UDC

Authors

Abstract

In the Preface to his book Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (The History of Madness in the Classical Period), Michel Foucault dwells on the existence of cultural phenomena in contemporary discursive space. He proceeds from the twentieth-century idea of rupture as he is deeply concerned with the very impossibility of smoothly combining the past and the present. Foucault takes into account the act of “occurrence” of cultural phenomena, i.e. their appearance, which is equal to book reprinting. The Preface focuses on the problematization of perception and, more specifically, interpretation, in which Foucault emphasizes the meeting with the Different and entrustment of oneself to the Other, as well as raises the problem of responsibility for the Other. Dealing with texts, Foucault takes into account the nature of their materiality. According to Foucault, eventfulness and material side of humanitarian “objects” determine the principle of “incorporeal materialism”, in the light of which he studies their paradoxical functioning. The “incorporeal materialism” formula reveals the evolution of ideas about the world of things and ideas. The event of reading a book, according to Foucault, leads to the transformation of its whole and to its integrity due to “compression”, “transfer”, and “splitting up” of humanitarian phenomena, and as a result of simulacra, formed during rereading. According to Foucault, the appearance of “twins” of the book due to interpretation or comment can be equated both to the rebirth and to the death of the book. To understand these phenomena, it is better to focus on the book instead of the author. The fact that the book is destined for “death” due to its material nature suddenly determines the forms of its life. The Preface is full of paradoxical relations: here disappearance means distinction and, therefore, a very peculiar repetition. Research guidelines in such a repetition do not point to the author’s priorities but to what the book has said about its time without ignoring the text.

Keywords

References

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