C Bradley Dilger

University of Florida

The discontinuities of Foucault:

Reading The Archaeology of Knowledge1

Michel Foucault’s L’Archéology du savior, translated into English as The

Archaeology of Knowledge, (AK) is largely responsible for his unwanted and

problematic title of “philosopher of discontinuity.” This enigmatic, self-reflexive

methodological reflection, which Foucault presents as both an account of “tools

that [previous] studies have used or forged for themselves in the course of their

work” and a tentative, experimental “method of analysis purged of all

anthropologism” (16), provides most of the source material for those who wish to

label Foucault in this manner. The circumstances of publication (written during

the May 1968 student uprising, and published shortly thereafter), the book’s oft-

discussed relationship to Foucault’s other works, and the book’s admittedly

convoluted style all seem to validate the identification of Foucault with “theories

of discontinuity.”

However, as this essay shall argue, the title is undeserved. While both the

form and content of AK seem to point toward discontinuity more than any other

concept, Foucault’s position is never one of advocacy or polemic. Rather, he

merely seeks to restore discontinuity from the historical rubbish bin in which it

has been repeatedly and resoundingly tossed by historians obsessed with finding

continuity to the position of methodological utility which he believes it should

rightly occupy. To be sure, the argument undertaken here shall not cover

1
Unless otherwise noted, all page references are to this text, referred to here as AK. Copyright © 1999
C Bradley Dilger, [email protected]. Permission to reproduce in whole or in part is granted if
prior notice is given to the author.
 Dilger 2

untrodden ground. But the large amount of Foucault scholarship which stands

against the argument of this essay and AK itself justify its production.

The philosopher of discontinuity?

Foucault wishes to offer a methodology in which discontinuity is liberated

from the inevitable erasure it faces in traditional historical scholarship. As he

states with seeming clarity in the introduction, “It is as if it was particularly

difficult, in the history in which men retrace their own ideas and their own

knowledge, to formulate a general theory of discontinuity … we felt a particular

repugnance to conceiving of difference, to describing separations and dispersions,

to dissociating the reassuring form of the identical” (12). Both history and the

history of ideas prefer the ready-made continuities of tradition, influence,

development, and evolution, among others, to the discontinuities, ruptures,

thresholds, limits, series and transformations. They attempt to “preserve, against

all decenterings, the sovereignty of the subject, and the twin figures of

anthropology and humanism” (12). Consequently, the discourses of history and

philosophy are distorted by this teleological reliance on continuities:

One is therefore led to anthropologize Marx, to make him a historian

of totalities, and to rediscover in him the message of humanism; one
is led therefore to interpret Nietzsche in the terms of transcendental
philosophy, and to reduce his genealogy to the level of a search for
origins; lastly, one is led to leave to one side, as if it had never arisen,
that whole field of methodological problems that the new history is
now presenting. (12)

This distortion is what AK seeks to expose and act against. Foucault’s goal is not

the violent and permanent removal of all continuities, nor the erasure of all

humanism and anthropology, nor the denial of the use of these concepts and
 Dilger 3

their ready-mades in certain contexts (this last point will be examined in detail in

a few moments). Rather, he seeks a more balanced form of analysis in which

continuities are controlled and prevented from dominating and distorting

history. Continuities and ready-mades “must not be rejected definitively of

course, but the tranquillity with which they are accepted must be disturbed” (25).

Likewise, the comfortable subjectivity and blasé methodology of the

historians who write in this manner must be challenged. Questioning the

methodologies of hundreds of historians—”advancing beyond familiar territory,

far from the certainties to which one is accustomed” (39)—and proposing a

radically different system of historical subjectivity—grounded in discourse, and

separate and distinct from both history and the history of ideas (136)—is not likely

to be very popular. Foucault notes and accepts these difficulties and his own

uncertainty about the project at hand (most notably in the introduction, 135-138,

and in the conclusion, but at many other times in the text).

The consistent presence of discontinuity in AK is as carefully regulated and

mediated as its self-reflexive methodological signposting. However, that has not

prevented some Foucault scholars from disconnecting Foucault’s repeated

moderations of continuity and discontinuity in both direct attacks and friendly

analysis. Before analyzing certain relations of continuity, discontinuity, and the

history of ideas, as outlined in AK, a few selections of Foucault scholarship will

be examined.

The discontinuities of scholarship

While some critics, notably Eve Tabor Bannet, represent Foucault’s reliance

on discontinuity in AK rather accurately, many consider evangelism for

discontinuity and difference the sole goal of that text and perhaps Foucault’s
 Dilger 4

work in general. In a quite polemical essay which argues for deconstruction

against archaeology, Foucault’s own term for the method of analysis he proposes

in AK, E. M. Henning names discontinuity as the “second theme” of archaeology

(interestingly enough, he considers rule-making the first), and argues that AK

establishes difference and discontinuity as the norm of discourse (249). Henning

claims that “Foucault has gone to the extreme of simply reversing a past

imbalance” and eschews categorization for its “hostility to all forms of difference

and discontinuity” (258).

If Henning’s argument, which could be called the left critique of Foucault,

is a misreading, it is certainly egregious—there are simply too many

methodological reflections in AK for any careful reader to misunderstand this

part of Foucault’s argument. More likely, Henning’s critique is closer to that of

the antagonist Foucault constructs in the conclusion of AK (199-211), or the

“sagacious commentators” he mentions earlier in the text (48). Henning’s critique

is anticipated by Foucault, who addresses the question of inversion directly.

It is you who devalue the continuous by the use that you make of
it…. you are merely neutralizing it, driving it out to the outer limit of
time, towards an original passivity. Archaeology proposes to invert
this arrangement, or rather (for our aim is not to accord to the
discontinuous the role formerly accorded to the continuous) to play
one off against the other… (174).

Indeed, nothing about the inversion Foucault proposes for continuity and

discontinuity seems as simple as Henning would have us believe.

Mark Poster is more generous than Henning, but still wavers on the subject,

acknowledging Foucault’s repeated moderations of discontinuity in AK. Unlike

Henning, Poster does not choose to dismiss Foucault’s desire to simultaneously

enable discontinuity and privilege discontinuity. Instead, he recognizes the

 Dilger 5

attempt, but seems ultimately unable to decide if Foucault is successful in this

regard (Poster 147, 151-2).

In his book Michel Foucault’s Force of Flight : Toward an Ethics for

Thought, a study of Foucault which has a tendency to overstate the philosopher’s

project, James Bernauer expresses neither ambiguity toward nor disliking for AK.

His reading, which is a charitable version of Henning’s erasure of continuity,

elevates discontinuity to the highest level possible. Bernauer considers

discontinuity (here appearing as “dissonance,” based on Foucault’s fondness for

contemporary French classical music, and “difference”) as the only goal and the

ontological condition of archaeology:

In place of the smooth concord that is imposed on a multiplicity of

separate occurrences by the desire for sameness, [Foucault] wishes to
place before the mind a constantly sounding dissonance. His earlier
work has cleared the way for this dissonant thinking, which will
become the inspiration of the “philosophy of event” emerging in this
period as the horizon for archaeology. (Bernauer 90-91)

According to Bernauer, archaeological thinking aims to make it possible to think

difference; it wishes to establish that “we are difference, that our reason is the

difference of discourses, out history the difference of times, our selves the

difference of masks.” (Bernauer 91). Unfortunately, in his zeal to put Foucault’s

methodological texts into practice, Bernauer overstates the case. Again, there is

direct address of this subject in Foucault. Bernauer is correct: Foucault is trying to

enable us to think difference, but as previously argued, that difference is always

moderated, and never included to the exclusion of all other things.

In a slightly different and actually more common vein, Richard Rorty calls

AK Foucault’s “stuffiest, most obscure, and worst book,” and advises that

“Power/Knowledge (P/K) is a much better attempt at methodology which cancels

 Dilger 6

and replaces AK” (Rorty 130). This critique encapsulates both versions of a second

undesirable possibility for reading AK as discontinuity. The first reading

foregrounds the difficult, convoluted form of AK, which is unlike any of his other

long studies, and seeks to separate it from Foucault’s other work for this reason;

the second reading sees the text as a historical break or disjuncture in Foucault’s

oeuvre. Both readings construct AK as discontinuity, and both are unsatisfactory.

Rorty’s accusations of stuffiness and obscurity are very hard to argue with.

AK is an admittedly difficult text which follows a distinctly non-linear path, and

relies upon the process established by that path for a considerable portion of its

argument. The book encapsulates Foucault’s “notology”—his long lists of what he

is not arguing, or what consequences certain arguments do not have—at its

height. However, despite the accuracy of his claims, and Rorty’s considerable

prestige, one wonders about the wisdom of striking AK from Foucault’s oeuvre—

like the exclusionary moves of St. Jerome which Foucault dissects in “What is an

author?” (127-9), Rorty’s suggestion seems an arbitrary imposition of external

values onto Foucault’s work.

