Through fertile errors and anodyne truths: about the book by Ivan Domingues entitled “Foucault, a arqueologia e as palavras e as coisas: cinquenta anos depois”

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide an appreciation of Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things reception, from the latest book by Ivan Domingues entitled “Foucault, a arqueologia e As palavras e as coisas: cinquenta anos depois” (Ed. UFMG, 2023). One of the scopes of the book is to examine the range of The Order of Things and its archaeological strategy to account for the presentation of the birth of human sciences, as well as its fragility and instability in the face of a possible change in the disposition of knowledge. Or Episteme’s disposition, according to Foucault terminology, whose signs of change can be observed on the occasion of the advent, in the twentieth century, of Lacanian psychoanalysis, ethnology and structural linguistics. By privileging its repercussions, expansions and rectifications fifty years later, it is not intended to “correct” Foucault from an epistemological point of view, but to point out the fertility and power of his thoughts for posterity. It is about going through “fertile errors and anodyne truths” (DOMINGUES, 2020, p. 386). The bet is that possible gaps, errors or confusions identifiable by Foucault himself and by his critics at the time never invalidate the fertility of a discussion concerning human sciences, which were never the same after Foucault.