- A NATURAL HISTORY PANOPTICON271
- In Foucault’s reconfiguration of historic periodization, the episteme is the historical a
priori that in any given culture, and at any given time, defines “the conditions and pos-
sibility of knowledge” through implicit cultural limitations and constraints imposed
on discourses and practices of truth. - M. Foucault, 1966, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Science (Lon-
don: Routledge, 1970, 2003), 193. - In this book I adopt Foucault’s own historical periodization—one that partially disre-
gards traditional historiographical approaches to focuses on epistemes. The three main
periodizations Foucault discusses in The Order of Things are the Renaissance (1400–
1650), the Classical age (1650–1800), and the Modern age (1800–1950). In a 1967 inter-
view with Raymond Bellour, Foucault explained: “I can... define the Classical age in
its own configuration through the double difference that opposes it to the 16th century
on the one hand and to the 19th on the other. On the other hand, I can define the Mod-
ern age in its singularity only by opposing it to the 17th century on the one hand and
to us on the other.... From this Modern age which begins around 1790–1810 and goes
to around 1950, it’s a matter of detaching oneself, whereas for the Classical age it’s only
a matter of describing it.” M. Foucault 1989, Foucault Live (Interviews 1966–84) (New
York: Semitoext(e)), 30. - Ibid., xxiv.
- Foucault 1966:142.
- I bid. , 1 43.
- R. J. Hoage and W. A. Deiss, eds., 1996, New Worlds, New Animals: From Menagerie to
Zoological Park in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press), 14–15. - Foucault 1966:143–144.
- Ibid., 144–145.
- Ibid., 145.
- C. Lévi-Strauss 1962, The Savage Mind, trans. G. Weidenfield and Nicolson (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1972), 23. - Ibid., 23.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., 22.
- Ibid., 24.
- Ibid., 23.
- Foucault 1966:40.
- Ibid., 149.
- Foucault 1967, “Les mots et les images,” in D. Defert and F. Ewald, eds., Dits et écrits,
1954–1988 (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 620–623. - Foucault 1966:149.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- M. Foucault 1964, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
(New York: Vintage, 1967, 1988).
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