Topics Inventory of Foucault, ‘Preface’, The Order of Things And the Prerequisites of Order

In constructing the Preface of The Order of Things, Foucault dialectically involved discussion of various designed topics to illustration his question on habitual ways of ordering things. Trough quoting and paraphrasing Borges “certain Chinese encyclopaedia” in several dialogues, Foucault also critically engaged reader to examine topics including the use of “Chinese encyclopaedia”, language, table, Heterotopias and their latent limitations of ordering methodology.

The opening quotes Borges’s writing of“certain Chinese encyclopaedia” and wrote that animals can be divided into more than a dozen strange categories. Foucault found those defining terms absurd and incomprehensible is because it is beyond habitual sense of his culture. As someone from another culture he sense the limitation and the stark impossibility of thinking like wise(Foucault, 1989, p.xvi). This difference leads question of how content of contemplation and boundaries are formed differently.

In the following paragraphs Foucault specified on the topic of languages and its property for establishing a “non-place” where things are taken out of context and put in close juxtaposition to each other. Things otherwise improbable together are listed in alphabet order, and use of speaker’s language(and, in, on) is the only common ground(common locus) created for providing proof of the possibility of juxtaposition.(Foucault, 1989, p.xvii) However the non-space of language including in present classification does not find a way of establishing a stable relation of contained and container that would fit in everything without exception in one of the division(ibid.).

The topic of generation a table(a tabula) is compared with generating coherence in grid of identities, similitudes, analogies. Foucault defines table as something that thought wold operate and divide the entities of out world in classes based on their difference and similarity(ibid., p.xix). And language is the overarching system upon tables that’s used to organize the world.

Without the utopia brought by langue, it appears that aphasiacs struggles to make easy distinction between coloured skeins of wool.(ibid., p.xix). The absence of language undermines their capability to perceive enough similarity for a stable order. In reflection to the first topic, Borges’s exotic encyclopaedia is odd and disturbing to Foucault in similar way when aphasiacs are deprived of the defined common ground of names. Those instances of Heterotopias questions the ground on which our convinced ways of classification is built. 

Therefore Foucault argues order exists only in the limited network created by gaze, inspection, and language. Thought includes two ends, one end is the basic code of culture, such as language, value, practice, perceptual framework, etc., from our roots the order has been determined for different person. At the other end is the interpretation of the existence of these orders. But in the middle zone between these two ends is a silent existence, which also holds its own order when language and inspection fail us.