Archeology is the term Foucault gives to his method, which seeks to describe discourses in the conditions of their emergence and transformation rather than in their deeper, hidden meaning, their propositional or logical content, or their expression of an individual or collective psychology. Archeological analysis studies discourse only at its level of positive existence, and never takes discourse to be a trace or record of something outside of itself. In his discussion of the archive, Foucault writes that the term ‘archeology’ marks the distance necessary for the historian to be able to describe the archive with any clarity. This distance is not just a methodological requirement, but a crucial and pervasive feature of the history that the archeological method tries to describe: a history defined throughout by difference. ‘Archeology’ also has strong connotations of positivity; Foucault’s method always describes only the positive, verifiably extant aspect of discourse, as one might describe a physical artifact or ‘monument.’
