Learning Connection
Epistemology – The study or theory of knowledge, of how we come to know things.
Essentialism – the view that objects have essences, and that there is a distinction between what is essential and what is non-essential or accidental.
Objectivism – the view that the world and things are infused with meaning that exists independently of consciousness and experience.
Reality – in philosophical usage – how things actually are in contrast to how they appear to be to a particular perceiver or group of perceivers.
Statements – The term has a specific usage in Foucault. A statement is a specific sub set of utterances that has the necessary institutionalised validation procedures at a given time (community of experts, rules of dialectical argument, inquisitional interrogation, or empirical confirmation) to count as knowledge. For example: ‘it is going to rain’ has only local significance, but when spoken by a meteorological expert this speech act counts as a statement (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982: 48).
Discursive formation – In Foucault, ‘the regularities exhibited by the relations of statements with other statements of the same and other types’ (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982:49).
Archaeology – The method Foucault utilized in his early work influenced by structuralism which was popular at the time of writing. His early 'archaeological' period focused purely on knowledge formations emphasising their autonomous nature (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982).
Genealogy – The method Foucault gradually settled into in which he moved more toward the hermeneutic understanding of language as shaped by the extra discursive field. The genealogical method is concerned with the relationships between specific knowledge formations and institutional and cultural practices (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982).
The work of Michel Foucault (1926-1984) represents one of the most well known alternatives to phenomenology, hermeneutics and structuralism. In this topic we will look at the unique method Michel Foucault developed for the study of knowledge, how this changed across the body of his work, and what his work suggests about the development of the social sciences. Foucault’s ‘archaeological’ method will be discussed in relation to The order of things and The archaeology of knowledge, and his ‘genealogical’ method in a discussion of Discipline and punish and The history of sexuality. Throughout this topic we will be looking at Foucault’s work to determine what makes it distinctive from the social theory we have examined in previous topics.
In exploring the shifts in Foucault’s thinking and their implications for social theorists, this topic assumes a basic knowledge of the philosophical assumptions underpinning phenomenology, hermeneutics and structuralism. These topics will be essential revision for this topic.
Dreyfus, H and Rabinow, P 1982, Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, chapters 2 and 3.
Instead of trying to find out about the meaning of specific phenomena (phenomenology and hermeneutics), or the universal structures that condition human experience and culture (structuralism), Foucault was interested in understanding why these questions and ways of thinking became more important than others. The order of things begins the continuing theme in Foucault’s work which was to uncover or explore the epistemological history of the human or social sciences, or what is sometimes referred to as the ‘modern’ episteme. This refers specifically to the positivist interest in human beings as objects of scientific knowledge, and the phenomenological and hermeneutic interest in human beings as subjects possessed of, or invested in, deep meaning.
In The order of things Foucault puts taken for granted epistemological assumptions of our age into relief by contrasting them with the epistemological terms that existed in what he called the ‘Classical Age’. In the Classical period, human beings were understood as rational creatures using language in a transparent manner to represent the natural order. In the Classical period human beings are part of the natural order, albeit at the top of God’s hierarchy. That is, human knowledge is a representation of the order of existence ultimately created by God. In the Classical period, the one doing the representation, the human being, is not in the picture, either as a knower in their own right, with say a peculiarly human, cultural or individual perspective that might colour the knowledge produced (humanism), or as one about whom one might become curious, one about whom a body of knowledge might be built. These ways of thinking, upon which the social sciences are built, simply did not exist at this moment in history.
According to Foucault, at the beginning of the eighteenth century this way of understanding human beings within the order of things suddenly and dramatically changes. In the Classical Age ‘man’ is understood as a being among others within the natural order created by God. In the modern period, there is the dawning realisation that human beings are limited by a language that precedes them and which has its own inscrutable history. The unproblematic Classical relation between ‘man’, nature and language is broken. In the modern episteme, human beings can no longer be understood as rational spectators or translators of God’s creation. Now people see that their view of things is not God-given after all, but is limited by what precedes them - culture, language, history. Hence in the modern episteme human beings become distinguishable from natural objects of thought because they use language and are capable of producing knowledge in their own right. Human beings have also, therefore, become a distinctive kind of object worth knowing about.
In short, in the modern age, we suddenly become curious about ourselves as human beings, but at the same time, we recognise the impossibility of knowing about ourselves or our world in an objective manner. According to Foucault, rather than accept the epistemological limitations of being human, modernism gives rise to ‘warped’ and ‘twisted’ philosophical attempts to explain the possibility for factual or positive knowledge. But it does so in terms which refer back to the very limitations that modernism observes. Foucault argues that these attempts at positive knowledge have taken three major analytic forms or ‘doubles’ – the transcendental/empirical (pertaining to positivism), the cogito/unthought (pertaining to phenomenology) and the retreat/return of origin (pertaining to hermeneutics and Critical theory).
