[earljwagner]

It sounds like Foucault's concept of a "discursive formation", basically a Kuhn-style paradigm. Foucault was interested in the social conditions and context that enable certain statements to be uttered, and interpreted as meaningful.

More broadly, Nozick's focus shifted away from logical proof as a form of argument, the hallmark of Anglo-American Analytic philosophy. It seems to shift to a more Continental (European) style, in which philosophers point to patterns, aiming to evoke insights (e.g. Foucault and more recently Žižek).