Full Citation and Summary Foucault, Michel. Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans.
Alan Mark Sheridan-Smith. London; New York: Routledge, 2002. Print. Routledge
Classics. [French edition: Foucault, Michel. L'Archaeologie du Savoir. Paris:
Gallimard, 1969. Print.]
This book, is a methodological work which documents and develops Foucault's
Archaeological method of historical inquiry, providing the basis of
contemporary discourse analysis. First published in French in 1969, this book
follows Foucault's previous book-length studies of madness (1954 &1961),
medicine (1963), Raymond Roussel (1963), and the so-called "human sciences"
(1966). Its publication coincided with Foucault's tenure as head of the
philosophy department in Vincennes.
Chapter Notes
INTRODUCTION
Introduction (pp. 3-19)
- Presents two trends in historical disciplines (pp. 6): 1) History through
investigating the stable, continuous layers under surface-level events (pp.
3-4); 2) History of Ideas through investigating rupture, discontinuity, etc.
that disrupt continuous knowledge accumulation (pp. 4-5)
- Argues that these two trends respond to the same question of "the document"
(pp. 6)
- No longer reconstruction of history from the document, but ordering
operations on documents as history; "history is one way in which a society
recognizes and develops a mass of documentation to which it is inextricably
linked" (pp. 7)
- More like "archaeology" since documents are treated as artefacts that must be
ordered in relation to each other (pp. 8)
- "document" is defined broadly: "books, texts, accounts, registers, acts,
buildings, institutions, laws, techniques, objects, customs, etc." (pp. 7)
- Four consequences [Listing like this will be a technique F deploys a lot]
- 1) long periods in history proper and discontinuities in history of ideas
(pp. 8)
- Long periods based on methodology of making series (pp. 8-9)
- Discontinuities through questioning existing totalities of thinking (pp. 9)
- 2) discontinuity takes a major threefold role in historical disciplines (pp.
9)
- A) discontinuity is a deliberate operation by historians, not intrinsic to
material under investigation (pp. 9)
- B) it is a result of descriptive method of discovering limits rather than a
condition to be eliminated by analysis (pp. 9)
- C) it is specified to the context in which it is found/made (pp. 9)
- Discontinuity is both an instrument and object of research (pp. 10)
- 3) the theme of "total history" is replaced by" general history" (pp. 10)
- Total history "...draws all phenomena around a single centre..." (pp. 11)
- General history "...would deploy the space of dispersion." (pp. 11)
- Localized, specific histories which relate to each other, the question of how
and on what level they interface (pp. 11)
- 4) New methodological problems: (pp. 11-12)
- Building up corpora of documents and principle of choice (pp. 11)
- Defining the level of analysis and its relevant elements (pp. 11)
- Specification of best analytical method for level under analysis (pp. 11)
- Defining groups and subgroups (pp. 12)
- History freeing itself from philosophy of history, its intersection with
other fields (pp. 12)
- Three major decentrings: 1) Marx's historicization of production; 2)
Nietzsche's genealogy against origins; 3) psychoanalysis, linguistics, and
ethnology decentring the subject (pp. 14)
- Introducing the main aims of this book in relation to F's previous work (pp.
16-19)
- Main aim: to "define a method of historical analysis freed from the
anthropological theme." [ie. not tied to human psychology and the actions of
specific individuals] (pp. 17)
- Note on the French: "connaissance" = "the relation of the subject to the
object and the formal rules that govern it"; "savoir" = "the conditions that
are necessary in a particular period for this or that type of object to be
given to connaissance and for this or that enunciation to be formulated." (pp.
16-17, note)
- Stresses that this is not a structuralist project and that the categories of
"cultural totalities" will be avoided since totalities are exactly what he
will be questioning (pp. 17)
- Nice quote on pp. 19: "si je ne préparais -- d'une main un peu fébrile --
le labyrinthe où m'aventurer, déplacer mon propos, lui ouvrir des
souterrains, l'enfoncer loin de lui-même, lui trouver des surplombs qui
résument et déforment son parcours, où me perdre et apparaître finalement à des
yeux que je n'aurai jamais plus à rencontrer. Plus d'un, comme moi sans doute,
écrivent pour n'avoir plus de visage."
