As soon as one questions unity, it loses its self-evidence; it indicates itself, constructs itself, only on the basis of a complex field of discourse.

Foucault writes this in the context of deconstructing the unity of the book, but his formulation here could be a model for his approach to any and all received forms of continuity. Any historical unity that has not been analyzed archeologically is at risk of being a naive assumption. Foucault examines forms of unity from the book and the Oeuvre to historical “progress” in general, and finds that each is an effect of a discursive formation that exceeds it.

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