The production of knowledge - a Foucauldian perspective to discourse analysis

Discourse and discourse analysis have been defined in different ways at different times and by different people. Discourse is connected by some to what sociologists call ’ideology’, and is taken to refer to a group of statements or beliefs that produce knowledge that benefits particular groups in society, and the task of the researcher is thus that of deciphering the rules that connect different statements to each other. Others, importantly conversation analysts, approach discourse as what people say and do, drawing attention to rules governing turn taking in conversation. A Foucauldian approach, on the other hand, is preoccupied with how meaning is construed, with discursive formations or systems of meaning that constitute the identity of things – of social reality, of subjects and objects. (Howarth 2002; see also Jokinen, Juhila & Suoninen 1999; Simola 1995.)

Writing of discourse analysis in general, Jokinen et al. (1999) introduce the category of discursive

‘accounts’, through which people make sense of their understanding of particular issues to others.

‘Accounts’, they write, are embedded in social reality, and participate in maintaining cultural stability. From the perspective of the present research, what is interesting in ‘accounts’ is the way in which they often begin from discursive meanings that are generally accepted, ideologically attractive and seemingly natural. (Ibid., 20 – 22.) However, whilst they often pertain to generally accepted ‘truths’, as Jokinen et al. (ibid.) write, this does not mean that they are unambiguous: “The most common discourses or ’ideologies’ incorporate ambiguous meanings - - Therefore agents have many possibilities of building accounts from conventional materials that support alternative practices” (27.¹)

Foucauldian discourse analysis has been described as “concerned with how the social construction process of shaped across different domains of everyday life” (Holstein & Gubrium 2005, 492), as occupied by the “connection between ‘discursive practices’ and wider sets of ‘non-discursive’

activities and institutions” (Howarth 2002, 4), with the production of knowledge through power relations, and the mutual dependence of power and knowledge (Foucault 1979). Relatedly, Foucauldian analysis has been applied as a critical form of qualitative research to interrogate power relationships/the circulation of power. A major theme in Foucault’s work is that of examining how subjects become subjects. This is apparent in the phases that Foucault’s work has been divided into:

1 Tunnetuimmat diskurssit tai ”ideologiat” sisäsltävät ristiriitaisia - - aineksia. Näin ollen toimijoille tarjoutuu mahdollisuuksia yrittää rakentaa konventionaalisistakin aineksista selontekoja, jotka tukevat vaihtoehtoisia käytäntöjä.

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an archeological and genealogical phase, a focus on care of the self and, some add, governmentality (Scheurich & McKenzie 2005; see also Husa 2000, 61-64; Pulkkinen 1998, 92-103; Simola 1995, 23 - 37). The archeological phase focuses on discourse and the constitution of knowledge, whilst the relationship between power and knowledge becomes more focal in his genealogical phase, the concept of geneology deriving from Nietzsche’s work (Pulkkinen 1998, 87 – 103; see also Husa 2000, 61-68). The three main themes of Foucault’s work are those of knowledge, power and the subject, and throughout his work, his interest is in examining historical ‘truths’ (Simola 1995).

Foucault’s understanding of power, a central component that runs through his work, is quite different to the traditional juridico-discursive model of power that assumes that power is repressive, possessed by individuals, and has a centralized force from which it flows from top to bottom.

Foucault suggests power is exercised not possessed, productive not repressive and present at every level of society. The way in which power is exercised, Foucault suggests, is through discourse.

Discursive formation, a concept introduced by Foucault, refers to how statements refer to each other and support each other in discourse. As Foucault (1981, p. 102) writes, “[d]iscourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can run different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy”. Thus, paradoxically, whilst we may not believe in the superiority of the ‘West’ and the ‘Rest’, for example, to apply Said’s (1992) terms, through the act of referring to such distinctions, we position ourselves as subjects within such discourses.

Foucault takes as his point of interest the ‘planning of planning’, leading him to dispense with the Enlightenment rationality of modernity, including the belief in teleology, reason and the movement towards progress – all foundational assumptions of Western modernity. Relatedly, Foucault suggests that in modern societies, the state operates not through brute force or domination as in previous absolutist monarchies in Europe, but through acting on the wishes and happiness of its citizens, administering progress on the basis of shared conceptions of what is “good, healthy, normal, virtuous, efficient or profitable” to quote Rose and Miller (1992, 3). Thereby, as Rose and Miller (ibid., 3) go on to point out, “government is a domain of cognition, calculation, experimentation and evaluation”.

