![]() ![]() At the other extremity of thought, there are scientific theories or the philosophical interpretations which explain why order exists in general, what universal law it obeys, what principle can account for it, and why this particular order has been established and not some other” (p.xx). He further explains: “The fundamental codes of a culture - those governing its language, its schemas of perception, its exchanges, its techniques, its values, the hierarchy of its practices - establish for every man, from the very first, the empirical orders with which he will be dealing and within which he will be at home. It is very deeply embedded in our systems of thought that it seems natural thus, requiring to be brought out-while not being something decided or imposed itself. ![]() So, order is a taken-for-granted knowledge that presents a relationship between things and what they are. “When we establish a considered classification on what ‘table’, according to what grid of identities, similitudes, analogies, have we become accustomed to sort out so many different and similar things? What is this coherence – which, as is immediately apparent, is neither determined by an a priori and necessary concatenation, nor imposed on us by immediately perceptible contents?”(p.xix).Īccording to Foucault, order exists in every culture and “is, at one and the same time, that which is given in things as their inner law, the hidden network that determines the way they confront one another, and also that which has no existence except in the grid created by a glance, an examination, a language: and it is only in the blank spaces of this grid that order manifests itself in depth as though already there, waiting in silence for the moment of its expression” (p.xx). The unusual taxonomy mentioned by Borges provided Foucault some food for thought as he started questioning the validity of any sort of classification with complete certainty. Foucault’s inspiration of writing the book originated from a joke by Borges, who provided various definitions from a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ that divided animals into categories such as belonging to the Emperor, embalmed, tame, sucking pigs, sirens, drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, that from a long way off look like flies… Having laughed for a long time by this, Foucault also felt a certain uneasiness. ![]()
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