Regarding the second case Rorty’s quote highlights, it is extremely ironic to

employ the concept of oeuvre in critique of AK, considering the oeuvre’s place as
one of the infamous unities which restrain the effectiveness of history. “The

oeuvre,” writes Foucault, “can be regarded neither as an immediate unity, nor as a

homogeneous unity” (24).

AK further resists the separation into the traditional units of “book” and

oeuvre by looking backward and forward a great deal. Numerous indirect and

direct allusions to Foucault’s past and future work point toward Foucault’s desire

to show the analytical unsuitability of both concepts. Footnotes on page 47 and 54

are the best examples of this tendency, noting AK’s direct conflict with the earlier
 Dilger 7

works Madness and Civilization and Naissance de la Clinique respectively. Other

examples appear extensively in the introduction and on 64-65.

But still AK is considered a break. The otherwise insightful Eve Tabor

Bannet does a fairly good job of avoiding this trap. Though she protests the

imposition of a “break or discontinuity” between AK and Discipline and Punish,

and claims, “Foucault never revamped his ‘instruments of analysis.’ He refined

and elaborated them,” she also opines, “After 1968, for reasons which will be

explored below, discontinuity, differentiation and dispersion also take on a more

concrete political and strategic significance” (97, 106).

This characterization mistakenly isolates AK from the rest of Foucault’s

work. The most common form of this isolation is hinge-like, as evidenced by the

popular online index for humanities research, the Voice of the Shuttle (VoS). VoS

and many of the Foucault resources linked from its “contemporary theory”

section divide Foucault’s work into an “archaeological” period concluding with

AK, and a geneaological period beginning with DP. While this division works on

some levels, considering AK as a discontinuity or “break” in Foucault’s oeuvre

could give an undesirable theoretical weight to erasure of “genealogical”

characteristics present in “archaeological” work, and vice versa.

As Bannet argues, Foucault admitted that his work included corrections,

self-criticisms, and a good deal more focus on power after 1968. However, these

changes should not be given the negative status of a break which Foucault

repeatedly shows in AK. While most scholarship which has followed Bannet

relates Foucault’s position on discontinuity generally well, the danger of willful

or accidental misreading AK still exists. Direct analysis of the position of

discontinuity AK is still necessary. This essay shall now examine the relationship

between discontinuity, continuity, and the history of ideas as outlined in AK.

 Dilger 8

Continuity, history, and the history of ideas

But even if we concede that AK is more concerned with upsetting

continuity than imposing a discontinuous methodology, several questions are

still left unanswered. Is the target of the book a fresh methodological ground for

the history of ideas? Both history and the history of ideas come under vicious

attack in the book’s introduction, in its opening chapters, and again in its last

thirty pages. Are these institutions and their accompanying methodological

frameworks the book’s primary target?

In fact, Foucault claims that his primary target is not, as it indeed seems to

be, the cowardly, anthropology-producing historians who grasp their comfortable

teleologies and curl into a fetal position before his onslaught (for even less

charitable descriptions, see AK 14). Instead, Foucault states that he has turned

inward, and with AK is seeking to clear up discontinuities in his own methods:

[R]ather than trying to reduce others to silence, by claiming that

what they say is worthless, I have tried to define this blank space from
which I speak, and which is slowly taking shape in a discourse I still
feel to be so precarious and unsure. (17)

This and similar retrospective movements are frequent in AK. More than any
other one thing, AK is an attempt to rectify methodological questions raised (if

not in public, at least in Foucault’s mind, to himself) by Foucault’s earlier work.

However, this very prominent placement of self-as-primary-target does not

indicate that Foucault operates without exterior targets. In addition to the

uncertainties of method which have provoked Foucault to write, he wavers about

his relationship to the disciplines which for some time appear as targets: history

and the history of ideas. The division between these disciplines, and the division

between them—if indeed one exists—is not well-defined.

 Dilger 9

The introduction to AK seems to leave no doubt that historians are to

blame for the removal of continuities from history. Seemingly separate from these

historians’ propensity toward continuity is a shift toward discontinuity in the

history of ideas, whose practitioners have managed to “evade very largely the work

and methods of the historian” (4). For a brief moment, these “historical

disciplines” are united by their “questioning of the document” (6). However,

discussion of the tendency toward discontinuity in history of ideas is quietly

dropped as the continuities of “history proper” (7) emerge as the more disturbing

of the two movements.

