Reactions to Foucault

Foucault makes the point that discourse is not the translation of an idea into language. Rather, language is involved in the formation of an idea even before it is committed to some form of interpersonal communication. Language will therefore shape the thoughts we have them even before we attempt to speak them. Since language is inherently structured, what is produced with language will be structured. This structure within discourse in turn creates the structures and systems we might call "academic fields," even those these fields might contain drastically contradictory theories.

Within Biblical Studies, we can see this happening. Modern biblical scholarship ranges from scholars who assert the "inerrant fact" of Scripture and those that assert that Scripture is an anthology of fictional narratives. The analysis both of these methods produces varies wildly, and yet both fall under the aegis of "Biblical Studies." They are studying the same core text, but do so in radically different ways and with different tools. They would not need to be considered the same field. A chemist and a physicist can both study elemental hydrogen, but would do so with different goals in mind. They also would not be considered the same academic discipline.

The minimalist and the maximalist both contribute to biblical studies. Both attempt to find the "truth" which is believed to be found within the text of sacred writings. This truth varies for each of them. It could be what the ancients believed a text to mean, what the text can mean today, what historical reality can we find from the text, how the text points to doctrinal statements made/held today, etc. This web around Scripture and "truth," with varying definitions of all of the included terms, can be held to be "Biblical Studies."

Foucault, Michel - The Archaeology of Knowledge: Part II

9/12/12
Part II The Discursive Regularities
Ch 1 The Unities of Discourse
(21f) We must rid ourselves of the notions over-arching systems which tie events, people, and ideas together: tradition, "spirit", influence, and evolution/progress. We must at least question them. Further, we must question/discard divisions of disciplines: politics, religion, literature, etc. The unity of works themselves becomes problematic, since texts pull from any number of previous sources. We must also be willing to allow events to occur without (knowable) causation.
(25f) Not all of these needs be rejected out of hand. Rather, must be questioned and their assumed nature challenged. Must start with a group of descriptions of discursive events and build out of it any such structure that might be within it. Even with all the questioning and discarding above, we may end up with a very similar set of unities built out of our set.
Must be willing to disregard preconceived ideas of how things are related. In biblical studies, perhaps we need to question the unity of the books themselves along with the traditions which hold them together. We might even push further and question the existence of the traditions themselves. Thus, to claim a "priestly" source, we would need to examine the evidence of a priestly caste and look for its presence. This could be done purely textually, but we would need to establish the nature of the texts themselves. We often assume a priesthood which performed acts at holy sites, but what evidence that it was unified (as presented in the Torah) is there?
Ch 2 Discursive Formations
(31f) Two questions arise: what are these "statements" (which he will deal with later) and what is the nature of the relationships between two (or more) statements? Are these relationships completely socially constructed or are they something which was formally set down in the past, evolving into their present status?
(32f) First hypothesis: statements are related if they are about the same thing. However, this ends up too narrow, or with so broadly defined an "object" as to be useless.
(33f) Second hypothesis: connect statements based upon form and kind. This one breaks down because style is constantly changing; the nuances of making statements and tools used to do so constantly change, making forging a unity out of them difficult.
(34f) Third hypothesis: base the relations on definitions. The problem here is that definitions are adapted, discarded, and created as a field progresses.
(35f) Fourth hypothesis: identify persistent themes between statements. This leads to multiple kinds of discourse on the same theme: a discourse based on unity to and one based on disjunction from. Rather than work with themes, one might work with possibilities over persistence.
(37f) None of these hypotheses are sufficient to describe disciplines enough to project a history of them. Rather, are going to look for a "system of dispersion" among elements in a group, calling this a "discursive formation". This approach does not promise to provide us with the clean unities we are holding in abeyance.
Here we will have to disregard the Bible as we have it, along with the "Traditional" understanding of methodology. We might be able to define the text by showing a history of what is included (in a particular book, in a particular canon, etc.). What would need follow would be a construction of a system of study, followed by application.
Ch 3 The Formation of Objects
(40f) Looking at the objects which fall into an (admittedly arbitrary) system of distribution, can we find similarities between them? He explores psychopathology beginning in the 19th century as an example. In the example, psychopathology is not defined by a group of objects in a clear dispersion, but rather from disparate objects which have been linked together to create a system. The objects exist under a complex system of connections. These relationships are extrinsic to the objects themselves. Further, there are kinds of relations: primary (clearly evident ones), secondary (ones which are produced in talking about the primary ones) and discursive ones (as yet undefined but dealing with the links between primary and secondary). Discursive relations exist at the boundaries: they define the areas in which the discourse is to take place.
(46f) Returning to the idea of disciplines, are they simply linked attempts of discourse? Rather, they are bound by a set of rules. This leaves us discussing not objects themselves, but analyzing them based on rules and the evolution of those rules through time. Definitions of specific objects are beyond the scope of historical discussion, to some extent. One can state what a term means, but not if that was accurate. (?)
What do we do here with regards biblical studies? Do we avoid debates on what a "priest" is (or should be) and rather attempt to present how they were described? Is this not particularly helpful? What "rules" would be extant for biblicists?
Ch 4 The Formation of Enuciative Modalities
(50f)
09/24/12
What is a physician and why are they allowed to make such statements as they are? These statements are built from 1) the social construct of what the title "Doctor" confers on the speaker, 2) the location(s) in which they are made, 3) The position within the wider range of the medical field (specialty, sub-specialty, plotical/social rank, etc.)
The act of discourse does not involve encoding an existing thought into language. Rather, language itself is required for the thought. Thoughts are discursive even when they are still in our head..
Ch 5 The Formation of Concepts
(56f) Knowledge structures (fields) are not built stone-by-stone as a building is. There is construction going on, but it is far more fluid than material building is. 1) Knowledge statements are successive (That is A leads to B, for varying definitions of the phrase "leads to") 2) statements coexist within a field (differing theories to the same problem), between fields (physics can impact biology), and in memory (old, discarded ideas still hold influence) 3) Fields have methods of interacting with their statements.
All of these parts are going on simultaneously and also form knowledge statements within the field themselves that can be shared between fields. They also shape the work that is (and can) be done within a particular field.
You do not state pre-extant "facts" through discourse, but rather discourse is producing a description of the relationships between elements within a field based on the realities of the field.
The structures of a field were not consciously constructed by a group/individual. Rather, they emerged over time from the relationships between discourses. Concepts are not formed from some concept of Platonic Forms nor through empirically finding ideas.