The ‘transcendental/empirical’ double – This ‘double’ pertains to the logic of positivism which acknowledges on the one hand that knowledge is conditioned by subjective phenomenon, but assumes that it is (in principle) possible for a discipline to access objective truth either through the empirical perception of objects or the thought of human beings (as in the case of Marx). Foucault argued that this is logically unworkable. In order to follow the logic of positivism, we must accept, in the first instance, that the categories that define the objects of the discipline are themselves beyond discourse, or, in the second instance, that the discourse is valid because it is valid or because it provides some final truth.
The ‘cogito/unthought’ double - The difficulty for phenomenology is that it is unable to ever determine what came first, the experience, or the interpretation of experience. For Foucault this gives rise to an endless and ‘monotonous’ search for what is truly ‘authentic’ in human experience.
The ‘retreat/return of origin’ double - Hermeneutics attempts to establish the grounds for positive knowledge by insisting that human consciousness is capable of observing itself from a background position that is both part of, but also transcendent to its own history. Consider Heidegger’s concept of ‘dasein’, Gadamer’s ‘tradition’, and Habermas’ ‘rational dialogue’. Each ideation invents a conceptual space from which the social theorist can penetrate the vagaries of time and fashion, to perceive something truly meaningful about human beings and human society. In each, we see the fundamental contradiction between the understanding that human beings are inextricably tied up with pre-existing conditions, and cannot therefore hope to know themselves or get to the origin of thought, and the idea that we can know the world in a way that transcends the limitations of our own positioning within the order of things. Foucault refers to the theoretical complexity in hermeneutics and critical theory which attempts to show that ‘man’ is not truly limited by culture, but the transcendental source of history and knowledge, as 'extremely complex and extremely tangled'.
In The order of things Foucault enables us to observe our contemporary obsession with ourselves as peculiarly human beings and as meaning makers. For Foucault this obsession is not in any sense inevitable. By tracing the rise of the modern episteme, Foucault writes a history of the social sciences. It is a critical history because, for Foucault, the modern episteme is simply a made up story, and one that is contradictory, illogical, ultimately unworkable, and, as a result, already passing out of time. For Foucault, the social sciences have not and cannot produce positive knowledge about human beings. However, in the archaeological period, instead of accepting the impossibility of this project, Foucault attempts to outline a method and a theory of discourse that can rival it.
Dreyfus, H and Rabinow, P 1982, Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, chapters 3 and 4.
The ‘impossibilities’ Foucault observes in the doubles, leads him to a new kind of method and approach to the study of social life. Instead of asking ‘what is an authentic experience’, or ‘what central meaning explains a given situation’, Foucault seeks to determine why some statements are taken as authentic or meaningful, while others are not. He is interested in how they become meaningful, that is, what social practices and discourses ensure the rise of specific ‘serious’ statements. In his books The order of things and The archaeology of knowledge we begin to get a glimpse of the uniqueness of Foucault’s method and how it is different from phenomenology, hermeneutics and structuralism. We also see the methodological problems he eventually identified with his early ‘archaeological’ method which led him to adopt a ‘genealogical’ approach.
In The order of things and The archaeology of knowledge Foucault claims to have discovered a new linguistic object of study ─ ‘the statement’, and in particular the ‘serious’ statement. ‘Serious statements’ are not found by listening to people’s everyday talk (phenomenology) or by situating this talk within a background of practices (hermeneutics). Serious statements are those speech acts which are authorised by experts, treasured as knowledge or ‘savoir’, and studied, repeated and passed on (like our social science disciplines). Foucault was not interested in determining whether these systems of serious speech acts are true or not. His method involved locating serious speech acts, observing their regular relations with other serious speech acts (discursive formations), and tracing the transformations they undergo across time. His point in all this was to show that the statements we take to make serious sense and which determine and organise the shape of our world, only seem to do so within the network of discursive relations and the background of scientific and non scientific practices within which we understand them. By extracting serious statements from the system of relations and practices, Foucault aimed to highlight not only their dependency on those relations and practices, but the inability of science or philosophy to provide positive grounds for knowledge claims. In doing so he enables us to observe and question the serious statements that govern our worlds, which would otherwise remain beyond scrutiny.
