Archive-Foucault-ArchaeologyKnowledge-intro apriori

Notes on Foucault Archaeology Knowledge: Introduction; The Historic a Priori and the Archive

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The Historic a Priori and the Archive

Summary: Foucault description of the archive (different perspective on the archive than the traditional one)

The definitions of the archive:

• The archive is the system of statements (a systems that establish statements as events and things)
• "it is that which defines the mode of occurrence of the statement-thing"

• • what does it means to turn a statement as a thing?
  • what can a statement be?
  • what is a statement and a thing in an archive such as youtube

• "the archive is first the law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events
  • the system defines and what can be added to archive (youtube)

• "it is also that which determines that all these things ... are grouped together in distinct figures, composed together in accordance with multiple relations, maintained or blurred in accordance with specific regularities" p.145-146
• "it is the system of its functioning"
  • The way it functions defines it. If we have 2 archives with the same documents, but functioning differently, the materials or meanings that you gather from them will be distinct.

• "it is that which differentiates discourses in their multiple existence and specifies their multiple duration"
  • grouping discourses into given sections - gives them a context, and therefore a meaning;

duration to the archive: the importance of a document has its own duration (?)

• "it does not constitute the library of all libraries, outside time and space"

• "nor is it the welcoming oblivion that opens up all new speech to the operational field of its freedom"
  • it does not encompass all the speech - not everything fits within its space

• "it reveals the rules of a practice that enable statements both to survive and to undergo regular modification"
  •  ?? it reveals the rules  ?

• "It is the general system of the formation and transformation of statements" p.146
  • Alive nature of the archive.
  • The document kept in the archive is not a proof of the past, but a present and subjective view on that document.

• "The archive cannot be described in its totality ... It emerges in fragments, regions and levels"