ABSTRACT
This chapter examines from the deconstructive perspective Michel Foucault's contribution to the study of the past, which has been to question the very nature of history as a distinctive epistemology by replacing its empiricist-inspired inductive/deductive method with narrative interpretation as the primary form of knowing and telling. Foucault is regarded by the majority of conservative as well as mainstream historians as anti-historical. It is because of his denial of linear historical causality between events and epochs, favouring instead a history based upon the discontinuities between dominant figurative structures operating in human consciousness. Foucault argues that people unconsciously organise and create knowledge as discourses and practices within each of the four distinctive historical ages or epistemes that existed between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. Foucault notes three fundamental branches of knowledge – life (biological discourse), wealth creation (socio-economic discourse) and language (cultural discourse).
