The Sign and the Image in Michel Foucault (Approaches to Art and Meaning)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52152/ecg69158Keywords:
Michel Foucault, The Sign, The Image, Episteme, Representation, Discourse, Archaeology of Knowledge, VisibilityAbstract
This paper examines the shifting ontological and epistemological status of the "sign" and the "image" within Michel Foucault’s archaeological framework. Moving beyond traditional semiotic and iconographic approaches, the study explores how Foucault dismantles the classical link between representation and reality, particularly through his analysis of the transition from the Renaissance "episteme"—where signs were viewed as intrinsic components of the world—to the Classical and Modern frameworks. By analysing Foucault’s seminal readings of Velázquez’s Las Meninas and his discourse on the materiality of the visible, this research highlights how the interplay between the "sayable" (discourse) and the "visible" (image) functions as a mechanism for the historical production of knowledge. The paper argues that for Foucault, the sign is not a passive vehicle of meaning but a historically contingent instrument of power. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how Foucault’s inquiry into the visual and the discursive provides a critical "tool-box" for understanding the formation of objects of knowledge and the institutional regulation of visibility in contemporary society.
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