French historian Foucault, Michel’s term for the system of rules governing the production of statement in a particular society at a certain moment in history. These rules are anonymous, unintended and objective; they are not simply the laws or social regulations either. They are rather the rules for the production of statements, determining not merely what can and cannot be said at one moment, but also---and more importantly---what it is possible to say. To be able to say someone is ‘mad’ for instance requires that madness exist as a concept and that the rules for its use are established. It is the production of these rules that interested Foucault as a historian. Further Reading: M. Foucault L’Archéologie du savoir (1969), translated as The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972).