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  • Foucault and genealogy

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    Definitions

    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. 

    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).

    Synchronic—studying phenomena at a given time or stage without reference to historical data (The Macquarie Dictionary, 1991).

    Diachronic—of or pertaining to changes or developments over a period of time (The Macquarie Dictionary, 1991).

    Introduction

    The work of Michel Foucault (1926–1984) represents another, different, but equally influential, post structuralist alternative to phenomenological, hermeneutic and structuralist methodologies. In this topic we will look at the unique methodology Michel Foucault developed for the study of knowledge and society, and we will consider how this changed across the body of his work, what his work suggests about the operation of power in contemporary society, and the implications of this work for research ethics in the social sciences.

    Foucault was influenced by the disciplines of history and the philosophy of science, and he referred to his method as 'a history of ideas', an approach that is distinctive from deconstruction as well as from each of the approaches considered in the previous topics.

    Foucault's work evolved in two phases—archaeology and genealogy—the second of which slightly revises and builds upon the first. His archaeological phase is captured in studies of psychiatry (Histoire de la folie or The history of madness in the classical age), clinical medicine (The birth of the clinic), of the social sciences (The order of things), and finally The archaeology of knowledge where he reflects on the archaeological method itself. His second phase is captured in the books Discipline and punish, The history of sexuality, The uses of pleasure, and the Care of the self.

    What is most distinctive about Foucault's approach compared to those we have looked at before, is his introduction of the idea of 'discursive formations', or the idea that systems of thought evolve independently from the beliefs and intentions of individuals. Foucault saw that systems of thought are less determined and more anonymous than typically imagined within Critical approaches which offer large scale explanations of history and society driven by the designs of political interests. Foucault is, like Critical thinkers, interested in the politically motivated actions of institutions and social agents (and he takes a similarly large scale view of the social field), but he differs from Critical theory in two overlapping respects. First he saw that new systems of thought are born of many small, seemingly unrelated and insignificant causes (which themselves shape 'ideology' and political interests). Secondly, and relatedly, systems of thought are not wholly determined by political interests for Foucault, but only partly reflect them.

    In his observations of the evolution of systems of thought and their effects in the social field, Foucault introduces a new understanding of how power operates in our time (as opposed to a new theory of how power operates in all societies). The operation of contemporary power for Foucault is not a force that acts via repression, nor is it something that originates purely in political interests as for Critical theory. Power within contemporary society, according to Foucault, operates as an anonymous force with multiple and unpredictable effects in the social field (both repressive and liberatory). Power in this analysis is not 'bad' or repressive, so much as 'dangerous', whose effects must be tracked in particular social circumstances according to particular practices of freedom.

    The ethical project for Foucault, as for other post structuralists, is not to uncover essential truths that can form the basis of human action, but to release human beings from the constraints that apparently certain knowledge entails. In Derrida we saw that this is achieved by highlighting the linguistic dependencies and inconsistencies upon which supposedly inevitable or natural knowledge depends. For Foucault it is achieved by showing the historical play of discursive and non-discursive actions and events that give rise to what we hold to be essential knowledge about human beings and society. In doing so, post structuralist thought aims to enable alternative forms of existence, and specifically, for Foucault, to enable progressive intentions that coincide with ‘the real practice of people in the exercise of their freedom’.  

    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.

    An archaeology of the modern episteme

    Dreyfus, H and Rabinow, P 1982, Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, chapters 2 and 3.

    Before considering Foucault's archaeological method directly, it will be useful to consider his analysis of the epistemic underpinnings of the human sciences in The order of things. This will not only provide an example of the emergence of Foucault's unique method, but also his observations about the philosophical principles underpinning the modernist approaches we have considered in previous topics, specifically logical positivism, phenomenology and critical hermeneutics. Unlike modernist approaches which attempt to produce objective knowledge about human beings and society (logical positivism) or get to an authentic meaning (phenomenology and hermeneutics), Foucault was, in The order of things, interested in understanding why these questions and ways of thinking became more important than others. In The order of things he approaches this question by observing systems of thought or the 'discursive regularities' within the sciences across a given time period, and specifically in the shift from the Classical age to the 'modern episteme' at the end of the eighteenth century.

