Sunday, August 27, 2006
About discourses, positivities, and archaeology
It is hard to single out one topic or concept in Foucault’s reading. This book is full with information that can clarify the process of formulating a discourse, far beyond history. The second part of his book is dedicated to discursive regularities: discursive formations as well as formations of concepts, objects, enunciative modalities, and strategies. The third section is about statements – more than sentences, close to what Gee calls discursive models. Both sections seem to present Foucault’s methodology to buildup the archaeology of knowledge of a specific domain.
But this time I will only comment on two of these tools: contradictions and positivities.
ONE: Reading about contradictions was like finding an answer to some of the questions I already have, to some of the fears that paralyzes me when analyzing my data set. Somehow it seems research findings are about formulating a general statement, one that can encompass everything that has been researched. Nevertheless, Foucault stated,
So when analyzing discourse, contradictions are possible, and these together with a "dispersion of elements" that can buildup a discourse model.
TWO: For Foucault “positivities … [are] an attempt to reveal discursive practices in their complexity and density; to show that to speak is to do something – something other than to express what one thinks; to translate what one knows, and something other than to play with the structures of language (langue)” (p. 209) [italics added by the author]. This seems to be a clear and explicit connection to Austin’s (1962), How to do things with words, although he is not quoted or cited in this book.
Foucault’s (1972) discursive formations (Ch.2), or positivities, and Gee’s (2005) discourse models (in 1999, known as cultural models) seem to have similar underpinnings. But Foucault is in search of something bigger, an archaeology, a “discursive practice … [that] give rise to a corpus of knowledge” (p. 190). It is as if Gee’s discourse models were the pieces that together could buildup archaeology.
Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon Books.
But this time I will only comment on two of these tools: contradictions and positivities.
ONE: Reading about contradictions was like finding an answer to some of the questions I already have, to some of the fears that paralyzes me when analyzing my data set. Somehow it seems research findings are about formulating a general statement, one that can encompass everything that has been researched. Nevertheless, Foucault stated,
- “Discourse is the path from one contradiction to another: if it gives rise to those that can be seen, it is because it obeys that which it hides. To analyse (sic) discourse is to hide and reveal contradictions; it is to show the play that they set up within it; it is to manifest how it can express them, embody them, or give them a temporary appearance.
- For archaeological analysis, contradictions are neither appearances to be overcome, nor secret principles to be uncovered. They are objects to be described for themselves, without any attempt being made to discover from what point of view they can be dissipated, or at what level they can be radicalized and effects become causes” (p. 151).
So when analyzing discourse, contradictions are possible, and these together with a "dispersion of elements" that can buildup a discourse model.
TWO: For Foucault “positivities … [are] an attempt to reveal discursive practices in their complexity and density; to show that to speak is to do something – something other than to express what one thinks; to translate what one knows, and something other than to play with the structures of language (langue)” (p. 209) [italics added by the author]. This seems to be a clear and explicit connection to Austin’s (1962), How to do things with words, although he is not quoted or cited in this book.
Foucault’s (1972) discursive formations (Ch.2), or positivities, and Gee’s (2005) discourse models (in 1999, known as cultural models) seem to have similar underpinnings. But Foucault is in search of something bigger, an archaeology, a “discursive practice … [that] give rise to a corpus of knowledge” (p. 190). It is as if Gee’s discourse models were the pieces that together could buildup archaeology.
Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon Books.
