... MICHEL Foucault opens his book The Order of Things with a paragraph that has become one of his most famous. Foucault describes a passage from “a certain Chinese encyclopedia” that, he claims, breaks up all the ordered surfaces of our thoughts. By “our” thoughts, he means Western thought in the modern era... Not strictly true. The passage occurs mid-way through the Preface of The Order of Things, it doesnt open it. ...There is, however, a problem rarely mentioned by those who cite the Chinese taxonomy as evidence for these claims. No Chinese encyclopedia has ever described animals under the classification listed by Foucault. In fact, there is no evidence that any Chinese person has ever thought about animals in this way. The taxonomy is fictitious. It is the invention of the Argentinian short-story writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges... In fact Foucault acknowledges Borges before he cites the encyclopedia, and that his list is fictional; this rather negates the point that it weakens Foucaults overall argument. Foucaults tone is rather wry at this point in the preface, and it seems he simply wants us to take Borgess phoney taxonomy as a slap from a jesters bladder, to make us reconsider how we think, and how we categorize things. Are our systems as rational as we consider them? Or do we categorize things not on the basis of what they are, but because we are who we are? The above essay, whilst cautionary, makes me wonder whether Mr Windschuttle has actually read Foucault.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 09:52:02 +0000