How can we identify a field of study? One way to group together serious statements would be to link them to specific objects of thought. This is what Foucault tried to do in Madness and civilisation and The birth of the clinic. However, he soon realises that the object of thought, ‘madness’, does not exist in the world beyond discourse waiting to be interpreted in different historical periods. Rather the object ‘madness’ comes into existence, and can only be experienced, within a given discursive formation. Each shift in disciplinary conditions then shapes whether and what it is possible for us to ‘know’ about madness. He also observes that discursive formations do not cohere around well defined objects, but switch, substitute and transform their objects in discontinuous and sudden ways. Another way to define a field of study would be to group statements around the words or signifiers that point to representations of objects. However Foucault rejects this option also because he recognises that it is not possible to speak about any object in any time period. If we take objects or words as the starting point we cannot see how those objects or words emerged in the first place. We risk simply reinforcing their naturalness, rather than observing their dependencies.
Foucault posits a method that focuses on an analysis of the space within which objects emerge and in which they transform. Within this space Foucault emphasised the role of discursive formations. Foucault argued that neither the primary relations between institutions, techniques and social forms beyond discourse, nor the secondary relations (reflective interpretations of subjects) shape which statements become serious. Rather, discursive formations determine what can count as a serious statement by ‘organising’ or ‘establishing’ relations between primary and secondary orders. So for example, what psychiatrists say about madness and the institutional practices used to treat the mad do not themselves produce the possibility of saying something serious about madness. It is the relations that discourse establishes between specific speech acts, speakers and contexts that enables psychiatric discourse and practice to make sense and to be taken seriously. For instance, the discursive field establishes relations between the status of doctor, criteria of competence, institutions, systems, pedagogic norms and legal conditions which establish the right to practice. Individual subjects or ‘blind discovery’ do not shape our knowledge of madness.
According to Foucault the discursive relations that establish discursive formations are governed by their own ‘rules of formation’. They are the rules of an ‘anonymous truth game’ which operate within the minds of individuals and within or behind the discursive formation. These rules of formation govern what can count as an object of discourse, what can be said about objects, who can say them and what kinds of concepts can be deployed about them. Foucault also argued that the rules of formation govern the changes, ‘intrinsic mutations’ or ‘forms of sequence and succession’, that are possible within a given discourse. So not only is discourse unable to reveal positive knowledge of objects, or of the 'deep meanings' they hold for human beings. It is also unable to reveal the march of historical progress towards truth. Discourse itself allows us to ‘observe’ differences and changes which are contained within its own rules of formation.
In sum, the ‘archaeological’ method involved a study of discourse in its ‘exteriority’. Foucault observed epistemic shifts in knowledge without being concerned about their relationship to any underlying fundamental meaning of the times (hermeneutics). Nor was he attempting to uncover anything arising from, or related to, universal, trans-historical or trans-cultural ‘structures’ of the human mind or of language (structuralism). The method Foucault developed involved studying changing knowledge formations within specific historical and cultural conditions, free from a concern with either the meanings and intentions of specific historical actors, or a theory of linguistic systems.
Foucault is clear that discourse does not represent real objects in the objective world (positivism), the culturally mediated interpretations of subjects (interpretivism), structures imposed by human consciousness or the peculiarities of language (structuralism), or the determinations imposed by institutions, or social or economic relations (Critical theory). In his archaeological period he claims instead that discourse is governed by ‘rules of formation’. This ultimately proves to be an unworkable proposition. The view that discursive practices have more influence over serious statements than non discursive activities, gives rise to the contradiction that, although serious talk is shaped by the material world, it is studied solely in relation to discourse. Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982:84) explain this problem in the archaeological period in terms of Foucault’s lingering commitment to structuralism which obliges him to explain the regularity he observes within discursive practices by referring to practices that sit outside the discursive realm.
In the archaeology, Foucault was critical of the human sciences because of their philosophical illogicality, their desire to cling to positivity, and their inability to accept the relative nature of knowledge claims. However, he himself fell into the illogicality of the modernist paradigms when he insisted upon a ‘pure description’ of discourse that was beyond any further horizon of intelligibility. Furthermore, if discourse really could be removed from the extra discursive field of practice, it would be completely meaningless and useless. It would be just noise. No one would write, or bother to read or do research. What would be the point for Foucault of writing anything?
In The archaeology of knowledge, Foucault outlines his new method and theory of discourse which was supposed to enable a better understanding of human beings than the modern episteme could achieve. However, Foucault never really succeeded in overcoming the illogic he saw within the modern episteme. This is because his archaeological method clung to an attempt to provide a ‘pure description’ of discourse independent of any further horizon of intelligibility. This is a thoroughly modernist claim and is subject to the contradictions Foucault outlined in The order of things.