The lack of precision in the terminology presents some challenges to the

reader here. Should the history of ideas be considered separately from “history

proper?” At times there is clear delineation between these two fields; but in many

cases, “history” seems to cover both forms of historical analysis. Does the tendency

toward discontinuity evidenced by Bachelard, Canguilhem, et. al. carry similar

consequences as the tendency toward continuity of history proper? Consequences

for continuities in history are well-discussed; for the history of ideas, they are

almost totally absent.

The first clue is Foucault’s desire to separate himself from “these various
methods and forms of history,” and establish a “blank space” from which to rectify

his methodological problems (17). In the context of this chapter, that “blank

space” would seem to exclude all forms of history mentioned in it.

The second is more certain: the use of discontinuities creates theoretical

problems for “all historical analysis,” not only for history proper (21). The history

of ideas is the methodological focus, the “particular field” Foucault seeks to

examine. Though he delays the examination of this field, Foucault remains

 Dilger 10

concerned with other historical discourses, and a more general sense of the word

“history” seems to follow the more polemical introduction to the text.

The resolution of the delayed examination also dispels—or makes

irrelevant—the ambiguity of the introduction. Foucault wishes to be as

apparently distinct, “cut off” from the history of ideas as he does from history

proper, for their themes and tools are identical. “Genesis, continuity, totalization:

these are the great themes of the history of ideas, and that by which it is attached

to a certain, now traditional, form of historical analysis” (136).

The problems created by the epistemological mutation of history may affect

one historical discipline more than others, but they are the concern of all general

historical thought. This multivalent viewpoint is emphasized one final time in

the closing pages of the text, when Foucault notes the possibility of “other

archaeologies” (194-196). Foucault’s target is not historians (of ideas), but historical

analysis which collapses difference by the erasure of continuities and the enabling

of continuities, whatever its source.

Enabling discontinuity

To reduce the number and power of the continuities coloring history, a

methodology must privilege neither discontinuity nor continuity. The first task

concerns the typical continuities of the historical disciplines: book, oeuvre, text;

likewise tradition, influence, development, evolution, and spirit must all be

regulated and controlled. Under no circumstances is this movement a simple

one. Foucault recognizes two things: first, there is no need to erase all forms of

continuity from the historical disciplines. Second, even if such an erasure were

desirable, it would be impossible.

 Dilger 11

The removal of continuities from the immediate field of possibility is the

first priority. “We must rid ourselves,” Foucault writes, “of a whole mass of

notions, each of which, in its own way, diversifies the theme of continuity” (21).

These unites are “not intrinsic, autochthonous, and universally recognizable

characteristics,” (22) but exterior entities imposed upon analysis by other

unquestioned and cloudy unities: tradition, economic value, etcetera. Clear

analysis of “the dispersion of history” cannot be possible if these unities are

allowed to prefigure the form and content of the analytical work. However,

Foucault soon makes the moderated and controlled pace he intends for this

movement clear:

These pre-existing forms … must not be rejected definitively, of

course … we must define in what conditions and in view of which
analyses certain of them are legitimate; and we must indicate which
of them can never be accepted in any circumstances. (25-26)

Not surprisingly, Foucault refuses to make the very movement he is acting

against. He refuses to appeal to a higher unity (“All unities are bad”) blindly,

without careful analysis; he recognizes the interconnectedness of the discourses

he is investigating, and fashions his method in that light. Somewhat

maddeningly, but understandingly and necessarily, Foucault shifts his project

slightly here:

What we must do, in fact, is to tear [the traditional continuities]

away from their virtual self-evidence, and to free the problems that
they pose … I, in turn will do no more than this: of course, I shall take
as my starting-point whatever unities are already given… I shall make
use of them long enough to ask myself what unities they form … I
shall accept the groupings that history suggests only to subject them
at once to interrogation; to break them up and then to see whether
they can be legitimately reformed; or whether other groupings shall
be made. (26)
 Dilger 12

A temporary space is created between the traditional forms of history Foucault is

writing against and the archaeology of knowledge which is his goal. That space is

the book itself. For The archaeology of knowledge to produce a usable archaeology

of knowledge, Foucault must suspend rejection of the traditional continuities of

history in his own work until analysis of their operation is complete. If

continuities were blindly tossed aside immediately after the identification of

their constrictive action, actually useful unities could be needlessly purged from

historical disciplines. Note also that this noun appears in the plural: since the

unities of discourse are interconnected in ways not yet clearly understood, setting

them aside could diminish the lucidity of the connections between them which

are in fact the target of the immediate analysis (26-27; 31-37).

