BobKKKindle$
24th May 2009, 00:22
What are the differences between Foucault's episteme, and Althusser's problematic? As far as I can see, the main and perhaps only difference is that Foucault saw epistemes as applying to entire historical epochs and as affecting all thinkers regardless of the subject area in which they operated, whereas, for Althusser, a thinker can change the problematic within which they think and write during the course of their intellectual career, as is evident from his thesis of the epistemological break in relation to Marx. Apart from this, they seem remarkably similar, because they can both be seen as attacking the centrality of authorial intent in literary criticism. In many ways this is surprising, because Foucault is generally seen as a post-structuralist, whereas Althusser is located in the structuralist category. Thoughts?