Discursive Formations

I've picked up Foucault's 'The Archaeology of Knowledge' from Macquarie University library, and I'm deeply in love. It seems odd that adoption of postmodernity through the psychology-oriented disciplines that I study means mostly, at a maximum, that we aim to contextualise our knowledge. That's odd because in this book, Foucault outlines such a deeper process that he purports is vital in understanding the unity of a discipline, the discipline in question for me being psychology. It's perhaps not so odd in that Foucault states that he demands this deeper process understanding in order to maximise his sense of felt control over his subject matter, so it is unlikely to be a system that meets anyone else's demands in terms of necessary rigor in deconstructing a word, a book, or an oeuvre.

Nevertheless, I want to record his four hypotheses of 'discursive formations' in order that I contemplate their relation to knowledge. Broadly these conform to 'objects, mode of statement, concepts, thematic choices'.

Objects

'Statements different in form, and dispersed in time, form a group if they refer to one and the same object'.

But, 'psychology' as an object, now, does not equate to what was considered as pscyhology in 1890 or even 1960. We need to know more about the space in which psychology is fashioned over time - there is an interplay of rules that define transformation of the psychology object, and indeed, outlining these will formulate laws of division which separate them, in time.

Mode of Statement

A group of relations between statements can be defined by the forms and types of connexions, themselves. For example medicine in the 19th century was characterised by certain types of descriptive statements. Knowledge is mediated by observations made via instruments, statistical calculations, epidemiological observations, perceptual descriptions and therapeutic practice. A transformation takes place in the types of statements themselves, as well as in their relationship, over time.

Concepts

This method involves hierarchical organisation of statements - Foucault provides the example of Classical grammar - judgement defined as the general normative form of any sentence, subject and predicate being grouped under 'noun', verb being used for logical copula. But, new emerging forms throw a spanner in the works - these forms may apply to emerging concepts or pre-existing ones, arranged in a new way.

Thematic choices

The identity and persistence of themes is another proposal for identification of unitary forms - capable of linking, animating discourses, like an organism with it's own internal force, and capacity for survival. It is possible, however to identify different themes for the same idea - for evolution, as per Foucault's example, we see the idea of kinship as the most important aspect in 18th century thought, but by the 19th century describing discontinous groups and their interactions with the environment had greater explanatory value of the work of the field.

These four are the rules of discursive formation of a field, in themselves far from perfect, but together helping to delineate, in a deeper way (than is the typical) the abstract fields of knowledge that we so take for granted in striving in the academic environment.

En-amour-ed, indeed. Bring on the interiority and the promise, yea.

Ref: Foucault, M. (1969). L'Archeologie du saviour -The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge