ABSTRACT
This chapter vindicates Foucault's idea of the archaeology of knowledge from the influential and potentially devastating criticism by Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, who argue that archaeology is based on an incoherent conception of the rules of the discursive practices it purports to study. The chapter's argument fills a crucial gap in the secondary literature because the interpretation by Dreyfus and Rabinow has been widely accepted, while more sympathetic interpreters of archaeology have not systematically refuted it. The chapter shows that Dreyfus and Rabinow only deny Foucault's entitlement to the view that these rules are both implicit and efficacious, instead of attacking the view itself. However, this charge of incoherence rests on a misunderstanding about the nature of the archaeology of knowledge. In particular, it fails to appreciate that archaeology is an expressive project with a diagnostic potential but no need or ambition to explain how discursive cognition as such is possible.
