In the chapter entitled ‘Rarity, Exteriority, Accumulation’ (see section eleven), Foucault begins to use the term ‘positivity’ to designate an approach to discourse that excludes anything lying beneath it or hidden within it. For archeology, discourse is to be described only on the level of its basic, operative existence, its existence as a set of emerging and transforming statements (and relations between statements). In this sense, archeology addresses only the ‘positivities’ of discourse. Further on, Foucault uses ‘positivity’ almost always in noun form, as a catch-all term for statements, discursive formations, or sub-formations like sciences; any one of these (or any set of relations between them) is a positivity.
