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Michel Foucault

1926-1984
Paris

This work

The Order of Things (Les Mots et les choses) is Foucault's archaeological study of the human sciences, examining how Western thought has structured knowledge across three epistemes: the Renaissance, the Classical age, and the modern period. The book opens with Velázquez's Las Meninas as a tableau of representation itself, then traces the emergence of 'man' as both object and subject of knowledge — a figure destined to be erased 'like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.'

Gilles DeleuzeWrote a critical study of Foucault (1986) that traces the shift from the visible to the articulable, and from archaeology to the fold of subjectivation.
Judith ButlerDraws on Foucault's analysis of discursive formations and the construction of subjects in Gender Trouble and subsequent work on performativity.
Edward SaidApplied Foucault's archaeological method to Orientalism, analyzing the discursive formation that produced 'the Orient' as an object of colonial knowledge.
Ian HackingDeveloped historical ontology inspired by Foucault's archaeology, examining how kinds of people are made possible by changing systems of classification.
Hubert DreyfusCo-authored Mind Over Machine and later work on AI and embodiment that engages Foucault's critique of the human sciences.

The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences

Michel Foucault

Begin where the book begins

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