Abstract

A consensus view holds that Foucault’s historical methodology is incompatible with that of Marx. This paper challenges the consensus view by motivating the compatibility between Foucault’s archaeological method and historical materialism on a narrow but essential point of historical interpretation: the explanation of historical transformations of thought. Whereas Foucault’s apparent rejection of causal historical explanation has been interpreted to entail a rejection of historical materialism altogether, I demonstrate, first, that archaeology nonetheless remains a materialist methodology, insofar as it explains transformation on the basis of conditions that are not only discursive but also non-discursive and material. Second, I argue that Marx likewise interprets changes in thought not as the effects of immediate economic or technological causes, but on the basis of a range of conditions that are congruous with those central to archaeology. This common framework of explanation indicates that archaeology and historical materialism should be understood as minimally compatible in methodological terms and that Foucault’s method is thus not substantively opposed to that of Marx.