Consider the unities “book” and oeuvre—without a doubt the most

infamous of Foucault’s targets in AK (23-25). If “book” was removed from our

conceptual field, the effect on the unity oeuvre would be immediate. Would the

archaeologist be able to adequately gauge the operations of oeuvre if its

component unity “book” were not considered? To prevent such impact from

crippling the analysis, unities (and the discontinuities they suppress, for that

matter) must be considered in their interconnected state.

Foucault’s recognition of the complexity and difficulty of this task, and his

failure to act as the prophet of discontinuity, should now be apparent. The shift

away from continuity is not made blindly or abruptly, as scholars like Henning

argue, but with a great degree of care. Maintenance of the traditional continuities

in history is maintained not only so their destruction can be most effectively

completed; rather, as the analysis continues, Foucault makes it clear that uses

outside of his current project certainly exist and could be the object of future

studies:
 Dilger 13

Of course, these questions [of shared ideas] would be legitimate

(some of them, at least). But none of them would be relevant to the
level of archaeology. … Not that I wish to deny their existence, or
deny that they could ever be the object of a description. But rather
that I have tried to step back from them, to shift the level of attack of
the analysis. (160-161)

In circumstances Foucault does not specify, moderated and careful, educated use

of continuities is a legitimate scholarly activity. But such use is clearly not

archaeology, and not a project Foucault is interested in, though he refuses to

dismiss it as illegitimate.

Besides, to shift to much larger questions, is it even possible to consider

history or analysis or language in a field from which all continuities are banned?

Throughout the text, the impossibility of erasing continuities are indicated by

several chapter titles (notably, “The unities of discourse”). Certainly, why would

Foucault even bother to propose archaeological constructions such as the

statement, the archive, and the discursive formation if he rejected all forms of

continuity? AK is not about rejecting continuity; it is about carefully establishing

and rigorously testing a method for its control.

The essential regulation of continuity is reinforced by the second form of

enabling discontinuity, the more direct, empowering gestures made possible by

the methodological particularities of the discursive formation. This second form

of enabling discontinuity is an incredibly generative gesture in and of itself, with

very productive repercussions for the analytical field. “Once these immediate

forms of continuity are suspended,” Foucault observes, “an entire field is set free. A

vast field … the totality of all effective statements” (26-27).

Indeed, the greatest impact of enabling discontinuities is for the statement.

The suspension of traditional continuities enables archaeology to provide, in

 Dilger 14

analysis of statements, “exact specificity of occurrence,” as well as conditions of

existence, fixed limits, and correlations with other statements (28). Without

recognition of discontinuity, this first unity which Foucault proposes for

archaeology is relegated to the field of language. Until the traditional apparatus is

questioned, and its lack of specificity which obfuscates the statement challenged,

there can be no archaeology—just another form of the history of ideas with a new

name and pretty terminology.

Foucault is quick to replace the unities he questions with archaeological

unities—such as the discursive formation, the statement, and the archive—and

carefully constructed these entities to be free of the negative effects carried by the

traditional unities of continuity operant in the field of history. But he makes no

effort to disguise their ontological status as “unities,” or to mask the fact that he is

replacing one unity with another. “One is able to describe other unities,” he

continues, “but this time by means of a group of controlled decisions” (29).

This is the most critical difference: where before random and unexamined

effects reigned, AK proposes control. Where untheorized continuities once were

the limits of discourse, Foucault provides a theory for their description.

That is not to say that AK’s central project is another manifestation of “sad

theory,” a gloomy chart of yet another set of things to consider before we bring

pen to paper.2 Indeed, quite the reverse is true: an experimental sensibility is

simultaneously enabled by discontinuity and necessary for its survival. As he

concludes “The unities of discourse,” Foucault asks, “How can be sure of avoiding

such divisions … unless we adopt sufficiently broad fields and scales that are

chronologically vast enough?” The answer is to be found in the generative,

2 Kudos to Mr Justin Wyble for this wonderful construction.

 Dilger 15

experimentative nature of the unique space between the fields of “the sciences of

man” and archaeology:

Two facts must be constantly borne in mind: that the analysis of

discursive events is in no way limited to such a field; and that the
division of this field itself cannot be regarded either as definitive or as
absolutely valid; it is no more than an initial approximation that
must allow relations to appear that may erase the limits of this initial
outline. (30)

As Rorty opines, on one level, AK is a very stuffy, obscure, terrible book. However,

the experimentation which it continually demands injects a level of promise into

the text certainly lacking from tomes such as Philosophy and the Mirror of

Nature. A little of this sort of stuffiness would do Rorty some good.

