Hayden White, "Foucault Decoded"

 

Michel Foucault is often linked to French Structuralism, like Levi-Strauss in anthropology and Lacan in psychoanalysis. All three thinkers focus on the idea that to understand human behavior, we need to understand the structure of language. They believe that what people say and do is deeply shaped by hidden patterns in language. For example, Lacan suggests that in psychoanalysis, the way a dream is described is more important than the dream itself. Similarly, Levi-Strauss looks at how rituals or cultural acts are like a language of signs that reflect deeper meanings.

Foucault agrees with this idea but goes further. He turns this method onto the human sciences themselves—such as history, psychology, and sociology—and criticizes them. He says these fields aren’t truly scientific because they are based on language systems that change over time. The concepts like “man,” “society,” and “culture” aren’t real things but results of specific language use. So instead of finding truth, these sciences are just playing language games based on shifting rules.

In his major book The Order of Things, Foucault traces how ways of thinking have changed from the 16th century to now. He doesn’t see history as a smooth progress but as a series of breaks or “ruptures” in thought. He identifies four major periods, each with its own way of seeing and talking about the world. These periods don’t evolve from each other; instead, they appear suddenly and replace earlier ways of thinking.

Foucault’s method is not traditional history. He calls it “archaeology” because he digs into the layers of past ideas without caring about cause-and-effect or continuity. He’s more interested in what each period’s way of speaking leaves out—what it makes impossible to say. For him, language is not a neutral tool for describing the world. It shapes what we can know and what remains hidden. Each era, therefore, creates its own limits on understanding by its use of language.

Foucault argues that our current “human sciences” are also limited. They try to act like natural sciences but are based on faulty assumptions. We believe we can objectively study people, but we are really just repeating certain language patterns. The real problem is our trust in language to represent reality clearly.

Ultimately, Foucault sees modern thought as slowly realizing the failure of this trust. He believes that language has returned to being seen as just another thing in the world—mysterious and unclear. This opens the door to new ways of thinking, not limited by the old scientific or historical methods. For Foucault, freeing ourselves from these past assumptions could lead to a more honest way of understanding ourselves and the world.