WORD-DISCONTINUITY-NICK SEXTON

In the introduction to his book The Archaeology of Knowledge and Discourse on Language, Michel Foucault argues that "...the history of thought, of knowledge, of philosophy, of literature seems to be seeking, and discovering, more and more discontinuities, whereas history itself appears to be abandoning the irruption of events in favour of stable structures" (my emphasis, 6). In fact, Foucault does a lot of talking about discontinuity throughout his essay, so I thought it would be helpful to define discontinuity. The OED defines discontinuity as "The quality or state of being discontinuous; want or failure of continuity or uninterrupted sequence; interrupted condition." To go further, the OED defines discontinuous as "Producing discontinuity; breaking continuity between parts; gaping." The OED seems to lead us in circles when attempting to find a solid definition of discontinuity. Both the definition of discontinuity and discontinous reference back to one another without much information being given; however, from the definitions one can deduce that discontinuity refers to a failure in being continuous or the condition of interruption.