In a considerably different sort of generative movement, the enabling of

discontinuity forces some changes in the status of the historian and the History

s/he writes. No longer able to rely on old continuities, the historian must create.

Rather than “providing a basis for what already exists” and “going over with bold

strokes lines that have already been sketched,” the historian shall “advance beyond

familiar territory” and create new forms of thought outside of the standardized

rationalities and teleologies of history (38-39). Repeatedly, Foucault makes it clear

that he is aware of, and willing to accept, the risk of this forced creativity, at times

mocking historians for their timidity and refusal to do anything new. Will

historians will take up his challenge? That question goes unanswered.

Similarly, the “loosening of the embrace, apparently so tight, of words and

things” (49) follows the recognition of the legitimacy of the dispersion of the

discursive formation, and forces return to a state which is neither language

(langue), nor speech, nor some other version of “the history of the referent” (47).

The researcher is compulsed to find new territory which can define both figure
 Dilger 16

and ground without reference to them (and to the pre-existing continuities

which are their limits).

As Foucault works toward discussion and actualization of the shift away

from continuity, he enables and describes a series of archaeological unities,

generating them sometimes by forcing others aside; and sometimes by creating

new positions from which to speak. The engine at the heart of it all,

discontinuity, is most closely bound to the second archaeological unity he

proposes and carefully defines, the “discursive formation.”

The discontinuities of the discursive formation

Though immediately after enabling discontinuities Foucault states that he

will leave the problems of defining “statement,” “event,” and “discourse,” aside

until later, and focus on describing “the relations that may legitimately be

described between the statements that have been left in their provisional, visible

grouping,” (31) it soon becomes clear that in spite of his stated intent to separate

his argument into two sections, in reality, he will be working on both tasks

simultaneously. Foucault admits as much in the methodological about-face

which begins Part III of AK:

I wonder whether I have not changed direction on the way; whether I

have not replaced my first quest with another … instead of gradually
reducing the rather fluctuating meaning of the word ‘discourse’, I
believe that I have in fact added to its meanings: treating it
sometimes as the general domain of all statements, sometimes as an
individualizable group of statements … (80)

Indeed, the most troubling addition to the meaning “discourse” are the

problematic entities called the “discursive formation” and the “rules of

formation” which are its conditions of existence (38). The definition for the
 Dilger 17

discursive formation is first proposed after Foucault attempts to answer the

question of relation between statements by investigating the soundness of four

assumptions commonly made about statements. Famously (or infamously, and

perhaps importantly in a rhetorical sense) all of these assumptions fail—and every

failure points Foucault to the discontinuity called dispersion. These failures set

up the four categories Foucault will investigate while defining the discursive

formation and rules of formation more precisely, over the next four chapters of

the text, and also illustrate the incredible importance of dispersion—more so

than may first seem apparent, in Part II, Chapter One, when dispersion appears to

be the natural status of statements and events before they are made into language

and/or History.

In the same way that statement, event, and discourse are not clearly defined

in the section of AK which enables discontinuities (Part II, Chapter One),

dispersion is not clearly defined there. Nor is it clearly defined after all four of

Foucault’s tried-and-failed hypotheses of relations between statements.

Dispersion is never defined explicitly, but only through comparison with, and a

careful working through, the concepts that bridge all the uncertain unities forged

from discontinuities. The relationship appears circular and comparative:

“discursive formation” and “rules of formation” are needed to define “statement,”

“event,” and “discourse,” which must be defined for a clear understanding of

“dispersion,” which is at the heart of the “discursive formation.” 3 While this may

seem strange, it is consistent with the dual status of continuity and

discontinuity—each enabled and controlled by the other. The discursive

formation is not a simple structure forged from “dispersion,” “dissension,” or a

host of other discontinuities, but a complex structure of interrelations. Hence the

3Perhaps the term “dialectical” could be applied to this relationship. However, since hearing S. Hunt
use it, I’ve always been afraid to.
 Dilger 18

convoluted nature of its introduction in AK, and its multiple definitions—the

statements such as, “A discursive formation is xyz”—which appear throughout

the text. Hence the shifting definition of “dispersion,” the entity which lies at the

heart of the discursive formation, and the necessity of reading across AK to

understand fully the expansive terminology and corresponding concepts which

multiply within it.

