Archive
For Foucault, an archive is not a collection of documents, but a “general system of the formation and transformation of statements,” or in other words, the archive is Foucault’s term for the conditions and rules of discourse itself
Cogito
A thinking subject
Correlative Space
Foucault's term for the way statements integrate (or correlate) different entities (people, places, things) into a single comprehensible whole, or statement. Such integration "happens" in what Foucault calls the statement's "correlative space"
Delimitation
The boundaries or limits of a discourse
Discourse
Foucault’s term for when a number of statements belong to the same discursive formation
Discursive Formation
A certain way of thinking about and doing things, part of a specific discourse
Document
A part of discourse that represents a historical event
Empiricism
The theory that knowledge comes from what is presented to the senses. Foucault calls his archaeology empirical because it begins with what is right in front of you: written statements
Epistemology
The branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of knowledge
General History
In contrast to total history, general history does not unify events under a single principle, but explores all the different relations between very different and simultaneously unfolding timelines and domains
Inadequation
Non-compatible; Foucault uses the term to discuss contradictory approaches to studying the same object
Non-Discursive Domain
Foucault’s term for institutions and political events that might influence discourse but are not within the discourse itself
Oeuvre
The collected works of an author
Original
Foucault’s preferred term for the “new” in discourse, which he thinks historians of ideas overemphasize
Referent
What a word denotes or represents, like the real-world tree referred to by the word “tree”
Regular
Foucault’s preferred term for the “old” in discourse, or the repeated and relatively stable statement over time
Sovereignty of the Subject
Foucault’s phrase for actions or statements that are the product of a conscious individual in control of his or her own will
Statement
In Foucault’s technical definition, a statement is an “enunciative function” that manifests different rules for ordering different concepts
Total History
A history that groups everything under a single theme or logic, like the march of a civilization or of science
Transcendental
Something that goes beyond ordinary limits, especially those of the human world; a transcendental history goes beyond all specific people, events, things, and discourses, as if history is controlled by something like the hand of God instead
