Speak For Themselves

archaeology

menstruation

tampon

archaeologist

dad joke

ruin

subway

trivia

philosophy

ecology

ology (the study of)

fossil

anatomy

skeleton

bumper sticker

bone

philology

Egypt

plastic

alien

archeologist

anthropology

office

office work

prison

misogyny

women

battle of the sexes

Internet

Disney World

Disneyland

Walt Disney

is a form of analysis that is concerned not with universal structures but with the instances of discourse that articulate what we think, say, and do as so many historical events.

Archaeological and not transcendental in the sense that it will not seek to identify the universal structures of all knowledge or of all possible moral action, but will seek to treat the instances of discourse that articulate what we think, say, and do as so many historical events. (Foucault 'what is enlightenment' 10)

is a method for marking out principles of ordering, exclusion, and rarity.

attempting to mark out and distinguish the principles of ordering, exclusion and rarity in discourse' (Discourse on Language 234)

is a method of focusing 'purely on what was actually said or written and how it fits into the discursive formation.

a method of focusing 'purely on what was actually said or written and how it fits into the discursive formation' (probably rabinow)

is a method of locating relatively autonomous system of serious speech acts.

a method which allows him to avoid consideration of the 'internal conditions governing speech act understanding, and to focus purely on what was actually said or written and how it fits into the discursive formation' the relatively autonomous system of serious speech acts in which it was produced.

is a method quite different from formalization and from interpretation.

archeology contrasts with the two principal techniques used until now by 'archivist': formalization and interpretation' (Deleuze foucault 15).

is a method that addresses itself to the general space of knowledge and its configurations, and to the mode of being of the things that appear in it.

archaeology, addressing itself to the general space of knowledge, to its configurations, and to the mode of being of the things that appear in it, defines systems of simultaneity, as well as the series of mutations necessary and sufficient to circumscribe the threshold of a new positivity. (Foucault 1966 : xxiii)

is a method which shows the coherence that existed between various domains such as a theory of representation and language, natural orders, as well as wealth and value.

In this way, analysis has been able to show the coherence that existed, throughout the Classical age, between the theory of representation and the theories of language, of the natural orders, and of wealth and value. (Foucault 1966 : xxiii)

is a methodological approach which, say, in the field of criminality, might focus on the discourses and practices of the criminal courts to reveal how and in what ways legal equality is engendered. A genealogical approach would then consider how these contemporary discourses came into being, and the alternatives that were suppressed along the way.

Thus, for example, in my own field of criminology, both Mary Eaton ( 1986) and Hilary Allen ( 1987) have analysed in an archaeological fashion the discourses and practices of the criminal courts, clearly revealing how engendered legal equality is. A genealogical approach would consider how these contemporary discourses came into being, and the alternatives that were suppressed along the way.

archaeology, n.Definitions

archaeology