Dispersions first appear in the introduction as the portions of history

rejected by historians (12). Soon after “the dispersions of history” and the

“population of dispersed events” are named as the natural, pre-conceptual form

of “reality” (though Foucault never uses this term, even with scare quotes) which

History or the History of Ideas distort in their continuous representation.

As Foucault works up to proposing the discursive formation, the diversity

of dispersion is revealed by the generative nature of discontinuities. A vast field of

discourse has been freed, and “this field is made up of the totality of all effective

statements (whether spoken or written), in their dispersion as events and in the

occurrence that is proper to them.” Note that dispersion appears here, as it does

earlier, without relation to time or space. At this point condition indicates

neither of those things, but rather a general sense of “distance, scattering, and
disappearing” such as reflected in a dictionary definition.

So, naturally, dispersion should be the starting point for the concepts

Foucault will use in his analysis. But “naturally” is not good enough for Foucault,

as the four trials-and-failures of Part II, Chapter 2 prove. The testing of hypotheses

makes clear that Foucault’s sense of dispersion does include the elements of time

and space. The first hypothesis proposes that “statements different in form, and

dispersed in time form a group if they refer to one and the same object” (32, my

italics). The failure of this hypotheses reveals that “to define a group of statements
 Dilger 19

in terms of its individuality would be to define the dispersion of these objects, to

grasp all the interstices that separate them, to measure the distances that reign

between them” (33, my italics). Dispersion isn’t only about time and space, but

neither of those elements are excluded from it.

All four failed hypotheses lead to dispersion. But the failure is productive:

instead of seeing a discontinuity of objects—which are made up of series of gaps,

interplays of differences—Foucault sees a dispersion (unity) of objects, and makes

that dispersion the subject of description and analysis. The same shift is proposed

for enunciations, concepts, and strategies. “Such an analysis … would describe

systems of dispersion. Whenever one can describe, between a number of

statements, such a system of dispersion … we are dealing with a discursive

formation (37).

The language is important here: Foucault is not providing a definition for

the discursive formation, but merely noting its conditions of possibility. The

definition of this critical concept is not a matter of a single concept: for each

possibility of objects, enunciations, concepts, and strategies, Foucault shows the

operation of the discursive formation. Foucault’s development of the discursive

formation in the four directions of his failed hypotheses makes the critical nature
of dispersion even more apparent, as four particular and contingent definitions

are constructed (objects, 44; enunciations, 54-55; concepts, 60, 62; strategies, 68).

The stakes for understanding the relationship of dispersion and in this

manner are very high. Near the middle of AK, Foucault observes,

And if I succeed in showing that this discursive formation really is

the principle of dispersion and redistribution, not of formulations,
not of sentences, not of propositions, but of statements … thus I shall
be able to speak of clinical discourse, economic discourse, the
discourse of natural history, psychiatric discourse. (107-108)
 Dilger 20

In other words, Foucault realizes fully here that the legitimacy of the discursive

formation is not the only thing being tested by The Archaeology of Knowledge.

The legitimacy of other texts—The Birth of the Clinic, The Order of Things,

Madness and Civilization—and in the oeuvre-constructing eyes of the historians,

the legitimacy of Michel Foucault himself—are all placed at risk by this

discontinuous movement, this difficulty, this dispersion.

Labeling Foucault

As Foucault argued many times, the unities of history aren’t invalid

concepts—they are simply inserted in places that they don’t belong. We can

consider Foucault’s response toward being labeled “the philosopher of

discontinuity” in a similar light. Foucault resisted labeling not because it was

intrinsically wrong, but because labels were so often misapplied or misconstrued.

This essay began with the issue of labeling; a brief return to that subject serves

well as a conclusion.

Throughout his life Michel Foucault resisted the labeling literary critics

and interviewers tried to pin upon him—especially when charges of

“structuralism” were levied in his direction. This matter is taken up directly in

the strange conclusion of AK, as quoted in several instances above (the notes from

AK 174 and 205 come to mind).

At times Foucault’s responses to attempts to label him were humorous;

sometimes they were swift and sardonic. A radio interview with Jacques Chancel,

broadcast on Radio-France in October 1975, is typical of the latter: the interviewer,

perhaps a bit under-prepared, constantly tries to steer Foucault toward simply

stated positions, simply picks out phrases from Foucault’s answers and repeats
 Dilger 21

them (comparisons to the Eliza “psychologist” computer program are

frighteningly accurate). But Foucault resists at every turn:

Q: You were ahead of others.