Ch 6. The Formation of Strategies
(64f) Strategies (themes/theories) within a field - do these emerge out of necessity? randomness? Is there an underlying structure to how theory is developed? How can we tell? 1) Identify where 2 (or more) ideas which coexist in some fashion are mutually exclusive, but one can present how these options arose in parallel, despite the positions themselves being mutually exclusive 2) Some possibilities are not realized -> explore the why of this 3) the function of a field of study is determined to soem degree by non-academic endeavors (capitalism drives the study of economics)
Can show a field extant if one can describe how its various strategies and discourses arose, even if those elements have some level of antagonism to one another.

Ch 7 Remarks and Consequences
(71f) How helpful is this current analysis over against other forms of defining field? - answered later in the book
Can we speak of unities (given this established method of defining them)?
1) Fields are not just discrete elements of knowledge, but also the relationships between them
2) The systems of a field (and discourse in general) arise from discourse itself. They are not imposed upon it from outside by participants nor are they pre-ordained (divine) structures which are necessary. Thus, systems are organic and complex, altering over time.
3) These systems are not the final part of the field. They are not the produced texts. They are where analysis occurs
"Discourse and system produce each other - and conjointly - only at the crest of this immense reserve" [of development and analysis].


Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Harper Colophon Books: New York, NY, 1972.

Foucault, Michel - The Archaeology of Knowledge (Introduction)

Part I

Introduction (3f)

Foucault begins by documenting a shift in what history is focusing on, from particular events/ideas to an attempt to define the underlying systems behind those ideas. The focus started to be on the discontinuities and how they fit into a structure. The question then becomes: how different is different? Furthermore, while history starts looking for unified systems, philosophies in other disciplines are dealing with "How the same does something have to be in order to be unified?"

(6f) History used to deal with documents and attempted to reconstruct the past out of the document(s). Now, history is attempting to dissect the document into its parts and then find how those parts relate to one another. History used to turn the monuments of memory into documents, now it is turning documents into monuments. History used to take a series of events and attempt to connect them through relationships. Now, it is questioning the series and what belongs in that series (before even attempting the relational aspects). The nature of discontinuity has changed as well: rather than attempting to obliterate through discussion discontinuity from history, discontinuity is highlighted. The idea of total history, wherein the nature of civilization is distilled, begins to vanish and the idea of general history arises, wherein the form(s) of relation(s) between different historical series can be distilled. Finally, new history has problems with methodology, which doubtless existed before, but are now in the forefront: how are documents treated, how are they related, how much statistics plays in it, etc.

