Historian of Ideas
For Foucault, the Historian of Ideas is essentially the mainstream historian. These are historians who are also the major antagonist for Foucault’s own method. In Chapter 4 of Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault spells out the major tendencies of historians of ideas. They tend to study the sudden emergence of something inventive or new; they are interested in continuity so that every event leads to or causes another; they try to eliminate contradiction in what they study by finding an underlying principle to cohere opposites; and they are interested in large and general categories like “science” or “culture.” Most importantly, historians of ideas approach discourse as a document. That means discourse is a record of something else, like the slow march of technological progress, rather than an object of study in its own right.
Archaeologist
In contrast to the historian of ideas, Foucault wants archaeologists of discourse. That means treating discourse as a “monument” in its own right, a totality worthy of its own study. In particular, Foucault wants to understand the rules and conditions under which discourse comes into being the way it is, with some things said in a certain way and other things not said at all. In contrast to the historian of ideas, the archaeologist does not resolve contradictions or build unified narratives about progress, but instead explains all the discontinuities and gaps in the discourse.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher and economist best known for his theories of class struggle and capitalism. For Foucault, Karl Marx was the first—and until now really the only—person to conceive of history beyond the terms of individual agency. Rather than tell the story of kings or geniuses, Marx told the story of classes of people and successions of “modes of production,” or the ways in which a society’s economy was organized. This is a kind of “impersonal” history, because it is a history of groups and structures rather than persons. Foucault is inspired by this decentering of “anthropology” or the study of people.
Authorities of Delimitation
The “authorities of delimitation” emerge in Foucault’s discussion of the formation of objects. Foucault says that when studying their emergence, we should pay special attention to who is authorized to talk about them. For instance, in the case of madness as it formed in the 19th century, medical professionals were the ones who were able to write and speak about the object. These professionals are the “authorities of delimitation.” To delimit means to determine the limits or boundaries of something. In this case, medical professionals are determining the shape of this new object. With the emergence of any object, Foucault says we need to pay attention to the institutions authorized to shape it.
