is important t
with a psychological diagn
the person whose work b
genius or what had been
it is another thing to des
operations, the types of t
cursive practice.
3) What is important to
one hand inert discourses
on the other hand, an all-
upsets them, renews them
the discursive field - the
of their displacements),
functional mutation). T
subjectivity irrupts; it is
functionings for the subjec
4) What is important t
these transformations the
- intradiscursive depen
tions, the concepts of a sa
- inter dis cursive depende
tions: such as the correlations which I have studied in Les mots et
les choses [Words and Things] between natural history, economics,
grammar and the theory of representation).
- extradiscursive dependencies (between discursive transformations
and others which have been produced elsewhere than in the discourse:
such as the correlations studied in VHistoire de la folie [History of
Madness] and in La naissance de la clinique [Birth of the Hospital]
between the medical discourse and a whole play of economic, political
and social changes).
I would like to substitute this whole play of dependencies for the
uniform, simple notion of assigning causality; and by eliminating the
prerogative of the endlessly accompanying cause, bring out the bundle
of polymorphous correlations.
As you see, there is absolutely no question of substituting a "dis-

a In which I follow the examples of the method given on several occasions by

M. Canguilhem.

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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 233
continuous" category for the no less abstract and general one
"continuous." I am attempting, on the contrary, to sho
discontinuity is not a monotonous and unthinkable void b
events, a void which one must hasten to fill (two perfectly
metrical solutions) with the dismal plentitude of the cause or
suppleness and agility of the mind; but that it is a play of s
transformations different from one another (each one havi
conditions, its rules, its level) and linked among themselves ac
to schemes of dependence. History is the descriptive analysi
the theory of these transformations.
*******

A last point on w
the expression: "
write a history o
do not study th
to their gramma
field which they
so? What do you
them and to recon
a durable transla
What do you seek
the men who hav
tarily or unbekn
imperceptible sup
like the beginning

Therein lies, per

am analyzing in th
a general way, th
about knowing w
and allows it to s
is not that of cod
that which has r
place: the conditi
with other previ
question, however
obscure or explicit
of discourse to t
without invoking

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 234 MICHEL FOUCAULT

in relation to what is sa
inaudible when a word doesn't occur in the text.
So that what I am doing is neither a formalization nor an exegesis.
But an archeology: that is to say, as its name indicates only too
obviously, the description of the record. By this word, I do not mean
the mass of texts which have been collected at a given period, or
chanced to have survived oblivion from this period. I mean all the
rules which at a given period and for a definite society defined:
1) the limits and the forms of expressihility: what is it possible to
speak of? What has been constituted as the field of discourse? What
type of discursivity has been appropriated to such and such a domain
(what has been designated as the subject; what has one wished to
make a descriptive science of; to what has one given a literary formu-
lation, etc.)?
2) the limits and the forms of conservation: what are the terms
destined to disappear without any trace? Which ones are destined, on
the other hand, to enter into the memory of men through ritualistic
recitation, pedagogy and teaching, entertainment or holiday, pub-
licity? Which ones are noted for being capable of re-use, and toward
what ends? Which ones are put in circulation and in what groups?
Which are those which are repressed and censured?
3) the limits and the forms of memory such as it appears in the
different discursive formations: which are the terms which everyone
recognizes as valid or questionable, or definitely invalid? Which
ones have been abandoned as negligible and which ones have been
excluded as foreign? What types of relationships are established
between the system of present terms and the body of past terms?
4) the limits and the forms of reactivation: amongst the discourses
of previous epochs or of foreign cultures, which are the ones that are
retained, which are valued, which are imported, which one tries to
reconstitute? And what does one do with them, what transforma-
tions does one impose upon them (commentary, exegesis, analysis),
what system of appreciation does one apply to them, what role does
one give them to play?
5) the limits and the forms of appropriation: what individuals,
what groups, what classes have access to such a kind of discourse?
In what way is the relationship between the discourse and he who
gives it, and he who receives it institutionalized? In what way is
the relationship of the discourse to its author shown and defined?

