#will to knowledge

[through a series of stalls and shifts that we can move from the level of science to that of power-knowledge] (cont'd) 2. The second shift allows passing discursive practices at the level of power-knowledge through these matrices of "legal-political" knowledge that is - the measure - the test - the investigation.

Q: Professor, could you tell us about your work? [cont'd] A: This investigation [of prisons by the GIP], we did it in a rather particular way: instead of addressing us to the prison administration, to find out how things were going on from the point of view of this administration, we went directly to the former detainees, to those who were coming out of prison. And entering the law illegally, we smuggled detainees, and we got their answers. We came to know exactly what life was like in prison.

The analysis of other legal-political matrices will reveal, alongside the survey and measurement, another schema of power-knowledge. The new types of penalty, control and repression in the eighteenth-nineteenth century revealed the form of the examination: - exam of normality - examination of level - examination of morality - examination of health (mental or not) on the individuals or the groups. From this will be extracted an over-knowledge whose effect will be the appearance of the human sciences. From the three legal-political matrices [ - measure - investigation - examination ] are born the: - Measurements of the κόσμος [cosmos] - descriptive sciences of the nature - normative sciences of the man

So we have three levels: [1.] the history of science from which reduction to epistemological matrices [of objects, concepts, enunciative positions, theories/strategies] makes it possible to pass to [2.] the archaeology of knowledge from which the release of the juridico-political matrices of knowledge [of measures, tests, inquiries, examinations] allows one to move to [3.] knowledge-power -- the level where most profit, most power and most knowledge are bound together. The study of dynastic knowledge.

[through a series of stalls and shifts that we can move from the level of science to that of power-knowledge] (cont'd) Thus, in the great empirical sciences of the West such as biology or grammar, we do not find the administrative inquiry itself. But inquiry as a form of exercise of power and constitution of an over-knowing has given rise to discursive practices (to types of - description - analysis - cutting of the object - position of the object ) that have stabilized, corrected, reinforced each other at their own level. At this level too they have been corrected, corrected by other discursive formations. New type of formation of a greater knowledge And it is these discursive formations which have given rise to sciences, which at their own level produce more knowledge.

These processes are not read directly as traces or structures within science. It is through a series of stalls and shifts that we can move from the level of science to that of power-knowledge. The two main shifts are: 1. That which allows to pass from sciences, or so-called sciences, to great types of discursive practices and through the "epistemological matrices". The analysis of these epistemological matrices makes it possible to discover ways - of cutting out, of crisscrossing, of constituting object fields - of defining the positions of the subject - of regulating the formation of concepts and theories. We thus pass, through these epistemological matrices, the historical description of sciences to their "archaeology".

This level [where knowledge, profit, power reinforce each other] is fundamental in relation to knowledge. The - constitution of a "subject of knowledge" - cutting of an "object to know" - what is called the act of knowledge are the historical effects, localized to our type of civilization, of these processes of power-knowledge.