Michel Foucault: The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (1966–) [FR, IT, ES, EN, SH, DE, RU, PT, GR, TR, RO, ZH, CZ]

“When one defines “order” as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear as to what Foucault is doing here. With virtuoso showmanship, he weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology in The Order of Things, possibly one of the most significant, yet most overlooked, works of the twentieth century. Eclipsed by his later work on power and discourse, nonetheless it was The Order of Things that established Foucault’s reputation as an intellectual giant. Pirouetting around the outer edge of language, Foucault unsettles the surface of literary writing. In describing the limitations of our usual taxonomies, he opens the door onto a whole new system of thought, one ripe with what he calls “exotic charm”. Intellectual pyrotechnics from the master of critical thinking, this book is crucial reading for those who wish to gain insight into that odd beast called Postmodernism, and a must for any fan of Foucault.”

Publisher Gallimard, Paris, 1966
ISBN 2070224848
404 pages

English edition
With Foreword to the English edition by Michel Foucault
First published by Tavistock Publications, 1970
Publisher Routledge, London/New York, 1989/2005
ISBN 0415267366
422 pages

interview with the author (video, 14 min, 1966, in French)
wikipedia (FR)
wikipedia (EN)

Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines (French, 1966)
Le parole e le cose. Un’archeologia delle scienze umane (Italian, trans. Emilio Panaitescu, 1967)
Las palabras y las cosas. una arqueología de las ciencias humanas (Spanish, trans. Elsa Cecilia Frost, 1968)
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (English, trans. unknown, Pantheon Books, 1971, no OCR)
Riječi i stvari. Arheologija humanističkih znanosti (Serbocroatian, trans. Sreten Marić, 1971)
Die Ordnung der Dinge. Eine Archäologie der Humanwissenschaften (German, trans. Ulrich Köppen, 1971/74, 14 MB, no OCR)
Слова и вещи. Археология гуманитарных наук (Russian, trans. В. П. Визгин and Н. С. Автономова, 1977/94)
As Palavras e as Coisas: Uma arqueologia das ciências humanas (Portuguese, trans. Salma Tannus Muchail, 8th ed., 1981/2000)
Οι λέξεις και τα πράγματα. Μια αρχαιολογία των επιστημών του ανθρώπου (Greek, trans. Κωστής Παπαγιώργης, 1986)
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (English, trans. unknown, Vintage Books, 1971/1994, PDF), EPUB
Kelimeler ve şeyler. Insan bilimlerinin bir arkeolojisi (Turkish, trans. Mehmet Ali Kılıçbay, 2nd ed, 1994/2001)
Cuvintele și Lucrurile, o arheologie a științelor umane (Romanian, trans. Boghdan Ghiu and Mircea Vasilescu, 1996)
词与物 (Chinese, trans. unknown, 2002)
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (English, trans. unknown, Routledge, 1970/2005)
Slova a věci (Czech, trans. Jan Rubáš, 2007, 51 MB)

Andreas Killen: Berlin Electropolis: Shock, Nerves, and German Modernity (2006)

“Berlin Electropolis ties the German discourse on nervousness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to Berlin’s transformation into a capital of the second industrial revolution. Focusing on three key groups—railway personnel, soldiers, and telephone operators—Andreas Killen traces the emergence in the 1880s and then later decline of the belief that modernity caused nervous illness. During this period, Killen explains, Berlin became arguably the most advanced metropolis in Europe. A host of changes, many associated with breakthroughs in technologies of transportation, communication, and leisure, combined to radically alter the shape and tempo of everyday life in Berlin. The resulting consciousness of accelerated social change and the shocks and afflictions that accompanied it found their consummate expression in the discourse about nervousness.”

Wonderfully researched and clearly written, this book offers a wealth of new insights into the nature of the modern metropolis, the psychological aftermath of World War I, and the operations of the German welfare state. Killen also explores cultural attitudes toward electricity, the evolution of psychiatric thought and practice, and the status of women workers in Germany’s rapidly industrializing economy. Ultimately, he argues that the backlash against the welfare state that occurred during the late Weimar Republic brought about the final decoupling of modernity and nervous illness.

Publisher University of California Press, 2006
Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism, Volume 38
ISBN 0520931637, 9780520931633
303 pages

review (Eric J. Engstrom, H-German)
review (Harry Oosterhuis, History of Psychiatry)

Publisher

PDF

Robert Darnton: Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984–)

“When the apprentices of a Paris printing shop in the 1730s held a series of mock trials and then hanged all the cats they could lay their hands on, why did they find it so hilariously funny that they choked with laughter when they reenacted it in pantomime some twenty times? Why in the eighteenth-century version of Little Red Riding Hood did the wolf eat the child at the end? What did the anonymous townsman of Montpelier have in mind when he kept an exhaustive dossier on all the activities of his native city? These are some of the provocative questions Robert Darnton answers in this classic work of European history in what we like to call ‘The Age of Enlightenment.'”

First published in 1984
Publisher Basic Books, New York, 1990
ISBN 0465027008
298 pages

Reviews: Roger Chartier (Journal of Modern History, 1985), David E. Apter (American Journal of Sociology, 1985).
Commentaries: Darnton (Journal of Modern History, 1986), Dominick LaCapra (Journal of Modern History, 1988), Philip Stewart (Journal of Modern History, 1994).

Wikipedia
Publisher

PDF, PDF
EPUB (Revised edition)