Foucault's Order of Things pt.2
PREFACE
the quote Foucault begins with bears reproducing. he wants to demonstrate how systems of organizing are cultural, even though ours may seem natural and objective to us. he quotes Borges, who found the following classification system for animals in an old Chinese encyclopedia: "animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that form a long way off look like flies." Foucault points out that this sheds light on our own rigid thought structure: "in the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking THAT." And yet people clearly thought that at one time. He then expounds on the fundamental "codes" of a culture, or the grid of characteristics or perceptions that we plot things on in order to classify them. He sets out to conduct an archeology to discover the sets of conceptual tools used by Western cultures in the past few hundred years (the Classical period, Renaissance period, and the Modern period). He will focus on three domains: language and grammar, biology, and economics.
the quote Foucault begins with bears reproducing. he wants to demonstrate how systems of organizing are cultural, even though ours may seem natural and objective to us. he quotes Borges, who found the following classification system for animals in an old Chinese encyclopedia: "animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that form a long way off look like flies." Foucault points out that this sheds light on our own rigid thought structure: "in the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking THAT." And yet people clearly thought that at one time. He then expounds on the fundamental "codes" of a culture, or the grid of characteristics or perceptions that we plot things on in order to classify them. He sets out to conduct an archeology to discover the sets of conceptual tools used by Western cultures in the past few hundred years (the Classical period, Renaissance period, and the Modern period). He will focus on three domains: language and grammar, biology, and economics.