    1. In The order of things Foucault observes that in the Classical period, human beings were understood as rational creatures using language in a transparent manner to represent the natural order. At this time, both language and nature are seen to be created by God. Human beings are part of the natural order, albeit at the top of God’s hierarchy. Human knowledge is then a representation of the God given order of existence. 
    2. 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 humans are understood as beings 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 human beings, 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, but is limited by what precedes them—human culture, language, history. Human beings become distinguishable from natural objects of thought because they use language and are capable of producing knowledge in their own right.
    3. Human beings not only become, in this moment, a distinctive kind of object worth knowing about, but simultaneously subjects of their own knowledge. The act of representation, previously an unquestioned function of language now becomes a problem, but Foucault observes that in the shift to the modern episteme, it is not a theory of representation that emerges to address this problem, but a theory about how human beings can represent the world, and how things in the world can be given to representation.
    4. For Foucault this mutation in the episteme gives rise to an unresolved ambiguity in its various manifestions. Rather than accept the epistemological limitations of being human, Foucault observes that modernism gives rise to ‘warped’ and ‘twisted’ philosophical attempts to explain the possibility of factual or certain knowledge. Foucault argues that these attempts 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).
    5. The ‘transcendental/empirical’ double—This ‘double’ pertains to the logic of positivism which acknowledges on the one hand that knowledge is conditioned by subjective perception, 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 of the discipline is valid because it is valid, or because it provides some final truth.
    6. 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.
    7. 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. 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'.
    8. 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 independent of context 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.

    For Foucault then, the different versions of modernist theory and their desire to possess certain or authentic knowledge about what it is to be human, do not represent inevitable or essential philosophical questions. Instead, modernism, including our social science methodologies, become historical objects of investigation whose are outcomes of the flow of history. Foucault does not describe the causal drivers of this transformation, but simply observes the shift. One has the sense in The order of things that modernism is a permutation of thought which contains traces of its Classical precedent, and particularly the faith of the Classical age in the possibility of ordered knowledge about an essential, God given world. Instead of knowledge of this world coming through man straight from God as was thought to be the case in the Classical period, in the modern episteme we find humans standing alone, but able nevertheless to act as channels for essential knowledge, despite the limitation of human intellect and social and historical placement. Foucault is not so much saying that modernism is wrong, and that another philosophy is better. He simply observes the ambiguity of modernist philosophical thought and the mutation of the scientific episteme from the Classical age. For Foucault, the complexities and contradictions of modernist philosophy render it ultimately unworkable, and, as a result, doomed to pass out of time. The unique method he adopts in The order of things enables an historical observation of the essentialism within modern philosophy and the human sciences.

    Archaeological method

    Dreyfus, H and Rabinow, P 1982, Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, chapters 3 and 4.

    In his books The order of things and The archaeology of knowledge the uniqueness of Foucault’s method and its difference from phenomenology, hermeneutics and structuralism begin to emerge. 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.

