Foucault and Derrida for dummies

Foucault

Introduction

Themes: continuity, discontinuity, paradox

The establishment of the differences between two branches of historical method: the history of ideas and history proper.

Questioning the document traditionally perceived as a "language of a voice [...] reduced to silence" has led to a shift of approach in both studies; old concerns of the historical field have moved from creating links between disparate events and constructing continuity to identifying and isolating strata as well as forming systems of relations. The history of ideas, on the other hand, has turned its attention from the unity and gradual development of theoretical activity to the cracks in its foundation, the disruptions that allow the free movement of ideological achievements.

The above mentioned interruptions are of varying nature: -epistemological acts and thresholds -displacements and transformations of concepts -microscopic and macroscopic scales

"The history of thought, of knowledge, of philosophy, of literature seems to be seeking, and discovering, more and more discontinuities, whereas history itself appears to be abandoning the irruption of events in favour of stable structures."