THE DISCURSIVE REGULARITIES Unities of Discourse (pp. 25-33)
- Dealing with theoretical problems, specifically within the History of Ideas
(rather than general history) (pp. 23)
- Starting negatively, by suspending some received notions of continuity (pp.
23)
- "Tradition" giving special temporal status to a group of phenomena, to
make-visible the new against a continuity, to approach the origin without
discontinuity (pp. 23)
- "influence" which supports transmission and communication as causality (pp.
24)
- "resemblance or repetition" which links things across temporal distance (pp.
24)
- "development and evolution" that allows for disparate events to be grouped
(pp. 24)
- "spirit" which establishes links through continuity of meaning (pp. 24)
- Suspending the micro-scale unities as well
- The book whose unity is never totally stable, but variable and relative (ie.
poetry collection or book as a node in a network of references) (pp. 25-26)
- The oeuvre whose unity is based on a series of decisions
(inclusion-exclusion) that are difficult to justify and formulate (pp. 26)
- Note on "langue" = specific languages (eg. English or French) vs. "langage" =
either language in general or specific "technical" languages (eg.
philosophical, logical, or medical languages) (pp. 26)
- Suspending continuities by which we organize the discourse in analysis (pp.
27), both of these are to ensure the "infinite continuity of discourse" (pp.
28)
- That there is a secret origin that all chronologies converge at, and that all
beginnings are really repetitions of a single beginning (pp. 27-28)
- That all discourse exists beforehand as a kind of secret silent discourse
which had not yet been documented; that all discourse was already thought
before it manifested (pp. 27-28)
- Suspending these above through questioning them: they are "facts of
discourse" that deserve to be analysed beside others," some can be deemed
legitimate under certain conditions and others must be completely done away
with (pp. 25, 28)
- The search for unities of discourse then requires a theory which itself
emerges from the "pure description of discursive events" (pp. 29) whose field
is always finite and limited to "linguistic sequences that have been
formulated" and which has rules for the formulation of linguistic sequences
(pp. 30)
- The question is then: why these sequences and not others? (pp. 30)
- The suspension of unities serves to:
- restore the singularity and specificity of the statement, to deal with it as
unique articulation in writing or speech [note the focus on writing and
speech] (pp. 31)
- to allow the statement to be disengaged as in a lab to probe its capacities
and reveal new relations and regularities in the field of its deployment (pp.
32)
- to free statements from received forms of unity which are themselves unstable
and allow new ways of crossing the field of statements (pp. 32)
Discursive Formations (pp. 34- 43)
- The question of how a collection of statements can become a unity, how to
find and analyse unities (pp. 34)
- Presents four hypotheses, and show how each is wrong (pp. 35-40)
- Ends off with this: any analysis which focuses on unity isn't enough, so we
should focus on "systems of dispersion" (pp. 41)
- System of dispersion = an organized rule system which regulates the
differentiation of statements
- Therefore: "discursive formation" = when one can describe a system of
dispersion for a given collection of statements, when one can describe a
"regularity" (ie. an order, correlations, functionings) (pp. 41)
- "rules of formation" = "the conditions of existence... in a given discursive
division." (pp. 42)
The Formation of Objects (pp. 44-54)
- Deals with rules of formation of discursive objects, their general mode of
construction (pp. 44)
- Starts with a proposed model for how discursive objects emerge: planes of
emergence, authorities of delimitation, grids of specification (pp. 45-47)
- which is then expanded and specified (pp. 49-51); below are the 4 points:
- 1) the conditions necessary for the appearance of an object of discourse (pp.