Notwithstanding these contradictions, Foucault did offer a new way of thinking about research practice. Rather than attempting to understand what is true about human beings and the social world, he pointed to the need to explore why some statements are placed beyond scientific and philosophical question. This approach enables us to observe the workings of our own culture with a greater degree of distance than the other paradigms can offer. By enabling us to bring the peculiarities of our culture into view we can explore what else we might become or learn to tolerate in others and in our world.
Despite the positive sympathies in his archaeological work, Foucault insisted throughout that serious statements depend upon practices for their legitimacy. He was also clear that the archaeologist could never speak outside the horizon of intelligibility that makes his speech possible or coherent. These insights are carried without contradiction in his genealogical work. Here he eventually rejects the assumption that discourse can be studied in isolation from the field of practice, recognizing that both the network of discursive relations and non discursive practices are what enable particular statements to make serious sense.
In the genealogical method developed in his later writings, we find a new kind of approach in which Foucault follows his relativist proclivities to a more logical end. In his genealogical work we see both a reversal of his archaeological method, as well as a continuation of it. Foucault drops his insistence upon the rules of formation and the archaeologists situation outside discourse. In his genealogical work he is interested in the way that discursive and non discursive practices shape the conditions for serious speech, and he understands the genealogist as situated within the field of practice. In his genealogical work we will see how this interplay works itself out, and how it gives rise to a new understanding of power and the human objects and subjects we find within structuralism and hermeneutics.
Discipline and punish (1977) opens with an explanation of the social and political conditions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries including:
In these social conditions, the power of sovereignty becomes increasingly inadequate, not to an emerging democratic political consciousness, but to the new system of labour and commodities and of capital accumulation. At this time, there also arises a related concern for a tighter control of the minutiae of everyday life; a new attention to detail involving an increased institutionalisation of persons, and control of bodies within defined spaces. Within prisons, the military, factories, hospitals and schools temporal, micro-institutional practices allocate individuals to specified spaces and tasks in relation to other individuals. This allows tighter control, surveillance and increased productivity of the population.
The institutionalisation and control of bodies in this period also gives rise to a mass of documentation about human beings, which begins to take shape in the form of information about the ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ body, its propensities, limits, proclivities. This knowledge of the body, gradually linked to an emerging idea of the human ‘soul’, is the means by which bodies come to be regulated and to regulate themselves. In establishing the 'truth' about 'normal' human behaviour these knowledges effectively oblige human beings to conform or be ‘abnormal’, 'anti-social', 'deviant'. So the function of prisons historically has been to enable the regulation and control not only of prisoners, but of the general population via knoweldges about what constitutes 'healthy', 'normal' human social behaviour. Increased efficiency and productivity within factories enabled not only an increase in the productivity of the factory, it also enabled a gradual 'discovery' of the 'productive soul', an apparently inborn drive to express one’s self, and one’s humanity in the act of creative labour. This gives rise to a society in which human beings are obliged to find their freedom and to regulate their behaviour in increasingly productive directions. We also see this version of the subject at the heart of Marx's thought.
In Discipline and punish, Foucault sought to show how apparently insignificant, small scale institutional practices and the ‘sciences of man’ they gave rise to have gradually enabled a more effective mode of control of the population than sovereignty could ever achieve. We are regulated by ourselves and others, via the continual recirculation of 'scientific' knowledge about ‘normal’ or 'natural' human behaviour. Foucault calls this new mode of power ‘disciplinary’ or ‘bio-technico-power’. It is ‘productive’ rather than oppressive; acting to control and harness bodies, space and time in more efficient, productive and ‘biological/natural’ directions. It is a mode of power that is not directed by anyone, but which increasingly enmeshes everyone in it. Its only purpose is the increase of power and order itself. These ideas are clearly following lines of thought started in Nietzsche, Weber, late Heidegger, and Adorno, but with an added sophistication, and with an emphasis upon the body as the site of local and minute social practices linked to the large scale organisation of power (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983:xxvi).
In The History of sexuality (1976) Foucault argues that, in the twentieth century, individuality, previously given by reference to family, allegiance, and protection, now flows from the truth one pronounces about the ‘self’. This became possible via the practice of confession since the 16th century. Since the confession focused on sex, and what was confessed was taken to be the sign of a secret buried within the self, an emphasis upon human beings as subjects of intimate experience and knowledge gradually begins to emerge. The 'secret self' 'buried' within human beings is one in which truth and sex were increasingly intertwined. The confessional technique effectively ‘discovers’ a new element in humanity, not its mechanical, progressive nature as in Discipline and punish, but a ‘biological’ drive inherent to the species body.