    1. 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 (interpretivism) 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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 absolute grounds for knowledge claims. In doing so, he aimed to enable us to observe and question the serious statements that govern our worlds, which would otherwise remain beyond scrutiny.
    4. How does Foucault 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 decides 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, or series of regularly coinciding statements. Foucault observes that each shift in social conditions 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.
    5. If objects of thought cannot form the basis for a field of study, how else can a field of study be identified? Another way to define a field of study would be to group statements around the words or signifiers that represent objects. However Foucault rejects this option also because he sees that it is not possible to speak about any object in any time period. For Foucault, if we take objects or words as the starting point we cannot see how those objects or words emerged in the first place and risk simply reinforcing their naturalness, rather than observing their dependencies.
    6. 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, or the regular relations between serious speech acts. Foucault argues 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. It is the relations that discourse establishes between specific speech acts, speakers, and contexts that enables, for example, psychiatric discourse and practice to make sense and to be taken seriously. 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.
    7. According to Foucault in this period of his work the discursive relations that enable discursive formations are governed by their own ‘rules of formation’. The rules of formation 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 at this time that the rules of formation govern the changes, ‘intrinsic mutations’ or ‘forms of sequence and succession’, that are possible within a given discursive formation.
    8. So, Foucault argues, not only is discourse unable to reveal absolute knowledge of objects, or of the 'deep meanings' they hold for human beings. Neither can discourse be seen to reveal a march of historical progress towards truth. What discourse allows us to ‘observe’ are the 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', or a study of discourse from the outside. Foucault observed epistemic shifts in knowledge rather than underlying fundamental meaning of the times (hermeneutics). Nor was he attempting to uncover anything arising from, or related to the structure 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.

    Problems with archaeology

    Foucault is clear that knowledge does not represent a real or objective world (positivism, realism), structures imposed by language (structuralism), or the determinations of institutions, or social and economic relations (Critical Theory). In his archaeological period he claims instead that discourse is governed by ‘rules of formation’ which determine 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. However, the view that discourse is governed by 'rules of formation' ultimately proves to be an unworkable proposition (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982). According to Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982:84), Foucault's conceptualisation of the rules of formation carries the sense that discourse is systematically regulated or pre-determined by some kind of underlying cause or explanatory a priori. This contradicts Foucault's claim that discursive practices are autonomous and self-determining, giving rise to the 'strange notion of regularities which regulate themselves' (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982:84). Dreyfus and Rabinow explain this problem in the archaeological period in terms of Foucault’s lingering commitment to structuralism which leads him to explain the regularity he observes within discursive practices by reference to something that sits outside the discursive realm. Foucault falls into the illogicality of the modernist paradigm when he insisted upon a ‘pure description’ of discourse that was to be taken as beyond any further horizon of intelligibility.

    Conclusion

    Notwithstanding this contradiction, Foucault's early work offers a new way of thinking about research practice. His work points to the need to explore how some statements come to be placed beyond scientific and philosophical question while others are not. This deflection from the meaning of discourse to the operation and effects of discourse, Foucaultian scholars argue, enables us to observe the workings of our own culture with a greater degree of distance and detachment than other perspectives offer. By showing the historical rather than the essential nature of previously unquestioned objects of thought, or serious statements, Foucault aimed to enable alternative ways of being.

    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 forward without contradiction in his genealogical work.

    Genealogy

    In his genealogical work, Foucault drops his insistence upon the governed nature of the rules of formation and the archaeologist's situation outside discourse. In his genealogical work, Foucault 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.

    Discipline and Punish

    Discipline and punish (1977) opens with an observation of the social and political conditions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries including: the increase in rebellions against sovereign power around the spectacles of torture and execution; greater accumulation of private property by wider sections of the population; the engagement of police with bandit gangs; the professionalisation and spread of crimes against property; an increasing perception of the inconsistencies and irregularities of the organisation of the legal machinery, and the powers of the monarch within it; a greater investment of wealth in commodities and machines; a popular tolerance of illegality.

    1. In these social conditions, Foucault observes that 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.
    2. 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.
    3. The institutionalisation and control of bodies in this period 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.
    4. This gradually emerging knowledge of the body, increasingly linked to an idea of the human ‘soul’, is the means by which bodies come to be regulated and to regulate themselves.  
    5. The function of prisons is not simply to regulate and control prisoners, they also play an important role in the regulation and control of the general population. This is achieved via the role of the prison in knowledge about 'healthy', 'normal' human social behaviour.

    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. In Foucault's analysis, 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 a ‘productive’ rather than an oppressive power; 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).