49) (pp. 45)
- So, it is not easy to say something new since the context must be perfectly
right, and if many different things are to be said about an object, the
conditions must allow it to be the case (pp. 49)
- 2) the "relations between institutions, economic and social processes,
behavioural patterns, systems of norms, techniques, types of classifications,
modes of characterization" which are extra-discursive and provide positions
from which the object may situate itself (pp. 49-50)
- 3) two different kinds of other relations: 1) "primary relations" which are
the relations of institutions, techniques, etc. to each other that are not
directly expressed in discourse and object formation & 2) "secondary relations"
that are the relations between institutions etc. as they are formed in
discourse itself (pp. 50)
- 4) note that "secondary relations" AKA "discursive relations" are at the
limits of discourse since they are the relations which must be established
before a discourse can speak about an object (pp. 51)
- We find from this that it is not the objects, their chronologies of
emergence, or their spatial location which form unities, but the rules by
which they relate which form unities and remain constant under certain
conditions; not things but mechanisms (pp. 51-52)
- Rules of formation of objects must not be: embodied in things, emplaced in
the domain of words (pp. 70)
The Formation of Enunciative Modalities (pp. 55-61)
- We must examine the place from which statements are made (enunciation)
through:
- 1) asking who is speaking (pp. 55-56)
- 2) describing the institutional, etc. sites from which the speaking is done
(pp. 56-57)
- 3) describing the position in relation to the groups of objects the statement
will be about and where they are in the information network (ie. how does the
stater access the objects and how is their statement transmitted?); there might
be an apparatus involved(pp. 57-58)
- Instead of a unified speaking subject which is stable, we have a subject
dispersed over various enunciative modalities, subjectivity as itself
regulated by rules for where, when, and how it takes place (pp. 60)
- "a network of distinct sites is deployed." (pp. 60)
- formation of enunciative types must not be: located in a knowing subject,
located in a psychological individuality (pp. 70)
The Formation of Concepts (pp. 62-70)
- Concepts emerge from fields of statements of a discursive formation whose
organization (the configuration of the enunciative field) can be described
through: (pp. 62)
- A) forms of succession, the "orderings of enunciative series"; the types of
dependence of statements upon each other, rhetorical schemata by which
statements can be combined (pp. 63)
- B) forms of coexistence; 1) "fields of presence" = all statements taken up by
a discourse along with those that are judged, criticized, excluded, etc.; 2)
"fields of concomitance" = statements from a different domain of objects which
are active in this domain of objects (eg. analogical statements); 3) "field of
memory" = statements which are no longer accepted or discussed at all (pp.
64-65)
- C) the procedures of intervention that may be applied to statements:
techniques of rewriting, methods of transcribing, modes of translating
quantitative into qualitative, modes of approximation to refine exactitude, the
way validity of statements is delimited, the means of transferring a statement
from one field to another, systemization (pp. 65-66)
- This is a kind of "preconceptual" level, not chronologically "pre" but the
level which allows concepts to operate and form in the first place (pp.
67-68)
- Might not constitute a historical event of discovery, but is historically
constituted as a group of rules which operate within history, which change
themselves (pp. 69)
- Preconceptual field allows emergence of discursive regularity and constraints
which produce heterogeneity of concepts and their proliferation (pp. 70)
- formation of concepts should not be related to: horizon of ideality, progress
of ideas (pp. 70)
The Formation of Strategies (pp. 71-78)
- To find how "strategies (themes, theories) are distributed in history one
must: (pp. 71)
- 1) determine the points of diffraction of discourse which are: "points of
incompatibility" = when two statements, enunciations, concepts exist in the
same discourse but can't be deployed together; "points of equivalence" = when
two statements, concepts, etc. are formed in the same exact ways and take place
in the same location as alternatives to each other but might appear
chronologically disparate (no-sum situation); "link points of systemization" =
which link disparate elements into a coherent series, a discursive "subgroup"
whether or not they are compatible or not (pp. 73)
- 2) study the economy of the discursive constellation to account for why this
discourse and not another: the relation of this discourse to others that are
contemporary with it; relations of analogy, opposition, complementarity;
relations of mutual delimitation; what happens to a discourse when the
constellation it is in changes (pp. 74-75)
- 3) The authority which theoretical choices are dependent upon characterised
by: the function of discourse within a field of nondiscursive practices; the
rules and processes of appropriation of discourse (who is allowed to use it and
how); possible positions of desire in relation to discourse (pp. 76)
- Discursive formation can be individualized if all strategies derive from the
same set of relations (pp. 76)
- Strategies are not anterior to discourse nor superposed upon discourse but
are components of discourse (pp. 77-78)
- One must not relate theoretical choices to: a fundamental project, secondary
play of opinions (pp. 78)
Remarks and Consequences (pp. 81-85)
- Three main things to note:
- 1) all the above elements discussed are not independent of one another, but
exist in a kind of vertical relation which authorize each other (pp. 81-82)
- 2) Systems of formation are mobile, mutable, historical, and reside internal
to discourse itself (pp. 82-83)
- Systems of formation are modified by their relations to each other and
non-discursive fields; they in turn modify each other and the non-discursive
field (pp. 83)
- 3) the "systems of formation" are not the terminal origin of discourse (pp.