Like power, knowledge, according to Foucault, is not something that individuals possess; it does not emerge as a product of the thinking of agentic subjects, but is essentially shared. (Husa 2000;

Pulkkinen 1998; Scheurich & McKenzie 2005.) This decentering of the subject, as Scheurich and McKenzie (ibid., p. 848), write, has led some to reject Foucault on the premise that, whilst his 11

problematization of reason has been critical to the identification of covert uses of power, in the process he succeeds in destroying the concept of the agentic subject that has been considered pivotal to any attempt to initiate social change. However, Foucault’s focus is not so much on the subject as it is on processes through which subjects are made or fashioned; nor is he inclined towards a political project as he is towards problematicizing received meanings and assumed origins, which he demonstrates through his genealogical approach are often fabricated. In what could be characterized as a postmodern move, Foucault dispenses with the notion that discourse reflects deeper meanings. (Scheurich & McKenzie 2005; Simola 1995.) Discursive formations, as Foucault claims, form a web of interlinked meanings. Thus Foucault writes in Discipline and Punish (1977) as follows: “- - the sentence, even if it is formulated in terms of legal punishment, implies, more or less obscurely, judgements of normality, attributions of causality, assessments of possible changes, anticipations as to the offender’s future” (p. 20).

From the perspective of development work and the introduction of political imaginaries fabricated in Western countries to other parts of the world, genealogical analysis provides an interesting approach to examining and ‘tracing back’ the political rationale, or the ‘political truths’ of suggested reform, the blueprint of which is often that of Western institutional models (Zanotti 2008). Central to Foucault’s genealogical approach is the contextualization of statements and discursive formations in particular historical time and place, underlining the notion of subjects as produced through knowledge and power that is historically and culturally specific. As Rose (1999/1989) explains, this (historical) approach to inquiry involves:

the attempt to trace, in very concrete and material forms, the actual history of those forms of rationality that comprise our present, the ways of thinking and acting with which they have been caught up, the practices and assemblages which they have animated, and the consequences for our understanding of our present, and of ourselves in that present. (x.)

Foucault does not look to an origin or source of meaning, but to the conditions through which meaning and truths emerge (Scheurich & McKenzie 2005; Simola 1995.) He demonstrates how discursive formations are on the move continually, changing and altering, generating new meanings, some of which may alter earlier meanings. This leads Foucault to also examine forgotten discourses, which also add meaning, in their own way, to dominant discourses. (Pulkkinen 1998;

Scheurich & McKenzie 2005; Simola 1995.) For Foucault, truth claims are object of interrogation, 12

and his interest is in how truth is produced (Ojakangas in Simola 1995, p. 24). As Simola (ibid.) writes, by truth Foucault is not referring to

ways of thinking, ideas, paradigms or premises in the traditional announced, intentional and explicit way. Truths are often confessed unintentionally in clauses, implicitly between the lines, and they are not often explicitly explained. They are often taken for granted, beliefs that are taken as givens, well known but not things that subjects are well aware of, broadly approved but not well recognized building blocks of particular discourses. (24.)²

The ‘truths’ attached to the private sector and its response to HIV, as articulated by global guidelines issued by UNAIDS and other development partners, read as universal in their claims, yet are often very Western and Eurocentric, and they are rarely questioned or challenged on broad front, nor have they been traced back to the Western institutions in which most are produced. The potential of a Foucauldian analysis in the context of international institutions such as the UN, and development aid, that, as Walters says, is that through its contructionist perspective we can:

begin to see the state as an effect of practices rather than a given, self-evident entity.

For instance, rather than focusing on development as either a policy or process, one would see development as a space of practices or as a dispositif – a whole complex of practices and knowledges. One would then ask: how does the emergence of this thing called “development” give rise to particular knowledges of states? How does it give rise to particular accounts of international space? How does it encourage or produce particular ways for states to act, to position themselves, understand themselves and others, advance and contest particular forms of politics. (Tietäväinen, Pyykkönen, Kaisto 2008, p. 64).

As Simola (1995, pp. 24 – 25) argues, for Foucault, ‘truths’ have at least three functions: 1) they function to identify the ‘real’, the ‘good’ and ‘right’ from the ‘non-truth’, good’ and the ‘not-right’; 2) they legitimate particular practices by naturalizing decisions and solutions as self-evident

2aatteita,  ideoita,  paradigmoja  tai  premissejä  perinteisessä  julkilausutussa,  intentionaalisessa  ja  eksplisiittisessä mielessä. Totuudet tunnustetaan monesti huomaamatta sivulauseissa, implisiittisesti rivien  välissä, eikä niitä useinkaan eksplisiittisesti perustella. Ne ovat usein itsestäänselvyyksiä, annettuna otettuja  uskomuksia, hyvin tiedettyjä mutta huonosti tiedostettuja, laajasti tunnustettuja, mutta vähän tunnistettuja  tiettyä diskurssia jäsentäviä rakennusosia. 

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– failure to recognize dominant, hegemonic discourses is due to the normalizing power of discourse; and 3) they construct or define the identities of the objects to which they are attached.