Bourdieu and Foucault: derivation of an epistemic space

Abstract

In this article the author discusses the bachelardian episthemological basis of Bourdieu’s and Foucault’s works, aiming at assessing their pertinence to a sociology of modernity in the periphery. Bachelard founded a modality of rational reconstruction associated to a historicization opposed to positivism, since it emphasizes the creative and inventive character of the scientific phenomenotechnology. Bourdieu takes from Bachelard the imposition of an epistemological rupture between the phenomenon reconstructed in science and the one presented to common sense. Foucault uses the bachelardian method of demonstration of the fantastic roots of science to unmask the pretensions of human sciences. It is suggested in this article that the extension of the foucaultian epistemological position is heuristically more productive, being still promising to places of enunciation that intend to unveil the way modernity presents itself in the periphery.