84)
- Behind the veneer of discourse is a "mass of largely silent devenir: a
presystematic that is not of the order of the system..." (pp. 84)
THE STATEMENT AND THE ARCHIVE Defining the Statement (pp. 91-98)
- Objects, concepts, and strategies dealt with above all refer to groups of
statements (pp. 90)
- Discussion which refines what statements are, moving from linguistic,
psychoanalytic, logical received unities (pp. 91-96)
- Arrives at this definition of "statement":
- It is neither entirely linguistic nor exclusively material: one does not need
to have consistent grammar, nor is it enough to just have a profusion of
signs in space (pp. 97)
- The statement is "a function of existence that properly belongs to signs and
on the basis of which one may then decide... whether or not they `make
sense'", how they are to be arranged in relation to each other and what kind of
act happens when they are formulated (pp. 97)
- It is not a structural unity, but a function that cuts across a "domain of
structures and possible unities" and reveals them through giving them content
(pp. 98)
- In the next section: that which enables syntagma, rules of construction,
forms of succession and permutation to exist in the first place and what
enables those rules to become manifest (pp. 99)
The Enunciative Function
- Four characteristics of the "enunciative function"
- A) A series of signs becomes a statement if it is liked to a defined "space
of correlations" (pp. 101)
- So, a statement can be repeated exactly, but will not be the same statement
(pp. 101) and all statements are significant (pp. 102)
- So, statements are linked to a "referential" which consists of "laws of
possibility, rules of existence" for objects and relations set up in it (pp.
103)
- This is the enunciative level (pp. 103)
- B) A statement has a subject position from which it must be enunciated in
order to exist in its particular way (or, what position someone must occupy
in order to be able to make an enunciation of a statement) (pp. 104, 107)
- Not identical with the specific author of the formulation, it can be assigned
(pp. 107)
- The subject position may be filled by various individuals (pp. 107)
- C) It cannot operate without an associated domain (pp. 108) which:
- Is characterised as a network (pp. 110)
- Made up of the series of other formulations which:
- the statement appears as an element within (pp. 110)
- the statement refers to implicitly or explicitly (repeating, modifying,
adapting, opposing) (pp. 110-111)
- are made possible by the statement and which may follow it (pp. 111)
- posses a status shared with the statement (pp. 111)
- Each statement is unique and individual within an enunciative field, but
there is no completely independent statement (pp. 111)
- D) A statement must have a material existence; it must have a medium even if
that medium isn't immediately visible (pp. 112), the statement has repeatable
materiality (pp. 114)
- Materiality ensures the repeatability of a statement by stabilizing its
identity and provides a threshold at which a repetition can no longer be said
to be the same statement (pp. 116-117)
- Provides a "field of stabilization" and a "principle of variation" both of
which are modifiable (pp. 117)
- Materiality characterizes the enunciative function as an object that is
produced, modified, exchanged, combined, destroyed by people; this is
important (pp. 118)
The Description of Statements (pp. 119- 132)
- Recapitulation of the stuff above, stressing the functional quality of
enunciation, how it fixes limits, provides locations, sets up paths of
movement, and coordinates (pp. 119)
- In order to analyse discursive formations, we must describe statements:
- The final form of some definitions
- "verbal performance/linguistic performance" = any group of signs produced on
the basis of a specific language (pp. 120)
- "formulation" = the specific, spatio-temporally located act that reveals a
linguistic performance on any material; a formulation must be related to an
author (pp. 120)
- "sentence/proposition" = the units that grammar or logic may recognize in a
linguistic performance (pp. 120)
- "statement" = the modality of existence of a linguistic performance which
allows it to come into relation with a domain of objects, prescribe a subject
position, be situated among other linguistic performances, and have repeatable
materiality (pp. 120)
- "discourse" = a group of sequences of signs in so far as they are statements
(pp. 121)
- Description of statements as limited in scope and operates on a specific
level; it is abstract (pp. 121)
- The description of the statement is not about isolating a stratum, but of
defining the conditions in which a series of signs is given existence, the
possible positions within a field of coexistence (pp. 122)
- The statement is not immediately visible, nor is it hidden behind linguistic
