Structuralism in Words and Things:

a Structural History of Knowledge

Abstract

The aim of this article is to recognize the presence of a specific style of structuralism in the practice of archaeological research by Michel Foucault. The archaeological method, as opposed to resorting to a structuralist practice that refuses historical transformation and change, corresponded to a theoretical-methodological effort to introduce a historical perspective into structural studies. The hypothesis that animates this research was to show how Michel Foucault wrote The Words and the Things, with the interest in carrying out a structural study of Western knowledge, through the adaptation of the archaeological method to a style of structuralist research through a discontinuous history of knowledge.