    The History of Sexuality

    1. 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’.
    2. 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, the idea of a 'secret self' 'buried' within human beings emerges in which truth and sex are increasingly intertwined.
    3. The confessional technique then ‘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.
    4. This notion of a (‘normal’/‘natural’/heterosexual) life force now had to be captured and channelled by governments in order to secure 'the national good'. 
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Foucault then 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.

    In the same way that Discipline and punish links the operation of power to the sciences of man, the History of sexuality ties the hermeneutic conviction in deep meaning and the practice of the confessional to the operation of power. 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 tied to the increasing regulation of society.

    Conclusion

    Exerpt from Bastalich, W. 2009, 'Reading Foucault: Genealogy and social science research methodology and ethics', Sociological Research Online, Vol. 14, Issue 2/3.

    The ethic that underpins a Foucaultian approach to research contrasts sharply with traditional modernist approaches to questions of research ethics. Existing conceptions of the purpose or value of research are based on a separation of truth and freedom from politics and power such that whatever stands on the side of truth must also necessarily stand for freedom and resistance. This split can take a variety of forms within discussions of research ethics. It occurs within the idea that the integrity of an interview, of the co-construction of meaning within a given context, is assured when the interviewer reveals a ‘personal bias’. ‘Resistance’ to power will occur, and violence, injustice or scholarly dishonesty will be prevented, by a disclosure of the researcher’s personal motivations, interests and social perspective. Such disclosure is seen as necessary to allow the truth of the research participant’s ‘real’ condition, or at least their real experience or interpretation to come through. In other discussions, the focus is on the importance of not betraying the truth of respondents. Questions about who has the power to tell the truth about a life, and over power relations within the research relationship, are central. The assumption is that telling the truth about a life is the best way to avoid questions of power understood as a negative force contained within a relatively static social position. Equality or an absence of power relations are seen to exist when there is negotiation and agreement about the stories produced. A similar code of ethics can be found within institutional research ethics codes which emphasise the consensual agreement of the participant and full disclosure of research aims and requirements prior to interview. Again the view is that power will be overcome when the truth is told, or when there is consensual agreement within full knowledge. The action or effects of knowledge, the reach of knowledge over bodies or fields of action, is not considered because the truth is seen to be emancipating in its very nature.

    While existing practices of consent and disclosure are of course important, in a Foucaultian frame they do not in themselves remove researchers from the field of power or from questions of correct ethical conduct. It is precisely in the name of truth, and the opposition of truth to power and politics, that all the ‘self-revelations’ prompted by the interview and other social research techniques are able to extend their grip over individuals and populations. For this reason Foucault (1984:247) was ‘irritated’ by analyses of society that promise freedom. For Foucault (1984:245), ‘liberty is a practice’ which cannot be guaranteed; it must be exercised. Freedom is not something the researcher enables by virtue of the ‘deep’ insights generated by the research. Nor can it be assured by laws, programs or procedures followed within the research process or arising from the recommendations generated by research. Freedom is always the business of persons acting in specific instances. Positive outcomes or liberation occurs when the intentions of progressive actions coincide with ‘the real practice of people in the exercise of their freedom’ (1984:246). The potential for change that lies within scholarship arises from its ability to open the field of possible actions, not from its setting new limits and new moral codes that delimit and define the boundaries of action.

