The Episteme and the Historical A Priori: On Foucault’s Archaeological Method

Interpreters of Michel Foucault's 1966 Les mots et les choses have often conflated the terms 'episteme' and 'historical a priori'. This article suggests that the two terms are entirely separate: while 'episteme' refers to the configuration of thought in a given historical period, 'historical a priori' refers to the conditions of unity for a certain field of science within a given period. In his use of the term 'historical a priori', Foucault is thus much closer to Husserl than has hitherto been appreciated. Keeping the two terms separated also sheds new light on the archaeological method that Foucault uses, showing that there is a procedure to get from an archive of texts to the reconstruction of an episteme.

MAKNA ARTEFAK MASA HINDU-BUDDHA DI KRATON KASEPUHAN CIREBON: TINJAUAN SEMIOTIKA PEIRCE

The research conducted in this paper focuses on answering the problem of the meaning of the artifacts of the Classical period found in the Kasepuhan Cirebon palace. The goal to be achieved in this research is to obtain an explanation of the position of the artifacts of the Classical period for the Kraton Kasepuhan Cirebon. In order to answer this research problem, three research steps were applied in the archaeological method, namely data collection, data analysis, and interpretation. Based on the entire research process that has been carried out, it can be seen that the artifacts of the Classical period that are stored in the Kasepuhan Cirebon palace are meaningful as symbols of the status of the king who occupies the highest power. Artifacts of the Classical period were used to strengthen the legitimacy of the King of Cirebon who had the status of "pandita ratu". Kebudayaan Hindu-Buddha di Indonesia banyak meninggalkan tinggalan kebudayaan di beberapa tempat. Salah satu tempat yang masih menyimpan tinggalan kebudayaan masa Klasik adalah Kraton Kasepuhan Cirebon. Artefak masa Klasik yang disimpan di Kraton Kasepuhan Cirebon antara lain berupa Arca Nandi, Lingga dan Yoni. Penempatan artefak ini dapat dihipotesiskan sebagai “kasus ekstrim”, karena biasanya unsur budaya Klasik yang masih dilanjutkan pada masa Islam sifatnya hanya samar-sama. Kajian ini berfokus dalam menjawab makna dari artefak masa Klasik yang terdapat di Kraton Kasepuhan Cirebon. Masalah ini diharapkan dapat menjelaskan kedudukan artefak-artefak masa Klasik tersebut bagi Kraton Kasepuhan Cirebon. Masalah penelitian ini dilakukan melalui analisis semiotika triadik Charles Sanders Peirce. Berdasarkan kajian yang dilakukan, dapat diketahui bahwa artefak-artefak masa Klasik yang disimpan di Kraton Kasepuhan Cirebon bermakna simbol raja sebagai pemegang kekuatan tertinggi. Artefak masa Klasik digunakan sebagai penguat legitimasi Raja Cirebon yang berstatus “pandita ratu”.

Material Culture and Typology

The active and discursive nature of material culture is the subject of this paper. It will, however, be approached from the point of view of typology and in particular the debate about the 'Swedish Typology’ (Gräslund 1974). Typology is probably the archaeological method or theory through which the discipline has most explicitly stated its view on the nature of the archaeological object. Inspired by the idea of naturalised epistemology as the basis for understanding how knowledge is constructed within the sciences (as discussed by Thomas 1996: 194), it is here argued that what we do, as archaeologists, is of importance rather than the theorising about our actions. Through a discussion of typology as expressed in archaeological practice, this paper will propose that the relationship between the object and typology is much simpler and more complex than our habitual use of the concept tends to suggest. It is proposed that the creation of typologies reveals the quite decisive influence which the object has upon the archaeological constructions. Typologies, moreover, are intimately connected to prehistoric production strategies. It is the relationship between these two dimensions of typologies, that we must understand in order to fully realise their potentials and understand their roles in archaeological practice.

Project Holocene: The Clayful Phenomenology of Jōmon Flame Pots

As a ceramic artist, I was surprised to find that archaeological research gives little attention to the extraordinary sensorial qualities of Jōmon flame pots. To understand why, I consider the challenges of including sensory experience in archaeological method and the problems of leaving it out. Turning to the typological approach to Jōmon pottery, I highlight the assumptions it makes about cognition before introducing Material Engagement Theory (MET) as an alternative. A MET-oriented reanalysis of the typological evidence places sensation at the centre of enquiry and removes the need to interpret symbolic, representational content. Through MET, I consider the sensorial qualities of flame pots, not as prehistory but as they appeared recently and unexpectantly during the process of modelling clay into sculptures for a contemporary art project. Flame pots joined conceptually with the explorative activity of clay. A prehistoric/contemporary artefact/modelling system was created and developed itself into a method of monitoring intra-systemic experience—clayful phenomenology. The findings cover five themes: enacted agency, iconicity from indexicality, bending rules/undermining habits, the choreography of material engagement and the phenomenology of space.

The role of the Counts of Cilli in the architectural development of the Jurklošter Carthusian monastery's great cloister and the question of the location of Veronika of Desnice's grave. The archaeological method as an aid to art-historical interpretation

The article presents the first attempt at a comprehensive interpretation of the architectural development of the Jurklošter Carthusian monastery's great cloister and its appearance before and after the reconstruction that was financially supported by the Counts of Cilli Frederick II and Ulrich II. The article also refers to several archival sources that have been overlooked to date. These reveal the previously unknown patrocinium of the cemetery chapel in the cloister's atrium as well as, quite reliably, the location of Veronika of Desnice's grave. They also bring new information about the granting of indulgences, permission to erect an altar in the cemetery chapel, and consecrations. Apart from discovering new archival sources and carrying out a comparative analysis with the relevant medieval Carthusian monasteries elsewhere in Europe, the article is methodologically based on the art-historical analysis of two archaeological georadar recordings, of which one has been published for the first time in this very contribution.

Michel Foucault: Sejarahwan Spesifik Masa Kini

The paper presents Foucault’s rich historical analyses on various past historical events which he claimed to be the hidden historical materials. Using the archaeological method, particularly on his early works, he tried to dig out all these facts through various archives to see how people in different historical periods thought about them and took action on them. Through such analyses many people consider him to be a historian. However, he is not an historian understood in the traditional sense of the word, but a specific historian, namely the historian of the present.

M(C)AGA - UM ENSAIO FOTOGRÁFICO SOBRE AS ABORDAGENS LATINO-AMERICANAS À ARQUEOLOGIA CONTEMPORÂNEA

If you feel that contemporary archaeology has a lot to offer on new ways of understanding the past, this is your event. If your approach to archaeological method and practice goes beyond the trowel into more engaging and transformative practices, this is your event. If you believe that archaeology engages the political yesteryear and today, this is your event. In order to make (contemporary) archaeology great again, we propose a decolonizing approach to emerging presents that benefits people and engages in a mutual learning process. But we want to know where we stand first, so this is a call for ideas and projects that are currently moving this way in Latin America.

Archaeology of the term “kształcenie”. On the history of the 20th century Polish systematic educational science

The aim of the article is to analyse the meaning and use of the term “kształcenie” in the concepts of systematic pedagogy in 20th-century Poland. The study involved M. Foucault’s archaeological method and systematic problem-historical analysis. As a result, it was found that in the indicated period a change in the disciplinary assignment of the term “kształcenie” from systematic pedagogy to didactics occurred, which was accompanied by a shift in meaning towards the instrumentally perceived modelling of personality through school teaching. Identification and revision of this fact opens the possibility to reintroduce the term and concept of “kształcenie” to systematic Polish pedagogy as one of its two basic categories, next to “wychowanie” (upbringing).