performances (pp. 122)
- The analysis of statements is historical analysis, but not an interpretive
one; it is about the conditions which ensured specific signs came into
existence at specific times (pp. 123)
- The description of the statement is neither transcendental nor
anthropological, it does not lay down the limits of linguistic or logical
analysis but cuts through them (pp. 127)
- The enunciative level is at the limit of language, it is its periphery, its
surface rather that its interior [see Poincare's theorem] (pp. 126)
- Approaches what description of the statement is trying to do: to show how a
domain can be organized, how statements can be grouped and to draw into
question the received historical unities (pp. 128)
- Some propositions on the analysis of discursive formations
- 1) one can move from the discursive formation to the specificity of
statements OR one can move from statements to specify a discursive formation;
these movements are both possible and interchangeable (pp. 130)
- 2) statement : discursive formation :: sentence: text (pp. 130)
- 3) "discourse" = a group of statements belonging to the same discursive
formation; it is extremely limited only to those statements which share a
definable set of conditions of existence, those conditions of existence =
"discursive formation" (pp. 131)
- 4) "discursive practice" = a body of anonymous historical rules determined
for a given time and space (temporal period, economic condition, geographical
location, linguistic grouping)in which an enunciative function takes place (pp.
131)
- We can, through this description, find out how these notions take place
within other descriptive methods, how they reformulate the history of ideas
(pp. 132)
Rarity, Exteriority, Accumulation (pp. 133-141)
- "enunciative analysis" takes into account rarity in discourse (pp. 133);
interested in the fact that these signifying groups were enunciated and not
others and how that is the case (pp. 134)
- This is based on the fact that most things are not said, that most
possibilities are not enacted (pp. 134)
- The discursive formation is principle of division and principle of "vacuity",
ensuring that only specific things are said to the exclusion of others (pp.
134)
- There is no subtext, statements aren't hidden to be found later, all
interpretability is preconceived in the discursive formation (pp. 135)
- Statements, in their rarity, have value
- this value is appropriated through various techniques (pp. 135)
- Analysis of discursive formations is reflexive upon "rarity" in order to find
its underlying rules within the discursive formation (pp. 135)
- Value isn't necessarily tied to "truth" or some extra secret content but is
rather their "capacity for circulation and exchange, their possibility if
transformation... in the administration of scarce resources" (pp. 136)
- By being an "asset" and by having value, statements become closely tied to
power: they are fought over, are objects of struggle (pp. 136)
- Presupposes that statements are empirically real and not a representation of
some other process (pp. 137)
- Presupposes that the enunciative domain is a real, anonymous field of
discursive operation (pp. 137)
- Presupposes that discourse can operate in non-human temporalities; statements
can operate without people and without things (pp. 138)
- Presupposes that statements must be considered in their "remenance", that is,
in the way they are materially preserved in institutions, storage spaces,
statutes, etc. (pp. 139)
- This opens up to the means by which statements can be accessed, reactivated,
made-inaccessible, tied to the practices they form through their storage,
etc. (pp. 139-140)
- Presupposes that statements must be treated additively (pp. 140)
- Statements can modify, build-on, emerge from, nullify, previous statements in
their own way and according to rules (pp. 140)
- Presupposes one must take reccurence into account: statements define their
own relation to previous statements, their own possible future statements;
they contain their own historicity as naturalized truth (pp. 140)
- F acquiesces that his method is a form of "positivity" (pp. 141)
The Historical a priori and the Archive (pp. 142-148)
- Positivity takes the role of historical a priori: the prior conditions of
reality of statements (pp. 143)
- "an a priori of history that is given, since it is that of things actually
said." (pp. 143)
- This a priori has its own form of pastness and historicity that is related to
other types of history, but which is its own (pp. 144)
- These rules do not apply to discourse from an unmoving outside, but are
directly caught up in their own temporal/historical processes (pp. 144)
- Historical a priori is related but not the same as formal a prioris; they are
not on the same level, but they are related (pp. 144)
