ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Jacques-Alain Miller argues that whereas the History of Sexuality "exposes" psychoanalysis in the larger episteme Michel Foucault terms "the apparatus of sexuality", an earlier work such as The Order of Things "is entirely and explicitly ordered around psychoanalysis". It is possible to speak of Folie et deraison's psychoanalytic conception of history on the basis of the similar tension it displays. For the assessment of Folie et deraisoris relevance for a psychoanalytic conception of cultural history, this means two things. Firstly, the chapter suggests that Foucault's controversial "structuralism" does not preclude him from producing a model of historical change. His historiography is serial and episodic, submitting madness to the metonymic alteration of the primary process. Secondly, this means that Foucault's own fear that he had succumbed in Folie et deraison to a trans-historical account of madness may be too hasty.
