Archaeological Methodology: Foucault and the History of Systems of Thought

Abstract

Existing accounts of Foucault’s archaeological methodology have not (a) contextualized the concept properly within the intellectual field of its emergence and (b) explained why it is called ‘archaeology’ and not simply ‘history’. Foucault contributed to the field of ‘history of systems of thought’ in France around 1960 by broadening its scope from the study of scientific and philosophical systems into systems of ‘knowledge’ in a wider sense. For Foucault, the term ‘archaeology’ provided a response to new methodological questions arising from this initiative. Archaeological methodology had already been developed into a distinct comparative approach for the study of linguistic and cultural systems, notably by Dumézil. Foucault redevised archaeological methodology for the post-Hegelian tradition of studying ‘problems’ prevalent in the history of systems of thought. The article thus furnishes the groundwork for a ‘sociological archaeology’ or ‘problem analysis’ that is not particularly dependent on Foucault as a social theorist of power.

Justification, Values or Concerns? Pragmatist Theories of Morality and Civic Engagements in Local Urban Greenspaces

“…Such structures may not be those of coherent justificatory regimes, but may equally well take the shape of problems, conflicts and contradictions. Thus, instead of defining what 'the market' means in the theory, inquiry would focus on the situated problems of delimiting it from other categories, such as 'nature' (Krarup, 2019(Krarup, , 2021a(Krarup, , 2021b. In other words, the content by which the theory characterizes each of the justificatory regimes is inseparable from the concerns and problems that motivate public contestation in the first place.…”

European artificial intelligence policy as digital single market making

“…In order to pursue this line of inquiry, we implement an analytical framework focused on the problematization of new objects of regulatory action (Ossandón and Ureta, 2019). Specifically, we draw on the ‘problem analysis’ methodology of Foucault, which looks for discursive patterns of tension, uncertainty, contradiction and conflict in order to qualify our understanding of the epistemic structures within which a problem – here: of regulating AI in the EU – is posed (Delaporte, 1998; Krarup, 2021a; Ossandón and Ureta, 2019).…”

“…First, while the latter acknowledges the role of controversy and contradiction (Mager and Katzenbach, 2021), problem analysis frontloads them. Second, the notion of problem differs from that of the performativity of discourse and the analysis of power struggles in so far as it is rather oriented towards the discursive problem conditions that allow and enable a multitude of different responses to co-exist (Krarup, 2021a). Nevertheless, while it would be impossible to account for all the relevant actors engaged in power struggles over each document or set of documents in our comprehensive analysis, our contribution may serve as a reference point for future studies of AI governance in Europe.…”

The politics of the urban green: Class, morality and attachments to place

“…Indeed, Figure 1 shows that ‘planners’, too, can be environmentalists, just as ‘grassroots’ can be anti-environmentalists. Rather than hegemony, the space reflects interlaced issues of concern – what Barnett and Bridge (2016) call problems (see also Krarup, 2021).…”