A: Ahead of others? Not at all.
Q: You have quite a few degrees?
A: I suppose.
Q: A degree, or a satchelful of them, is pretty burdensome?
A: No. There are certain ones which are very burdensome.
(Chancel and Foucault 134)

In a similar fashion, Foucault’s lengthy response to a question posed by Esprit

magazine adds weight to the arguments from The Archaeology of Knowledge

presented here, and provides a final word against labeling Foucault a

“philosopher of discontinuity.” When asked why he “emphasizes discontinuity,”

Foucault demanded a careful qualification of his project, repeating his larger goal,

and pointing toward both of the movements highlighted above:

My problem is to substitute the analysis of different types of

transformation for the abstract general and wearisome form of
change in which one so willingly thinks in terms of succession. …
Replacing, in short, the theme of becoming (general form, abstract
element, primary cause and universal effect, a confused mixture of
the identical and the new) by the analysis of the transformations in
their specificity. … there is absolutely no question of substituting a
“discontinuous” category for the no less abstract and general one of
the “continuous.” (Foucault, “History,” 36)

In that spirit, if Foucault shall be labeled, let him be labeled specifically and

descriptively: not as a “philosopher of discontinuities,” but as, “a philosopher for

whom continuities were the usual form of a distortion called history, and

discontinuities a means of exposing these customary unities and enabling new

unities to be constructed in their place.”

 Dilger 22

Works cited and consulted

Bannet, Eve Tavor. Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent: Barthes, Derrida,
Foucault, Lacan. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Bernauer, James. Michel Foucault’s Force of Flight : Toward an Ethics for

Thought. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1990.

Chancel, Jacques, and Michel Foucault. “Talk Show” (Transcript of Radio-France

interview conducted 3 October 1975). Trans. Phillis Aronov and Dan
McGrawth. Foucault Live: Collected Interviews 1961-1984. Ed. Sylvère
Lotringer. New York: Semiotext[e], 1996. 133-145.

Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things (Les Mots et les choses). New York: Random
House/Vintage Books, 1970.

———————. The Archaeology of Knowledge (L’Archéology du savior). Trans. A.

M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books: 1972.

———————. Discipline and Punish (Survellir et punir). Trans. Alan Sheridan.

New York: Random House/Vintage Books, 1978.

———————. The History of Sexuality: Volume One, An Introduction. (La

Volenté de savior). Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House/Vintage
Books, 1978.

———————. “What is an author?” Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Edited

by Donald F. Bouchard. Princeton: Cornell UP, 1977. 113-38.

———————. “History, Discourse, and Discontinuity” (Interview with Esprit

magazine). Trans. Anthony M. Nazzaro. Foucault Live: Collected Interviews
1961-1984. Edited by Sylvère Lotringer. New York: Semiotext[e], 1996. 33-50.

Henning, E. M. “Foucault and Derrida: Archaeology and Deconstruction.”

Stanford French Review 5 (1981), 247-264.

Lecourt, Dominique. Marxism and Epistemology: Bachelard, Canguilheim,

Foucault. Trans. Ben Brewster. London: New Left Books, 1975.
 Dilger 23

Works cited and consulted, continued

Lemert, Charles C., and Garth Gillan. Michel Foucault: Social Theory and
Transgression. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Macey, David. The Lives of Michel Foucault. New York: Random House/Vintage
Books, 1993.

Poster, Mark. “The Future According to Foucault: The Archaeology of Knowledge

and Intellectual History.” Modern European Intellectual History:
Reappraisals and New Perspectives. Ed. Dominick LaCapra and Steven L.
Kaplan. London: Cornell University Press, 1982. 137-152.

Rorty, Richard. “Beyond Nietzsche and Marx.” Michel Foucault (2) Critical
Assessments. Vol. 5. Ed. Barry Smart. London: Routledge, 1995. 126-132.

Taylor, Charles. “Foucault on Freedom and Truth.” Michel Foucault (2)

Critical Assessments. Vol. 5. Edited by Barry Smart. London: Routledge,
1995. 326-351.

Tilley, Christopher. “Foucault: Towards an Archaeology of Archaeology.”

Reading Material Culture. Ed. Christopher Tilley. Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1990. 281-347.