In the second part of Les Mots et les choses Michel Foucault points to the historical rift that separates the episteme of the âge classique from the modern order of knowledge. The repercussions of this rift can be shown in many fields of scientific and (inter-)cultural practice, not least in the European discourse of exploration as it developed in the second half of the eighteenth century. The voyages led by the British explorer James Cook furnish a graphic example of the ambiguous state of transition between conflicting epistemes, for while most of the members of his scientific crew – and especially he himself – remain firmly rooted within the discursive order of the Enlightenment, others manifest an early awareness of innovative means to produce knowledge in the fields of natural history and anthropology. The most interesting among the latter is the Anglo-German scientist and writer Georg Forster, who accompanied Cook on his second voyage to the Southern Pacific and published the English version of his account, A Voyage round the World, in 1777 (the German version, entitled Reise um die Welt, appeared in 1778–80). By comparing the travel writings of Cook with those of Forster, the effect of the epistemic rift on the practices of exploration can be made visible. In particular, the comparison makes it possible to work out two different (Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment) modes of fashioning the first-contact situation as well as corresponding ways of constructing the ‘contact-zone’ in which the encounter between the European traveller and the non-European ‘native’ was to take place.

Cook's Journals are generally held to be representative of the Enlightenment mode of exploration. A characteristic of his account is the attempt to separate the report of what happened to him and his crew during his visits to newly ‘discovered’ places from the detached description of these places and their inhabitants. Cook distinguishes neatly between narrative and description. His descriptive labour depends on his ability to collect first-hand information while maintaining an outsider's position.