Archaeology of Knowledge

Michel Foucault (1926-84). Celebrated French thinker and activist who challenged people's assumptions about care of the mentally ill, gay rights, prisons, the police and welfare.

'He is a brilliant writer.' - Maurice Cranston'A necessary guide to Foucault's often difficult ideas ... and to his overall historical ambition, which is to define the 'soil' out of which contemporary events in a given period grow.' - Times Literary Supplement'Next to Sartre's - Search for a Method and in direct opposition to it, Foucault's work is the most noteworthy effort at a theory of history in the last 50 years.'

• Part I: Introduction.Part II: The Discursive Regularities 1. The Unities of Discourse 2. Discursive Formations 3. The Formation of Objects 4. The Formation of Enunciative Modalities 5. The Formation of Concepts 6. The Formation of Strategies 7. Remarks and CosequencesPart III The Statement and the Archive 1. Defining the Statement 2. The Enunciative Function 3. The Description of Staements 4. Rarity, Exteriority, Accumilation 5. The Historical a priori and the ArchivePart IV Archeological Description 1. Archeology and the History of Ideas 2. The Original and the Regular 3. Contradictions 4. The Comparative Facts 5. Change and Transformations 6. Science and KnowledgePart V: Conclusion ConclusionIndex