- SO we are now dealing with archive = a complex volume in which discursive
regions are deployed and differentiated according to specific rules and
practices; within this volume specific systems establish statements as events
and/or things (pp. 145)
- NOT identical with literal archiving practices and institutions (pp. 145)
- The archive is the law of what can be said at all (system of enunciability),
the system that controls the appearance of statements as unique events
(system of functioning), the means by which elements do not accumulate
indefinitely [THIS LAST IS IMPORTANT] (pp. 145-146); "general system of the
formation and transformation of statements" (pp. 146)
- Limits of archival description: we cannot describe it exhaustively & we
cannot describe our own archive as it is in the present moment (since we are
in it) (pp. 146) We can describe our present from one step away, as it becomes
the past (pp. 147)
- Archival description and analysis is thus called "archaeology" = "the general
theme of description that questions the already-said at the level of its
existence..."; the description of the enunciative function and the discursive
formation (pp. 148)
ARCHAEOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION Archaeology and the History of Ideas (pp. 151-156)
- Section which discusses how Archaeology is different from the History of
Ideas and how it abandons it (pp. 151-154) Four main points on what
Archaeology is here:
- 1) It is concerned with discourse as a monument, as practices which obey
rules (pp. 155)
- 2) It defines discourses specifically, not in continuity with their
antecedents (pp. 155)
- 3) It is not ordered by oeuvres or their emergence (pp. 156)
- 4) It does not seek to restore some psychological nucleus of the past (pp.
156)
The Original and the Regular (pp. 157-165)
- History of Ideas is concerned with "originality" and judging works on their
deviation from their current condition, on their "merit" or "status" (pp.
157-160)
- Archaeology is not concerned with the binary old-new, but is rather concerned
with establishing the "regularity" of statements (pp. 160) = the threshold at
which the enunciative function operates (pp. 161)
- This study of regularities opens in two directions:
- 1) a study of how enunciative regularities (points of enunciative
homogeneity) change and morph into each other, and how these changes relate
to other sectors of the discursive formation (pp. 162-163)
- 2) The study of internal hierarchies within enunciative regularities (pp.
163), how other strategies, concepts, objects may be formed by more specific
statements derived from more general statements which are derived from so
called "governing statements" (pp. 164)
- Not a historically chronological process of "moving up the tree," but
derivations can be historically distributed by its own internal rule (pp.
164-165)
- Stresses that Archaeology does not hope to achieve a "totalitarian
periodization" (pp. 165)
Contradictions (pp. 166-173)
- History of Ideas thinks of the discourse it analyses as coherent and thus is
interested in dissipating contradiction (pp. 166-168)
- Archaeology treats contradiction as objects to be described in themselves
without attempting to overcome or dissipate them; neither does it attempt to
find the point where they can be radicalized or turned into causes [Archaeology
is not a revolutionary method on its own] (pp. 169); Archaeology describes
"spaces of dissention" (pp. 170)
- Types of contradiction in Archaeology:
- Extrinsic contradiction = opposition between distinct discursive formations
(pp. 171)
- Intrinsic contradiction = oppositions deployed within discursive formations
(Archaeology is more interested in these) (pp. 171)
- Inadequation of objects = two + statements deal with different aspects of a
single object (pp. 171)
- Divergence of enunciative modalities = when two + modalities operate by
different means, but are held together at certain points by a shared rule
(pp. 172)
- Incompatibility of concepts = when two + concepts cannot be used together
since one excludes elements of the other (pp. 172)
- Exclusion of theoretical options = when a strategy specifically excludes the
existence of certain formations when it is brought into play (pp. 172)
- These contradictions can be obstacles, can be principles of growth leading to
additional development or a reorganization of the discursive field (pp. 172)
- Discourse is therefore not a smooth volume, but one that is constantly
changing, full of differentiation and opposition (pp. 173)
The Comparative Facts (pp. 174-182)
- Archaeological analysis describes and individualizes discursive formations;
therefore, it must deal with them in the plural to see their points of
interface, relations, gaps, borders, etc. (pp. 174)
- Archaeological comparison is limited and regional, it deals with particular