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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 235
How does the struggle for the taking over of the discourse take p
between classes, nations, linguistic, cultural or ethnic collectivities
It is against this background that the analyses which I have beg
are set; it is towards it that they are directed. I am writing, ther
fore, not a history of the mind, according to the succession of
forms or according to the thickness of its deposited meanings. I
not question the discourses concerning what silently they me
but on the fact and the conditions of their manifest appearance;
on the contents which they may conceal, but on the transformati
which they have effectuated; not on the meaning which is main
tained in them like a perpetual origin, but on the field where th
coexist, remain and disappear. It is a question of an analysis of t
discourses in their exterior dimensions. From whence arise three
consequences:
1) Treat the past discourse not as a theme for a commentary which
would revive it, but as a monument3 to be described in its charac-
teristic disposition.
2) Seek in the discourse not its laws of construction, as do the
structural methods, but its conditions of existence.4
3) Refer the discourse not to the thought, to the mind or to the
subject which might have given rise to it, but to the practical field
in which it is deployed.
*******

Excuse me for b
slight changes in
we may speak ab
of the systems a
discourses.'9 Do n
I seek to avoid t
infinitum. But p
to the wall. I must answer.
Certainly not the question of whether / am a reactionary; nor
whether my texts are (in themselves, intrinsically, through a certain
number of well-coded signs). You ask me a much more serious ques-
tion, the only one, I believe, which can legitimately be asked. You
question me on the relationships between what I say and a certain
political practice.
3 I borrow this word from M. Canguilhem. He describes, better than I have
done myself, what I have wished to do.
* Is it necessary to specify again that I am not what is called a "structuralist"?

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 236 MICHEL FOUCAULT

It seems to me that two

One concerns the critical
in its own domain (the hi
knowledge . . .): was what
a progressive politics? Th
the realm of objects whic
can they be articulated in
I shall sum up as follow
undertaken:
1) To establish limits wher
form, gave itself a limitle
a) to challenge again the
which the reign of the dis
mute things and silence
where no word can be hea
the deeply varied murmur
they would continue to s
await us in the blank pa
theme I would like to substitute the notion that the discourses are
limited practical domains which have their boundaries, their rules
of formation, their conditions of existence: the historical base of the
discourse is not a more profound discourse - at once identical and
different;
b) to challenge again the theme of a sovereign subject which would
come from the outside to animate the inertia of the linguistic codes,
and which would deposit in the discourse the indelible trace of its
liberty; to challenge again the theme of a subjectivity which would
constitute the meanings and then would transcribe them into the
discourse. In opposition to these themes I would like to substitute
pin-pointing the origin of the roles and of the operations exercised by
the different "discoursing" subjects.
c) to challenge again the theme of the indefinitely receding origin,
and the idea that in the realm of thought, the role of history is to
awaken what has been forgotten, to eliminate the occultations, to
erase - or to obstruct again - the barriers. In opposition to this
theme I would like to substitute the analysis of discursive systems,
historically defined, to which one can fix thresholds, and assign con-
ditions of birth and disappearance.
In a word, to establish these limits, to question again these three

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 History, Discourse and Discontinuity 237
themes of the origin, the subject and the implicit meaning
undertake - a difficult task, very strong resistance indeed p
- to liberate the discursive field from the historical-transcen
structure which the philosophy of the nineteenth century has i
on it.

2) To eliminate ill-considered oppositions. Here are a few

in their order of increasing importance: the opposition betw
liveliness of innovations and the dead weight of tradition, th
of acquired knowledge or the old tracings of thought; the o
between the average forms of knowledge (which would rep
its everyday mediocrity) and its deviating forms (whic
manifest the singularity or the solitude characteristic of gen
opposition between periods of stability or of universal con
and moments of effervescence when consciences enter into
when sensibilities are metamorphosed, when all notions are
overturned, revivified, or for an indefinite time, fall into di
all these dichotomies I would like to substitute the analysis
field of simultaneous differences (which define at a given p
possible dispersal of knowledge) and of successive difference
define the whole of the transformations, their hierarchy, t
pendence, their level). Whereas one used to relate the hi
tradition and of invention, of the old and the new, of the dead
living, of the closed and the open, of the static and of the d
I undertake to relate the history of the perpetual differen
precisely, to relate the history of ideas as the sum total of the s
and descriptive forms of the non-identity. And thus I would
free it of the triple metaphor which has encumbered it for mor
a century (the evolutionist, which imposes upon it the divi
tween the regressive and the adaptive; the biological which s
the inert from the living; the dynamic which opposes movem
immobility).
3) To lift the restriction which has been directed at the discourse
in its very existence (and therein lies, for me, the most important of
the critical operations that I have undertaken). This restriction
consists of several aspects:
a) never treating the discourse except as an unimportant element
without its own consistency nor inherent laws (a pure translation
surface for mute things; a simple place of expression for thoughts,
imagination, knowledge, unconscious themes);