This new knowledge, and the practices that produce it, gradually become the means by which the population is regulated in more ‘healthful’ directions. Toward the beginning of the eighteenth century there arose a public interest in sex which entered discourses of ‘reason’, as opposed to morality alone, aiming to manage sex to serve the public welfare. Governments attempted to manage population with its phenomena and variables such as birth and death rates, life expectancy, fertility, state of health, frequency of illnesses, patterns of diet and habitation. At the heart of this was the notion of a (‘normal’/‘natural’/heterosexual) life force and the view that this had to be captured and channelled by governments in order to secure the national good.
Foucault refutes the reading of the history of sexuality as a gradual lifting of repressions, and argues it had more to do with the ‘discovery’ or ‘implantation’ in the population of a sexual life force which must, from this moment on, constantly assert its ‘right’ to liberation. This translates in a highly regulated society in which ‘healthy’ sexuality must be constantly performed, monitored, controlled, and policed in order to ensure its ‘normal’ expression.
In the same way that Discipline and punish challenges the sciences of man, the History of sexuality challenges the hermeneutic conviction in deep meaning. By tracing the rise of sexual confession and relating it to practices of social domination Foucault shows how interest in the psyche has become an obsession of our time.
Dreyfus, H and Rabinow, P 1982, Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
In Discipline and punish, Foucault demonstrates how disciplinary practices gradually produced human beings as objects of knowledge, and in The history of sexuality he demonstrates how confessional practices produce human beings as subjects of knowledge (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982). Taken together these texts provide an insight into our 'objectified, meaning obsessed society' (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982). Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982:xxvii) conclude that 'this helps explain how the study of human beings as subjects and objects has had such centrality in our culture, and why the current techniques used in this study - hermeneutics and structuralism - have proven so powerful. Thus Foucault manages both to criticize and to utilize - in a highly original way - the two dominant methods available for the study of human beings' .
How is Foucault’s approach like and unlike social constructionism? In the topic on interpretivism we learned that social constructionism accepts that knowledge arises from an interaction between knowing subjects and objects 'out in the world', while phenomenology distinguishes between experience that comes after the object of experience, and something more ‘immediate’. For Foucault, it is not possible to arrive at an 'authentic' or final account of a phenomenon. Claims of this kind simply reproduce another account which can always be replaced by something 'more authentic’ and so on into infinity. In this way Foucault shares structuralisms rejection of the phenomenological project of unearthing a ‘deeper meaning’ that resides either within human consciousness or within human cultural products and practices.
How is Foucault’s approach like and unlike hermeneutics? In the topic on Critical theory we learned that hermeneutics challenges the interpretive idea that knowledge arises in an 'authentic' exchange between subjects and objects of experience. For hermeneutics both the subjects and objects of experience are understood as always already culturally determined. Foucault agreed with this, however he rejected the hermeneutic theoretical distinction between everyday meaning, and a 'deeper', hidden or repressed meaning which he saw as just another cultural construction. Foucault was not interested in understanding what is meaningful to specific social actors or within a given social context. Instead, he attempted to observe the space within which 'serious' meaning emerges and transforms across time. His aim was to enable us to see more of the conceptual frames that situate our view, although ultimately he accepted that we can never escape them altogether.
How is Foucault’s approach like and unlike structuralism? In his archaeological period, Foucault was interested in the ‘rules of formation’ that govern statements and the discursive formations within which they occur. To this extent, Foucault’s study of discourse is similar to structuralism which also examines the abstract laws that govern the autonomous realm of discourse. However, Foucault has always rejected structuralism's explanation of the nature, origins and development of language. Even in his archaeological period, Foucault’s statements are governed by rules that are peculiar to a given period and discursive formation, whereas structuralism tries to capture the abstract laws that govern the possible field of permutations of essentially meaningless elements within a linguistic system. Foucault also rejected structuralisms idea that language reflects deep laid mental structures and can be understood as a self-regulating system underpinned by abstract, cross-cultural a historical laws.
Ashe, F, A Finlayson, M Lloyd, I Mackenzie, J Martin, S O'Neill 1999, Contemporary social and political theory: An introduction, Open University Press, Buckingham.
Dreyfus, H and Rabinow, P 1982, Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Foucault, M 1977, Discipline and punish, Penguin, London.
Foucault, M 1976, The history of sexuality: Volume 1, Penguin Book, Harmondsworth.
This web resource was developed by Wendy Bastalich.
