Discontinuity and Order

Abstract

If the critics were undecided as to how to classify Foucault’s work, they were also undecided as to what to make of its constant changeability. In this chapter and the ones that follow, Foucault’s work will be looked at as a constantly changing body of historical and philosophical reflection. At the same time, attention will be drawn to certain structural constants which give more cohesion to his work than would first appear to be the case. In order to emphasise different aspects of Foucault’s development, the analysis has been divided into four sections. The first two deal mainly with Foucault’s earlier work, beginning with the way Foucault orders his histories and his treatment of the ‘interior limits’ of a culture,¹ and then going on to the more difficult question of the relation of the Same and the Other and limits in his work. The third section is concerned with Foucault’s later work, in which the exterior limits disappear, and in which his analyses of order and his ontological theses merge. The fourth section deals with his final writings, which reintroduce the question of the limits.