configurations rather than general forms and any conclusions are valid only
for the domain specified (pp. 175)
- These relations of many discursive formations are "interdiscursive
configurations" ("interpositivities") (pp. 175)
- The limitation is on purpose, what is excluded is on purpose
- Proposed relationships (networks) must be derived, the "test of analysis"
shows if they exist of not (pp. 177)
- Archaeology's goal is to see many positivities together and watch how they
relate, it has a "diversifying effect" (pp. 177)
- Since Archaeology seeks to uncover the "play of analogies and differences" on
the level of rules of formation, there are 5 tasks: (pp. 178) None of these
are communicative ("influence") but correlative (pp. 179)
- 1) to show different archaeological isomorphisms = how different discursive
elements maybe be formed on the basis of similar rules (pp. 178)
- 2) to define the archaeological model of each formation = to what extent the
rules of each formation are arranged & act in a similar way (pp. 178)
- 3) to show which concepts in each formation share archaeological isotopia =
to what extent entirely different concepts occupy similar positions within
their respective formations (pp. 178)
- 4) to indicate archaeological shifts = to show how a single notion may
appear in two different formations, but in different places (pp. 178)
- 5) to establish archaeological correlations = how relations of
subordination and/or complementarity may be established between formations
(pp. 179)
- Archaeology reveals relations between discursive and non-discursive domains
(these are institutions, political events, economic practices/processes) =
rapprochements (pp. 179-180)
- The goal of this is to describe the linkages, not motivate them (pp. 180);
though it sets up the potential of a second order analysis after the
relations and rules of formation are identified and described (pp. 181)
- Archaeological description lives in the world of general history; seeking at
the level of discourse, various formations with their own historicity,
tracing their relationships, trying to get at everything at once without
totalizing to a single centre (pp. 182)
Change and Transformations (pp. 183-195)
- A discussion of the archaeological description of change (pp. 183)
- Archaeology temporarily suspends temporal succession (qua calendrical
chronology) in its analysis (pp. 184)
- To show that the succession of events can itself become an object of
discourse; a discursive formation can provide its own rules for understanding
succession (pp. 184-185)
- Does not try to a void change in/of discourse, or the possibility of
correlation btwn discourses and external events, but wants to get at what
conditions are necessary for there to be a correlation (pp. 185)
- Rules of formation assigned by archaeology to a positivity are not on a flat
plane, some derive from each other, some are more general (pp. 185)
- we have a branching tree of relationships, some of which contain temporal
directionality, "temporal vectors of derivation" (pp. 186)
- Two models of succession are left behind by archaeology: linear model of
speech and "stream of consciousness" (pp. 187)
- Archaeology is about undoing the historian's work of making continuity,
trying to "make it more difficult to pass one thing to another..." (pp. 187);
it is about describing differences, to differentiate differences (pp. 188-189)
This consists of:
- 1) Different levels of events: (pp. 189)
- Level of statements
- Level of emergence of objects, enunciations, concepts, strategies
- Level of derivation of new rules of formation
- Level in which the substitution of discursive formations takes place
- 2) To analyse events of differentiation, one must not apply "change" as a
vague received concept, but must analyse specific transformations that
changes consist of (pp. 190)
- How different elements of a system of formation were transformed
- How the characteristic relations of a system of formation were transformed
- How relations between specific rules of formations were transformed
- How relations between positivities were transformed
- 3) To say one discursive formation is replaced by another doesn't mean that
everything changes, we can find within this phenomenon, elements that remain:
(pp. 191); continuity and dispersion operate in accordance with the same rules
(pp. 193)
- Elements that are constituted and modified in one formation, that are
stabilized in another (pp. 191)
- Elements that appear as a later derivation in one formation, but appear as
foundational in another (pp, 192)
- Elements that reappear after a period of oblivion or invalidation (pp. 192)
- 4) Transformation of positivities is not homogeneous everywhere, there a
rules for distributing differentiation and transformations are not
necessarily continuous (pp. 193)
