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.One can no longer say that adiscovery, the formula-tion of a general principle, or the definition of a project, inaugurates, in a massive way, a newphase in the history of discourse.One no longer has to seek that point of absolute origin or total revolution on the basis ofwhich everything is organized, everything becomes possible and necessary, everything is effaced in order to begin again.One is deal-ing with.events of different types and levels, caught up in distinct historical webs; the establishment of anenunciative homogeneity in no way implies that, for decades or centuries to come, men will say and think the same thing;nor does it imply the definition, explicit or not, of a number of principles from which everything else would flow, asinevitable consequences.Enunciative homogeneities (and heterogeneities) intersect with linguistic continuities (andchanges), with logical identities (and differences), without any of them proceeding at the same pace or necessarilyaffecting one another.But there must exist between them a number of relations and inter-dependences whose no doubthighly complex domain must be described.2.Another direction of research: the interior hierarchies within enunciative regularities.We have seen that everystatement belongs to a certain regularity  that consequently none can be regarded as pure creation, as the marvellousdisorder of genius.But we have also seen that no statement can be regarded as inactive, and be valid as the scarcely realshadow or transfer of the initial statement.The whole enunciative field is both regular and alerted: it never sleeps; theleast statement  the most discreet or the most banal  puts into operation a whole set of rules in accordance with whichits object, its modality, the concepts that it employs, and the strategy of which it is a part, are formed.These rules arenever given in a formulation, they 'traverse' formulations, and set up for them a space of coexistence; one cannot thereforerediscover the unique statement that would articulate them for themselves.However, certain groups of statements putthese rules into operation in their most general and most widely applicable form;((164))using them as a starting-point, one can see how other objects, other concepts, other enunciative modalities, or otherstrategic choices may be formed on the basis of rules that are less general and whose domain of application is morespecified.One can thus describe a tree of enunciative derivation: at its base are the statements that put into operation rulesof formation in their most extended form; at its summit, and after a number of branchings, are the statements that put intooperation the same regularity, but one more delicately articulated, more clearly delimited and localized in its extension.Archaeology  and this is one of its principal themes  may thus constitute the tree of derivation of a discourse.Thatof Natural History, for example.It will place at the root, as governing statements, those that concern the definition ofobservable structures and the field of possible objects, those that prescribe the forms of description and the perceptualcodes that it can use, those that reveal the most general possibilities of characterization, and thus open up a whole domainof concepts to be constructed, and, lastly, those that, while constituting a strategic choice, leave room for the greatestnumber of subsequent options.And it will find, at the ends of the branches, or at various places in the whole, aburgeoning of `discoveries' (like that of fossil series), conceptual transformations (like the new definition of the genus),the emergence of new notions (like that of mammals or organ-ism), technical improvements (principles for organizingcollections, methods of classification and nomenclature) [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]