word-document

Foucault writes about the document and its role in historical analysis throughout time. He points out that historians have spent time trying to mind out the meaning as well as validity of a given document. However, Foucault goes on to write of a transformation in the way historians look at documents in that now they don't waste efforts on validity and definition, but rather they take the important information that the document provides and apply it to society. If you look at the Merriam-Webster definition of document you will see that it is "a writing conveying information". This definition doesn't claim to state that the document has to be true, it merely conveys information. This emphasis falls in line with the new way to look at documents according to Faucault.