Episteme

Georges Canguilhem gives this illuminating description of Foucault’s episteme: “In order to perceive the episteme, it was necessary to exit from a given science and from the history of a given science; it was necessary to defy the specialization of specialists, and to try to become a specialist not of generality, but of interregionality . . . . The archaeologist has to have read a great number of things that others have not read . . . Foucault cites none of the historians in a given discipline; he refers only to original texts that slumber in libraries. People have talked about ‘dust.’ Fair enough. But just as a layer of dust on furniture is a measure of the housekeeper’s negligence, so a layer of dust on books is a measure of the carelessness of their custodians.”

And, the very fact that the books are dusty raises a question for Foucault: Why have these books been excluded?