Foucault refers to the classical age or period in The Order of Things (trans. A. M. Sheridan
Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1970) and The Archaeology of Knowledge (trans.
A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972). Daniel Stempel provides the setting:
Foucault insists that he is developing a method,
not a model of the classification of periods. His
method produces models, but these are derived
from analyses of praxis, the language of institutions and disciplines; they are not paradigms or
hypothetical structures imposed on unorganized
data. The gap between method and model is
bridged by the "episteme," which he defines as
the total set of relations that unite, at a given period,
the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences, and possibly formalized systems; the way in which, in each of these discursive
formations, the transitions to epistemologization,
scientificity, and formalization are situated and
operate; the distribution of these thresholds, which
may coincide, be subordinated to one another, or be
separated by shifts in time; the lateral relations that
may exist between epistemological figures or sciences
in so far as they belong to neighbouring, but distinct,
discursive practices. The episteme is not a form of
knowledge (connaissance) or type of rationality
which, crossing the boundaries of the most varied
sciences, manifests the sovereign unity of a subject,
a spirit, or a period; it is the totality of relations that
can be discovered, for a given period, between the
sciences when one analyses them at the level of discursive regularities. (M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972): 191.)
The classical age, or the Enlightenment, occupies a central position in Foucault's triad of periods: it follows the Renaissance and precedes
the modern. (...) Renaissance discourse is structured by resemblance,
which links a hierarchy of correspondences developed from a canonical Ur-text; its model is
the palimpsest that can be deciphered through
the similitude of each level of discourse to the
text on which that level is superimposed. The warp of typology that links all interpretations of
both the Bible and the book of nature is ex-
tended in time, not in space. The task of interpretation strives either to establish the continuity of
successive readings (the Church) or to restore
the Ur-text (the Reformation). The relation be-
tween the Ur-text and all later commentaries is,
in the strict sense of the word, figurative, an
analogy whose sign is a figura; the link between
words and things is the natural sign, the emblem
that resembles the thing it represents. In contrast
to Renaissance practice, the classical episteme is
derived from the priority of representative perception; the similitude between words and things
is an accident or a contingency, not a necessity.
The given becomes significant only through its
participation in the order of representation. The
order of the given, its simple association in space
and time, is constantly refined by the analysis of
experience; the real order of things is the telos
toward which experience moves in its self-analysis. Representation is reflexive: the cogito examines the contents of consciousness and arranges
them in an order that parallels the order of
things; conversely, the order of things must parallel the order of consciousness - God is not a
deceiver. If ordinary experience contradicts the
order of the mind, which is determined by rational analysis, that experience must surrender all
claims to primacy. For the classical physicist experiment does not confirm ordinary experience;
it confirms the order of mathematics, not the
order of perception.
...
For Foucault the name, which represents the qualitative unit in discourse, is at the center of
the classical episteme:
One might say that it is the Name that organizes all
Classical discourse; to speak or to write is not to
say things or to express oneself, it is not a matter of
playing with language, it is to make one's way toward the sovereign act of nomination, to move,
through language, towards the place where things
and words are conjoined in their common essence,
and which makes it possible to give them a name.
(M. Foucault, The Order of Things, trans. A. M. Sheridan
Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1970: 117.)
General grammar, the classical science of language, lists four ways in which discourse is organized by and around the name: designation,
derivation, articulation, and attribution. Designation, the naming of things, is the primordial
act of nomination, the source of all language; as
languages diverge from their common source, the
simple roots cling to their original meanings
despite the phonetic deformations of new sounds
and scripts. Derivation is the process of semantic
displacement that parallels the movement of language away from its roots. Articulation, the analysis of language into its grammatical elements,
makes it possible to arrange words, as representations of representation, to duplicate experi-
ence. But beneath the surface articulation of syntax lies the deep structure of language - the proposition. If designation is the basic act of language
that links the name and the thing, attribution is
the basic act of discourse that locates the name
in language by affirming its identity and specifying its differences.
The name, then, is the point about which the
strategies of classical discourse are deployed.
Designation links the name and its origin; derivation shifts the meaning of the name through the
play of rhetorical movement; articulation holds
names together in an inflectional matrix; and attribution transforms the name into a subject to
which other names and qualities are attached in
judgments. These strategies operate as an inner
dynamic for the taxonomy of language; they
place, replace, and displace words in the table of
order in an effort to name things exactly and ex-
haustively, clearly and distinctly. Attribution
provides a nontemporal logical subject of possible predicates; articulation places the name of
the subject in the infinite chain of words that
mirrors the infinite gradations of things; derivation
and designation act as opposed semantic
vectors: derivation moves away from the root
meaning and designation attempts to conserve it.
Nomenclature and taxonomy bridge the opposition of mathesis and order:
The fundamental task of Classical "discourse" is to
ascribe a name to things, and in that name to name
their being. For two centuries, Western discourse
was the locus of ontology. When it named the being
of all representation in general, it was philosophy:
theory of knowledge and analysis of ideas. When it
ascribed to each thing represented the name that was
fitted to it, and laid out the grid of a well-made language across the whole field of representation, then
it was science - nomenclature and taxonomy.
(M. Foucault, The Order of Things, trans. A. M. Sheridan
Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1970: 120.)
(Daniel Stempel, 'Blake, Foucault, and the Classical Episteme', PMLA, Vol. 96, No. 3 (May, 1981), pp. 388-407: 389-90.)