Science and Knowledge (pp. 196-215)
- Major section on the relation between archaeology and the analysis of the
sciences (pp. 196)
- A) Positivities, Disciplines, Sciences (pp. 196-200)
- Archaeology does not describe disciplines, sciences, pseudo-sciences,
sciences in formation, etc.; one cannot describe a direct mapping between
disciplines and discursive formations (pp. 197, 199-200)
- B) Savoir (pp. 200-203)
- Clarifies what positivities are in relation to knowledge (savoir); that
positivities are the preconditions of what emerges as knowledge, illusion,
truth, error, etc. (pp. 200)
- Positivities are not a given or an element of lived experience, nor knowledge
in an archaic stage (pp. 200)
- Defines knowledge (savoir) as: "that of which one can speak in a discursive
practice, and which is specified by that fact: the domain constituted by the
different objects that will or will not acquire scientific status..." (pp. 201)
- Also the space in which the subject takes a position (pp. 201)
- Also the field of coordination in which concepts appear, transform, and are
applied (pp. 201)
- Also the possibilities of use and appropriation by discourse (pp. 201)
- Bodies of knowledge are not necessarily sciences and knowledge needs a
particular discursive practice to exist (pp. 201)
- Axis of archaeological exploration is discursive practice/savoir/science axis
(pp. 202)
- Scientific domains are different from archaeological territories (pp. 202)
- SDs obey certain laws that construct them as sciences (pp. 202)
- Ats may extend beyond sciences in philosophical, literary, etc. texts (pp.
202)
- C) Savoir and Ideology (pp. 203- 205)
- Sciences & science in general has a specific relation with knowledge, it does
not take on everything formed by the discursive practice it appears within;
this is where the relations of ideology are established (pp. 203-204) some
propositions: (pp. 205)
- 1) Ideology is not exclusive to scientificity
- 2) Theoretical contradictions, gaps, and defects may indicate ideological
functioning of a science and allow us to determine where the function takes
effect
- 3) Discourse does not necessarily undo its ideological relations by
correcting itself
- 4) To tackle the ideological functioning of science, we must go to the system
of formation, to the discourse that provides the possibility of its existence
- D) Different Thresholds and Their Chronology (pp. 205-208)
- Different thresholds at which a discursive practice achieves individuation
and autonomy: (pp. 205)
- Threshold of positivity = the moment when a single system of formation is put
into operation (pp. 206)
- Threshold of epistemologization = when a group of statements within a
discursive formation claim to validate and exert a dominant function over
knowledge (pp. 206)
- Threshold of scientificity = when an epistemological figure produced above
obeys a number of formal criteria of proposition-making (pp. 206)
- Threshold of formalization = when a scientific discourse is able to define
its axioms, terms, and operations, taking itself as its starting point (pp.
206)
- E) The Different Types of History of the Sciences (pp. 208-212)
- Different types of histories of the sciences at each level of constitution
outlined above and which examine how each threshold was crossed and in what
manner the crossing was constituted (pp. 209-210); these histories constitute
an analysis of "the episteme" (pp. 211)
- History of formalization of sciences (ie. history of math)
- Epistemological history of the sciences, how an epistemological form gets
"purified" into a science (pp. 209-210)
- Archaeological history which looks at the point of cleavage between
discursive formations and how they give rise to a corpus of knowledge (pp.
210)
- "episteme" = the total set of relations that unite a given period, the
discursive practices that give rise to kinds of knowledge and how these
processes occur; the totality of relations that can be discovered for a given
period (pp. 211)
- It is an inexhaustible field, constantly moving, and allows us to grasp the
constraints and limitations imposed on discourse
- F) The Other Archaeologies (pp. 212-215)
- Some possible other directions of development for archaeology: (pp. 212)
- 1) Analysis in the direction of the ethical: how discursive formations
produces specific ethical systems and systems of judgement (pp. 212-213)
- 2) Analysis in the direction of artistic aesthetics, how art is shot through
with savoir (pp. 213-214)
- 3) Analysis in the direction of politics, how revolutionary knowledge and
activity is constituted in a specific period, how it formats its strategies
(pp. 214-215)
CONCLUSION Conclusion (pp. 219-232)
- A speculative argument set up between Foucault and a Structuralist detractor
which sums everything up and explains that archaeological method is not
structuralism
