Anthropology and Humanism (Symbol)
In the Introduction to Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault says his archaeology will not be the history of great men and their actions. It will be a history of discourse, which is autonomous from the will or mind of any one person. Foucault thus aligns himself against a “theme” of trying to protect the role of the human subject in history:
In various forms, this theme has played a constant role since the nineteenth century: to preserve, against all decenterings, the sovereignty of the subject, and the twin figures of anthropology and humanism. Against the decentering operated by Marx—by the historical analysis of the relations of production, economic determinations, and the class struggle—it gave place, towards the end of the nineteenth century, to the search for a total history, in which all the differences of a society might be reduced to a single form, to the organization of a world-view, to the establishment of a system of values, to a coherent type of civilization. To the decentering operated by the Nietzschean genealogy, it opposed the search for an original foundation that would make rationality the telos of mankind, and link the whole history of thought to the preservation of this rationality, to the maintenance of this teleology, and to the ever necessary return to this foundation. (14)
Here, “anthropology” and “humanism” are symbols for the study of humans and their values. Against these disciplines, archaeology is a symbol for excavating the mass of discourse without reference to any human center.
Document and Monument (Allegory)
Also in the Introduction, Foucault first presents the fundamental opposition between the “document” and the “monument.” These form an allegory together, because they both symbolize different approaches to discourse:
To be brief, then, let us say that history, in its traditional form, undertook to ‘memorize’ the monuments of the past, transform them into documents, and lend speech to those traces which, in themselves, are often not verbal, or which say in silence something other than what they actually say; in our time, history is that which transforms documents into monuments. In that area where, in the past, history deciphered the traces left by men, it now deploys a mass of elements that have to be grouped, made relevant, placed in relation to one another to form totalities. (7-8)
To treat discourse as document is to treat it as a reference for something else, such as a war or the progress of science. In this case, the true “monument” or the focus of study, is actually the war or science. Instead, Foucault argues that discourse should itself be a monument, which means it is its own object of study.
Sovereignty of Consciousness (Motif)
A recurrent figure in The Archaeology of Knowledge is what Foucault calls the “sovereignty of consciousness” and which he is constantly dismissing or burying. He begins by explaining how traditional history has centered human agents who are in control of their world, and so history is the story of what men plan to do and then do:
If the history of thought could remain the locus of uninterrupted continuities, if it could endlessly forge connections that no analysis could undo without abstraction, if it could weave, around everything that men say and do, obscure synthesis that anticipate for him, prepare him, and lead him endlessly towards his future, it would provide a privileged shelter for the sovereignty of consciousness. (13)
Instead, Foucault advocates for thinking of discourse as the product of impersonal rules, which means no one has a will or control over how it comes into being:
Thus conceived, discourse is not the majestically unfolding manifestation of a thinking, knowing, speaking subject, but, on the contrary, a totality, in which the dispersion of the subject and his discontinuity with himself may be determined. (60)
The sovereignty of the subject is attractive to historians because it makes it seem like individuals are in control of the fate of the world. But Foucault must keep reminding us that this is not the case.
