Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge, Part II, Ch. 2 and 5.

Questions:

1. P. 34: “I have been careful...” --> What are the unities being disposed with and why?

2. P. 41: If F refuses inferences as an axis, but Tiisala uses Foucault to endorse inferentialism, how do we make sense of them?

3. P. 42: Foucault says that he does not know where his inquiry will take us. How do we make sense of this? Does he write as he goes along the inquiry? What does it say about the way he writes his books?

4. P. 68, 69: What is normativity for itself? What does F mean when he claims that rules of discursive formations don’t happen in individual consciousness but in discourse itself, anonymously?

5. P. 69: Are there different understandings of unity that Focault is deploying?

6. P. .34: What is the concealment of unity?

7. P. 38: Third hypothesis: “Might it not be possible to establish groups of statements.” How does F’s conclusion diverge from the 3rd hypothesis on transcendental grammar?

8. How do these terms work together? Concepts, enunciative function, discursive formation, and statement?

9. Are discursive statements necessarily hegemonic for Foucault? And given that they operate under a priori rule, how are we do deal with the critically

10. The relationship between discourse/archaeology, practice/genealogy in F and discursive practice in Tiisala; what is it? F sometimes also uses discursive practice.

Discussion:

1. F argues against historians presupposing a transcendental historical consciousness. The unity is also the story that we are telling. Both the unity of the subject and the unity of the object is presupposed.

2. In chapter 2, he talks about four different kinds of unities: objects, enunciative modalities, form/concepts, strategies. According to F, you cannot do history based on the idea of the unity of a concept. Enunciations are the particulars of which discursive formation would be the general system (meta-level).

3. Does F’s ‘enunciative affect’ relate to Brandom’s (or any other form) of inferentialism? It does not seem to so clear, although there is some reason to believe that they are not.

4. Systems of dispersions are related to field of strategic possibilites. But what gets dispersed? Unclear. But note that what gets dispersed also has some regularity.