Abstract

LOAIZA CANO, GILBERTO. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Rereading a Forgotten Method, 50 Years Later. Anu. colomb. hist. soc. cult. [online]. 2020, vol.47, n.2, pp.283-308.  Epub Mar 20, 2021. ISSN 0120-2456.  https://doi.org/10.15446/achsc.v47n2.86162.

This rereading commemorates the 50 years of publication of Michel Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), a book that provided a method aimed at renewing the history of ideas, but which, ultimately, called into question some principles and postulates of the human sciences. By reading and summarizing what Foucault says in The Archaeology of Knowledge, the article seeks to show and prove that the interlocutors of his method were -and still are- several human sciences: mainly history, philosophy, sociology, and linguistics, despite the fact that Foucault neither mentions them nor classifies them in this manner. Throughout this conversation, I shall try to show that his method, now forgotten and rarely applied, bears traces of similarity with other historians' postulates, or, at least, that it interpellates the foundations of historical science. I will demonstrate that Foucault teaches us a method of empirical vocation, instead of suggesting that we establish an obscure relationship between models of interpretation and archival findings. I conclude by pointing out some ambiguities, difficulties, and, perhaps, inconsistencies, which I deem inevitable in that archaeological method.

Keywords : archaeology; Foucault; history; human sciences; method.

        · abstract in Spanish | Portuguese     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )