Discourse
Discourse is one of the most frequently used terms from Foucault's work and at the same time, it is one of the most contradictory. Foucault himself defines it in a number of different ways throughout his work and, in this chapter, writer will express the way he uses the term in The Archeology of Knowledge (1972) and in 'The order of Discourse'(1981). He says in 'The Archeology of Knowledge' that he has used 'discourse' to refer to 'The general domain of all statements' sometimes as a regulated practice that accounts for a number of statements, sometimes as an indivizual group of statements'.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Power/Knowledge.
Many of Foucault's writtings are concerned with how it is that we know sometning, and the processes whereby something becomes established as a fact. As we saw in the last chapter on discourse, Foucault is interested in the process of exclusion which lead to the production of certain discourse rather than others. He is interested in the same processes of exclusion in relation to knowledge and, in the collection of essays entitled power/knowledge (1980), Foucault explores the way that, in order for something to be established as a fact or as true, other equally valid statements have to be discredited and denied. Thus, rather than focusing on the individual thinkers who developed certain ideas or theories, in works such as The order of Things (1970) and The Archeology of Knowledge(1972),Foucault wants to focus on the more abstract institutional processes at work which establish somehting as a fact or as knowledge.
The conventional view of knowledge, and particularly scientific knowledge, is tha it is created by a series of isolated creative geniuses, for example, Einstein and Pasteur. They are characterised as exceptional people and who were able to transcend the conventional ideas of their period and who were able to formulate completely new ideas and theoretical perspectives. In a similar way, the Historyof ideas within the philosophical tradition is largely characterised by this concern with individual thinkers, such as Hegel and Wittgenstein, who, it is claimed, changed the course of intellectual endeavour. Foucault would like to produce a much more anonymous, institutionalised and rule-governed model of knowledge-production. As Ian Hunter states:-
Foucault's reformulation of the concept of discourse derives from his attempts to provide histories of knowledge of what men and women have thought. Foucault's histories are not histories of ideas, opinions or influences nor are they histories of the way in which economic, political and social contexts have shaped ideas or opinions. Rather they are reconstructions of the material conditions of thought or 'knowledges'. They represent an attempt to produce what Foucault calls an archeology of the material conditions of thought/knowledge, conditions which are not reducible to the idea of 'consciousness' or the idea of 'mind'.
(Hunter, cited in Kendall and Wickham 1999:35)
Thus, he is not interested so much in what is known at any one period but ratrher in ' the material conditions of thought' that is the processes which led to certain facts being known rather than others.
Foucault is very aware of how much easier it would be to approach the history of knowledge and ideas by tracing the ideas of 'great thinkers' of Western culture, but instead he has decided to 'determine, in its diverse dimentions, what the mode of existence of discourses (their rules of formation, with their conditions, their dependencies, their transformetions) must have been in Europe since the 17th century, in order that the knowledge which is ours today could come to exist, and more particularly, that knowledge which has taken as its domain this curious object which is man' (Foucault 1991a:70). Thus, he is focusing on the mechanism by which knowledge comes into being and is produced, and that includes the human sciences in which Foucault, of course, situates his own work. In The order of things (1970), he is particularly interested in the epistemic shift in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which science turned its attention from the examination of the physical processes within the natural world to the study of 'man'. He argues that:
classical thought and all the forms of thought that preceded it, were able to speak of the mind and the body, of the human being, of how restricted a place s/h occupies in the universe, of all the limitations by which her/his knowledge or her/his freedom must be measured, but not one of them was able to know man as s/he is posited in modern knowledg. Renaissance 'humanism' and classical 'rationalism' were indeed able to allot human beings a priviledge position in the order of the world, but they were not able to conceive of man.
(Foucault 1970:318)
so, Foucault wants us to question the self-evident nature of disciplines such as sociology and phychology, consider the way that people thought about humankind before these disciplines developed and anslyse the processes whereby it becomes possible to study 'man' as an object.
In Power/Knowledge, Foucault describes knowledge as beinga conjuction of power relations ans information-0seeking which he terms 'power/knowlege' (Foucault 1980). He states, in an essay entitled 'Prison talk', that 'it is not possible for power to be excercised
Many of Foucault's writtings are concerned with how it is that we know sometning, and the processes whereby something becomes established as a fact. As we saw in the last chapter on discourse, Foucault is interested in the process of exclusion which lead to the production of certain discourse rather than others. He is interested in the same processes of exclusion in relation to knowledge and, in the collection of essays entitled power/knowledge (1980), Foucault explores the way that, in order for something to be established as a fact or as true, other equally valid statements have to be discredited and denied. Thus, rather than focusing on the individual thinkers who developed certain ideas or theories, in works such as The order of Things (1970) and The Archeology of Knowledge(1972),Foucault wants to focus on the more abstract institutional processes at work which establish somehting as a fact or as knowledge.
The conventional view of knowledge, and particularly scientific knowledge, is tha it is created by a series of isolated creative geniuses, for example, Einstein and Pasteur. They are characterised as exceptional people and who were able to transcend the conventional ideas of their period and who were able to formulate completely new ideas and theoretical perspectives. In a similar way, the Historyof ideas within the philosophical tradition is largely characterised by this concern with individual thinkers, such as Hegel and Wittgenstein, who, it is claimed, changed the course of intellectual endeavour. Foucault would like to produce a much more anonymous, institutionalised and rule-governed model of knowledge-production. As Ian Hunter states:-
Foucault's reformulation of the concept of discourse derives from his attempts to provide histories of knowledge of what men and women have thought. Foucault's histories are not histories of ideas, opinions or influences nor are they histories of the way in which economic, political and social contexts have shaped ideas or opinions. Rather they are reconstructions of the material conditions of thought or 'knowledges'. They represent an attempt to produce what Foucault calls an archeology of the material conditions of thought/knowledge, conditions which are not reducible to the idea of 'consciousness' or the idea of 'mind'.
(Hunter, cited in Kendall and Wickham 1999:35)
Thus, he is not interested so much in what is known at any one period but ratrher in ' the material conditions of thought' that is the processes which led to certain facts being known rather than others.
Foucault is very aware of how much easier it would be to approach the history of knowledge and ideas by tracing the ideas of 'great thinkers' of Western culture, but instead he has decided to 'determine, in its diverse dimentions, what the mode of existence of discourses (their rules of formation, with their conditions, their dependencies, their transformetions) must have been in Europe since the 17th century, in order that the knowledge which is ours today could come to exist, and more particularly, that knowledge which has taken as its domain this curious object which is man' (Foucault 1991a:70). Thus, he is focusing on the mechanism by which knowledge comes into being and is produced, and that includes the human sciences in which Foucault, of course, situates his own work. In The order of things (1970), he is particularly interested in the epistemic shift in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which science turned its attention from the examination of the physical processes within the natural world to the study of 'man'. He argues that:
classical thought and all the forms of thought that preceded it, were able to speak of the mind and the body, of the human being, of how restricted a place s/h occupies in the universe, of all the limitations by which her/his knowledge or her/his freedom must be measured, but not one of them was able to know man as s/he is posited in modern knowledg. Renaissance 'humanism' and classical 'rationalism' were indeed able to allot human beings a priviledge position in the order of the world, but they were not able to conceive of man.
(Foucault 1970:318)
so, Foucault wants us to question the self-evident nature of disciplines such as sociology and phychology, consider the way that people thought about humankind before these disciplines developed and anslyse the processes whereby it becomes possible to study 'man' as an object.
In Power/Knowledge, Foucault describes knowledge as beinga conjuction of power relations ans information-0seeking which he terms 'power/knowlege' (Foucault 1980). He states, in an essay entitled 'Prison talk', that 'it is not possible for power to be excercised
Madness and civilisation(1967),since the speech of those people who have been considered to be insane is not attended to;it is treated as if it did not exist. To give an example, those people in Britain who have been certified as mentally ill and who have been prescribed certain drugs to help their condition, now, because of changes in the legislation, are not able to state authoritatively that they do not wish to take such medication. They may well state that they do not want to take the drugs but it is now possible that the authorities will ignore their statements and force them to take the medication. In this sense, only the statement of those considered sane are attened to. The division between true and false is the third exclusionary practice described by Foucault; those in positions of power will be considered not to be speaking the truth. The notion of the truth should not be taken as self-evident; he shows in his work how truth is something which is supported materially by a whole range of practices and institutions; universities, government departments, publishing houses, scientific bodies and so on. All of these institutions work to exclude statements which they characterise as false and they keep in circulation those statements which they charactereise as false and they keep in circulation those statements which they characterise as true. For Foucault, only those statements which are 'in the true' will be circulated: The Archaeology of Knowledge(1972), he argues that it is always possible one could speak the truth in a void; one would only be " in the truth" however if one obeyed the rules of something which as far as we know it is "the truth", our statement will only be judged to be "true" if they accord with, and fit in with, all of the other statements which are authorised within society.[Routledge edge critical thinkers, Sara Mills]
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