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238 MICHEL FOUCAULT

b) recognizing in the disc

and individualizing model
- his juvenalia or his mat
rhetorical model (a genre,
(an idea, a theme);

c) admitting that all the

and outside of it (in the id
mute practices); that th
addition which adds an al
the mind; a surplus which
else except to say what h

To this restriction, I wou

or almost nothing. And wh
what allows one to make
one "meant" to say (that
which supposedly weighs,
ness than the things said
imposing things which do
marks* their black profile
the discourse is constitute
say correctly at one perio
those of logic) and what i
a specific moment, the law
number of operations whi
construction or of forma
in which speech and writi
and the difference of thei
group of practical rules
visible and exterior body to
ing to the solidity of thing
them. At the bottom of t
discourse (to the advantag
word-writing, words-thin
recognize that in the disc
well-definable rules); that
disappears (according to r
by side with all which a s
to say, in a relationship w

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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 239
formation and transformation of "things said." It is the
these "things said" that I have undertaken.
4) Finally, the last critical task (which sums up and em
the others) : freeing from their uncertain status this ensemb
ciplines which one calls history of ideas, history of sciences, h
thought, history of knowledge, of concepts or of consci
certainty manifests itself in several ways:
- difficulties in limiting the domains: where does the h
sciences end, where does the history of opinions and bel
How are the history of concepts and the history of notion
to be separated? Where lies the boundary between the hi
knowledge and that of the imagination?
- difficulty in defining the nature of the object: does on
history of what has been known, acquired, forgotten, or
of mental forms, or the history of their interference? Does o
the history of characteristic features which are held in c
men of one period or of one culture? Does one describe a
spirit? Does one analyze the (ideological or genetic) h
reason?

- difficulty in assigning the relationship between these

thought or of knowledge and the other areas of historic
must one treat them as signs of something else) (of a soci
ship, of a political situation, of an economic determinati
their result? Or as their refraction through a consciousn
the symbolic expression of their total form?
For so many uncertainties I would like to substitute the
the discourse itself in its conditions of formation, in the s
modifications, and in the play of its dependencies and of
tions. The discourse would thus appear in a describable re
with the whole of other practices. Instead of having to de
economic, social, political history embracing a history of
(which would be its expression and something like its
instead of having to deal with a history of ideas whic
referred (either through a play of signs and of expressio
relations of causality) to extrinsic conditions, one would
with a history of discursive practices in the specific rela
which link them to the other practices. There is no q
composing a global history - which would regroup all its
around one principle or one unique form - , but rather o

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 240 MICHEL FOUCAULT

up the field of a genera

peculiarity of practices, th
dependencies. And it is in
historical analysis of disc
a discipline.
These, then, are more or less the critical operations that I have
undertaken. Now allow me to call you to witness the question that
I ask of those who might become alarmed: "Is a progressive politics
linked (in its theoretical thinking) to the themes of meaning, of
origin, of the constituent subject, in short, to all the themes which
guarantee to history the inexhaustible prescence of the Logos, the
sovereignty of a pure subject, and the profound teleology of an
original destination? Is a progressive politics bound to such a form
of analysis - or with its being challenged? And is such a politics
bound to all the dynamic, biological, evolutionary metaphors through
which one masks the difficult problem of historical change - or, on
the contrary, to their meticulous destruction? And further: is there
some necessary relationship between a progressive politics and the
refusal to recognize in the discourse anything else except a thin
transparency which flickers for a moment at the limit of things and
of thoughts, then disappears immediately? Can one believe that this
politics has any interest in rehashing one more time the theme - I
would have thought that the existence and the practice of the revolu-
tionary discourse in Europe for more than 200 years might have been
able to free us from it - that words are just air, an exterior whisper-
ing, a sound of wings which one hears with difficulty in the serious-
ness of history and the silence of thought? Finally must one think
that a progressive politics is linked to the devaluation of discursive
practices, so that a history of the mind, of conscience, of reason, of
knowledge, of ideas or opinions might triumph in its certain
ideality?"
It seems to me that I perceive, on the other hand - and quite
clearly - the perilous ease which the politics you speak of would
assume, if it gave itself the guarantee of a primitive foundation or if
a transcendental teleology, if it persistently transformed time into
metaphors through the images of life or the models of movement, if it
renounced the difficult task of a general analysis of practices, of
their relations, of their transformations, to take refuge in a global
history of totalities, of expressive relationships, of symbolic values and