    A genealogy of ethics—of different ways of thinking about the substance, mode of subjection, activity, and telos of ethical conduct—becomes the focus of Foucault’s later work. This is undertaken not in order to shed light on the past, or to provide a guide for action in the present, but to allow a perspective on the present, and on the specific problems of the present (Foucault, 1983b). Specifically, Foucault comments that his later work revolves around the problem in our time of finding a basis for conduct that is independent of religion, law and science. His commentary on the very different ways in which Europeans have constituted ethical conduct throughout history aims to show that there is no absolute rule that can serve as a guide for conduct. Taken as a whole, his middle and later work might be summarised in a specific concern with the dangers of an ethical mode of action, including governmental action, grounded in truth and science. Ethical research conduct refuses the link between science and conduct. In Foucault’s terms, researchers might reject a mode of d’ assujettissement, or way of thinking about the proper conduct of the self, that is premised on a link between ethics and social, economic and political structures (Foucault, 1983b:236). Examples of these links include those commonly made between the apparent good that resides within the responsibility to manage one’s productivity and health, the welfare of one’s children, spouse, neighbours, and so on, in the name of the national or social good. All such ties between individual conduct and collective well-being, when authorised by social ‘scientific’ methodologies, become moral laws that oblige persons to follow particular courses of action, or face moral condemnation if they refuse.

    In summary, Foucault’s work raises a novel perspective on the question of the ethics of research. It implies a need to question a mode of conduct based on an association of knowledge about human beings and society with the social good. For Foucault, the ethical task of the researcher is to resist forms of epistemic authority invested in modernist research practice. Ethical practice centres on an ‘indispensable restraint’ that ‘records the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality’ (Foucault, 1984b:76). Rather than reproduce culture and colonise difference via social analyses that ‘empower’ others by defining their freedoms, Foucault saw the need for empirical observations of the history of the relations of bodies, practices and knowledge.

    Differences between Foucault and other approaches

    In the topic on interpretivism we learned that phenomenology distinguishes between pre given experience and something more ‘immediate’ in experience. For Foucault, as for structuralism and for Derrida, it is not possible to arrive at an 'authentic' or final account of a phenomenon. Claims of this kind simply produce another account which can always be replaced by something 'more authentic’ and so on into infinity. In this way, Foucault shares with structuralism and with Derrida a rejection of the phenomenological project of unearthing a ‘deeper meaning’ that resides within human consciousness or within human cultural products and practices.

    For critical hermeneutics both subjects and objects of experience are always, already culturally determined. Foucault agreed with this, however he rejects the hermeneutic theoretical distinction between everyday meaning, and a 'deeper', hidden, or repressed meaning which he saw as just another cultural construction. Instead, he attempted to observe the space within which the 'serious statements' that make up discursive formations emerge and transform 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.

    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 was somewhat similar to structuralism's interest in abstract laws seen to govern the autonomous realm of language. However, even in his archaeological period, Foucault’s statements are governed by rules that are peculiar to a given period and discursive formation. French structuralism offers a synchronic study of language, Foucault offers a diachronic study of discourse.

    Differences between Derrida, Deleuze and Foucault

    From Baugh, B. 2003. French Hegel: From surrealism to postmodernism. Routledge: New York and London.

    1. For Foucault (and Deleuze) systems of thought are supported by the extra discursive realm, by mechanisms and techniques, and by the status of those who are authorised to speak the truth. For Derrida, meaning arises in the relations of signs, which itself produces the extra discursive world (hence Derrida's famous claim, 'there is nothing outside the text').
    2. For Foucault (and Deleuze), there is more than the text, the text itself is constituted by this more, the non discursive, practices, institutions, actions and discourse which give rise to serious speech acts.
    3. For Foucault (and Deleuze), to reduce everything to the text is to fail to bring to the foreground what the text insists upon, thereby leading to a reproduction of power, making it impossible to speak in any other terms.
    4. Foucault seeks to trace the history of discursive regularities, Deleuze the future direction of real forms of becoming; Derrida aims to upset oppositional thought within a study of present or existing language.

    References

    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.

    Bastalich, W. 2009, 'Reading Foucault: Genealogy and social science research methodology and ethics', Sociological Research Online, Vol. 14, Issue 2/3.

    Baugh, B. 2003. French Hegel: From surrealism to postmodernism. Routledge: New York and London.

    Dreyfus, H and Rabinow, P 1982, Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

    This web resource was developed by Wendy Bastalich.


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