French historian Foucault, Michel uses this term to describe his research methodology. It is characterized by the suspension of all established conventions for thinking and doing history and the supposition that those very conventions for thinking and doing history should themselves be subjected to historical inquiry. Outlined in extensive detail in LâArchĂ©ologie du savoir (1969), translated as The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), archaeology takes shape as a series of injunctions against the perceived unities of author, discipline, genre, and a corresponding call to recognize the significance of dispersion, recurrence, and transformation. Foucault wanted to shift the objective of history away from what has been said and done to the set of conditions (which he referred to as the discursive formation) enabling those things to be said and done. For example, for Foucault what is important is not the fact that the mentally ill are locked up, but the diverse ways by which the very classification âmentally illâ came into being in such a way as to render ânormalâ the incarceration of those people so classified. Further Reading: J. Bernauer Michel Foucaultâs Force of Flight (1990). C. OâFarrell Michel Foucault (2005).