The archive … determines that all these things said do not accumulate endlessly in an amorphous mass, nor are they inscribed in an unbroken linearity, nor do they disappear at the mercy of chance external accidents; but they are grouped together in distinct figures, composed together in accordance with multiple relations, maintained or blurred in accordance with specific regularities.

— Michael Foucault The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Tavistock, and New York: Pantheon, 1972), p. 128.