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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 241
of all those secret meanings in which thoughts and
enveloped.
*******

You have a righ

operations whic
might appear at
termite on the o
anatomy conce
which pertain t
not devote them
To which I will
which is not wi
of the laws, of
institutionalizin
taken to analyz
have, not the st
physics), but the
cine, economics,
Take a simple e
which has chara
century until th
are dealing wit
cannot refer its
it would be very
and above all bec
between this sci
political events
scale - under th
give to this still
First hypothesi
modified (under
and their view o
have recognized
revolts in popula
its economic im
disposal a health
to transfer to th
transposed thei
universal valu

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 242 MICHEL FOUCAULT

hospital for the poor class

rich); they have therein
world: desacralization of
a greater importance acco
work; the concern for hea
tion. In all this, there are
one hand, they do not acc
course; and, on the othe
existence, and with the ef
the extent that the medical discourse had received a new standard.
Second hypothesis: the fundamental notions of clinical medicine
would be derived, by transposition, from a political practice or at
least from the theoretical forms in which it is reflected. The ideas
of organic solidarity, of functional cohesion, of tissulary communica-
tion, the abandonment of the principle of classification in favor of
an analysis of the whole body corresponded to a political practice
which revealed, beneath stratifications which were still feudal, social
relationships of the functional and economic type. Or else, do not the
refusal to see in sicknesses a large family of almost botanical species,
and the effort to find the pathological juncture, its mechanism of
development, its cause and, in the final analysis, its therapeutic, cor-
respond to the project, in the ruling social class, of no longer con-
trolling the world by theoretical knowledge alone, but by a mass of
applicable knowledge, its decision to accept no longer as nature that
which would be imposed upon her as a limit and as an evil? Such
analyses do not appear to me to be pertinent either, because they
avoid the essential problem: what should be, in the midst of the other
discourses, and in a general way, of the other practices, the mode of
existence and function of the medical discourse in order that such
transpositions or such correspondences are produced?

That is why I would change the point of attack in relation to the

traditional analyses. If indeed there is a link between political practice
and the medical discourse, it is not, it seems to me, because this
practice changed, initially, the conscience of men, their manner of
perceiving things or of conceiving of the world, and then finally the
form of their knowledge and its content; nor is it because this was
reflected at first, in a manner more or less clear and systematic, in
concepts, notions or themes which have been subsequently imported
into medicine. It is in a much more direct manner: political practice

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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 243
has transformed not the meaning or the form of the discou
the conditions of its emergence, insertion and functioning
transformed the mode of existence of the medical discourse.
has come about through a certain number of operations de
elsewhere and which I sum up here: new criteria to designa
who receive by law the right to hold a medical discour
division of the medical object through the application of a
scale of observation which is superimposed on the first without
it (sickness observed statistically on the level of a pop
new law of assistance which creates a hospital space for ob
and surgery (space which is organized, furthermore, accord
economic principle, since the sick person benefitting from
must compensate through the medical lesson which he gives
for the right of being cared for by the obligation of being e
and this goes up to, and includes, death); a new mode of reg
of preserving, of accumulating, of diffusing and of teachi
medical discourse (which must no longer express the exper
the physician but constitute, first of all, a document on illn
functioning of the medical discourse in the system of admin
and political control of the population (society as society is co
and "treated" according to the categories of health and path

Now - and here's where the analysis becomes complex

transformations in the conditions of existence and functionin
discourse are neither "reflected" nor "translated" nor "expre
the concepts, the methods or the data of medicine: they mo
rules of formation. What is transformed by political practic
the medical "objects" (political practice does not change, this
evident, the "morbid species" into '"lesionai infections"),
system which offers to the medical discourse a possib
(whether it be a population surveyed and indexed, whether
total pathological evolution in an individual whose antecede
been established and whose disturbances or their abatement
observed, whether it be an anatomical autopsied area);
transformed by political practice is not the methods of analysis
system of their formation (administrative recording of illn
deaths, of their causes, of admissions and dismissals from
setting up of archives, relations between medical personnel and p
in the hospital field); what has been transformed by political
is not the concepts but their system of formation: the substi

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 244 MICHEL FOUCAULT

the concept of "tissue" for

of a political change; but w
system of formation of the
the effects of illness, and f
tional cause, it has allowed
tinual, anatomical graph
reference of anomalies, of th
routes of diffusion. The ha
contents of a scientific dis
mind, the level where the
terms.

It seems to me, that starting from such an analysis, one can under-
stand:
1) how to describe a whole group of relations between a scientific
discourse and a political practice, the details of which it is possible
to follow and whose subordination one can grasp. Very direct relations
since they no longer have to pass through the conscience of the
speaking subjects nor through the efficacity of thought. Yet, indirect
relations since the data of a scientific discourse can no longer be
considered as the immediate expression of a social rapport or of an
economic situation.

2) how to assign the proper role of political practice in relation to

a scientific discourse. It does not have a thaumaturgie role of creation:
it does not bring forth sciences out of nothing; it transforms the
conditions of existence and the systems of functioning of the discourse.
These changes are not arbitrary nor "free": they operate in a realm
which has its own configuration and which consequently does not
offer limitless possibilities of modification. The political practice does
not reduce to nothing the consistency of the discursive field in which
it operates.
Nor does it have a universal, critical role. It is not in the name of a
political practice that one can judge the scientific quality of a science
(unless the latter claims to be, in one way or another, a theory of
politics). But in the name of a political practice one can question the
mode of existence and the functioning of a science.
3) how the relations between a political practice and a discursive
field can be articulated in turn on relations of another order. Thus
medicine, at the beginning of the 19th century, is at once linked to
a political practice (on a mode which I analyzed in La Naissance de la

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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 245
clinique [The Birth of the Hospital]), and to a whole gro
"interdiscursive" changes which were simultaneously produce
several disciplines (substitutions for an analysis of the order
taxonomical characters, of an analysis of solidarities, of functio
of successive series, which I have described in Les mots et les
[Words and Things]).
4) how phenomena which one is in the habit of placing i
foreground (influence, communication of models, transfer and
phorization of concepts) find their historical condition of poss
in these first modifications: for example, the importation, i
analysis of society, of biological concepts such as those of organism
function, of evolution, even of sickness, played, in the 19th ce
the role which one recognizes (much more important, much
ideologically loaded than the "naturalist" comparisons of prec
periods) only in proportion to the regulation given to the m
discourse by political practice.
Through this very long example I am anxious to show yo
one thing: how what I am attempting to bring out throug
analysis - the positivity of discourses, their conditions of exis
the systems which regulate their emergence, their functioni
their transformations - can concern political practice; to sho
what this practice can do with it; to convince you that by out
this theory of the scientific discourse, by making it appear
ensemble of regulated practices, being articulated in an analy
fashion upon other practices, I am not just enjoying myself by ma
the game more complicated for certain spirited souls. I am try
define in what way, to what extent, to what level the discour
particularly the scientific discourses, can be objects of a p
practice, and in what system of dependency they can be in r
to it.
Allow me once more to call you to witness the question I ask:
Isn't this politics well known which answers in terms of thought or
conscience, in terms of pure ideality or psychological traits, when
one speaks to it of a practice, of its conditions, of its rules, of its
historical changes? Isn't this politics well known which, since the
beginning of the 19th century, stubbornly persists in seeing in the
immense domain of practice only the epiphany of a triumphant
reason, or in deciphering in it only the historic-transcendental destin-
ation of the West? And more precisely: does the refusal to analyze

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246 MICHEL FOUCAULT

the conditions of existence a

discourses, in what they p
condemn all politics to a pe
which one can, indeed, c
validity and efficacity of a
real conditions of its exer
which it is articulated (thu
a universal rule for all the o
the fact that it is itself a r
to intervene directly in the
consistency, making of it t
tion (judging what is said
symbolic valorization of t
concepts which are "reactio
*******

I should like to c
- A progressive p
and the specified
only ideal necess
individual initiativ
- A progressive
possibilities of tr
these transform
abstraction of ch

- A progressive p
of the subject in
tions: it defines
subjects can occup

- A progressive
the result of mu
but rather that
political discours
the other practice

- A progressive
does not find i
"sovereign critic
diverse scientific
practices linked t

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History, Discourse and Discontinuity 247
susceptible to certain transformations) are part of a system
lations with other practices.
This is the point where what I have been trying to do
ten years now encounters the question which you are ask
I ought to say: that's the point where your question - w
legitimate and pertinent - reaches the heart of my own un
If I were to reformulate this undertaking - under the p
your questioning which has not ceased to occupy me for a
months - here is, more or less, what I would say: "To dete
its diverse dimensions, what must have been in Europe,
seventeenth century, the mode of existence of discourses a
larly of the scientific discourses (their rules of formation,
conditions, their dependencies, their transformations), in
the knowledge which is ours today could come to exist
more precise manner, that knowledge which has taken as
this curious object which is man."
I know, almost as much as any other person, how "thank
research can be - in the strict sense of the term - how i
it is to approach the discourses not from the sweet, mute and
conscience which is expressed in them, but from an obscur
of anonymous rules. I know how unpleasant it is to brin
limits and the necessities of a practice, whereas one was in
of seeing unfold in a pure transparency the play of g
liberty. I know how provoking it is to treat as a cluster
formations this history of discourses which, until now, w
by the reassuring metamorphoses of life and the intenti
tinuity of the past. Finally I know how unbearable it is
analyze, combine, recompose all these texts which have now
to silence, without the transfigured face of the author b
discernible in it, inasmuch as each person wants to put, th
putting of "himself" in his own discourse, when he unde
speak: what! so many words piled up, so many marks
much paper and offered to innumerable eyes, such a gre
preserve them beyond the gesture which articulates them
profound reverence determined to preserve them and inscribe
the memory of men - all this, so that nothing will rema
poor hand which has traced them, of this anxiety which
appease itself in them, and of this completed life which h
left but them for survival? Discourse, in its deepest dete

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 248 MICHEL FOUCAULT

would not be a "trace"? A

unsubstantial immortalit
of the discourse is not the time of the conscience carried to the
dimensions of history, or the time of present history in the form of
conscience? Would I have to suppose that, in my discourse, my
survival is not at stake? And that, by speaking, I do not exorcise my
death, but that I establish it; or rather, that I abolish all inwardness
in this outside which is so unconcerned with my life, and so neutral,
that it does not distinguish between my life and my death?
I indeed understand all this and people's uneasiness. They un-
doubtedly have had enough difficulty in recognizing that their history,
their economics, their social practices, the language which they speak,
the mythology of their ancestors, even the fables which were told
them in their childhood, obey rules which they are not aware of;
they hardly wish to be dispossessed, in addition, of this discourse in
which they wish to be able to say immediately, directly, what they
are thinking, what they believe or imagine; they will prefer to deny
that the discourse is a complex and differentiated practice obeying
rules and analyzable transformations, rather than be deprived of
this tender certainty, so consoling, of being able to change, if not
the world, if not life, at least their "meaning" only through the
freshness of a word which would come only from themselves and
would remain indefinitely so very close to the source. So many
things, in their language, have already escaped them; they do not
want to lose, in addition, what they say, this little fragment of dis-
course - word or writing, it matters little - whose frail and
uncertain existence is to extend their life further in time and space.
They cannot bear - and one can understand them somewhat -
being told: discourse is not life; its time is not yours; in it you will
not reconcile yourself with death; it is quite possible that you have
killed God under the weight of all that you have said; but don't
think that you will make, from everything that you say, a man who
will live longer than he. In each sentence that you pronounce -
and very precisely in this one that you are busy writing at this
moment, you have been answering a question so intently, for so
many pages, through which you have felt personally concerned and
who are going to sign this text with your name - in every sentence
there reigns the nameless law, the white indifference: "What does it
matter who is speaking; someone has said: what does it matter who
is speaking."

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