(11f) In history, there has been a particular distaste for dealing with the Other. This is because history has been an attempt to identify a unified human consciousness and to enshrine it as evolving constantly, but within a specific system wherein it progresses toward something better. History kept humans (specifically consciousness) at its center. Marx began to decentralize it by focusing on economics rather than humans, explaining human actions not as acts of will alone, but influenced by economic factors. History stopped being the sacralized citadel it had been, and became alive.

(14f) He puts forth his objectives, which are as follows:

• To show the changes within "historical thought" which are happening on their own, not to specifically introduce the idea of structuralist history
• His use of systems and structures is not to support them, but rather to bring them into question.
• To attempt to take anthropological concerns (that is, humans and human consciousness) out of the center within a historical method.

(16f) He explores problems within his previous works.

In the introduction, Foucault attempts to point out that "old history" used to use documents to propose a series of events between which it attempted to establish (usually causal) relationships. "New history" attempts to dissect the documents (giving a history of the document, in one sense) and then attempt to obscure distinct events into larger systems operating over time. This is an interesting comparison to biblical studies, wherein the documents have been dissected for decades if not centuries. The later shift in biblical studies has been shifted back toward whole documents. An attempt to "decentralize" the bible from biblical studies is something which would probably nearly cause a riot. How would this be done? Likely this question is a bit naive at this point, so perhaps a better one might be: What does it mean that biblical studies hold the Bible as central to its study? What questions would this status invalidate?

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Harper Colophon Books: New York, NY, 1972.

Clark: History, Theory, Text (Ch 4)

This chapter aims to explore how specific groups broached new methods of historiography. These same groups continued to show the influences of positivism in their works and continued to bar philosophy ad theory from much of their work, even though they began focusing on under-attended areas of history.

In France, the journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale (Febvre and Bloch) worked to counter positivism in France. It used Ranke's technique, if not his theory, when writing history. The journal's influence reached far beyond France. Their goals included an attempt to present history as framed by the questions posed by the historian. Rather than "submit"  to documents, Febvre put forth that there is no history, only a historian and her questions and hypotheses. History then becomes "a way of organizing the past."

The Annales also rejected the focus on events of history. Rather than focus on a series of events, they attempted to find ways of constructing a history of those affected by major events but not causing them. Their focus was often on those out of power rather than the "movers-and-shakers" of traditional history. This shifted focus from individual power brokers to institutional causes in a number of cases.

Another focus of the Annales was on analysis. The question/problem being studied must be identified before any other work can be done. Thus, the object of study for a historian is created by the question(s) she asks of the past (and present).

The tools used by the authors of the Annales were interdisciplinary. They pulled in a number of methods from numerous disciplines (especially social sciences) in an attempt to answer the questions they posed.

The latter members of the Annales shifted toward a history of ideas rather than structures. Structures were too tied to events, despite their clearly constructed nature. Thus, a number of mental constructs began to be studied. 

A reaction grew against the Annales for its lack of addressing philosophical issues around history. Even here, history was conceived of as concept-driven, not event-driven.

Veyne begins working against a number of these theories. He takes a decidedly unique approach and deals with epistemology and other philosophical issues. Additionally, he pushes history toward literature rather than science, pointing out that literature share much more with history, the only real difference is that history is about the "interesting" and the "true," lacking any way to construct "Good" or "Evil." 

Structuralism began to fall out of grace in the 70s as events caused by individual actions (say, the revolutions of '68 in France) began to cause problems for those writing the histories. Intertextuality begins to alter how texts are viewed.

Another movement of historians were the micro-historians. They rejected looking for over-arching structures or long periods of time, rather they focused on small areas, populations, and time frames. This focus was argued to present the "lived history" of a group of people and much more aligns with life experiences. Problems with this approach include turning history into fairy tales. These stories involve a good deal of invention on the part of the historian. Another problem is that the microhistorians often took their document sources at face value.

In Britain, Marxist historians favored attempts which paralleled the Annales in some respects. They endorsed view focusing on the lower classes, dealing with class issues and human agency. However, they did not address the philosophic issues of epistemology and language. Thompson and Althusser debated just how humanist Marx was: did Marx fill his revolutions with people or with structures of class?

Clark, Elizabeth A. History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA: 2004.

Clark: History, Theory, Text (Ch 3)

Structuralism changed from interest in referent and observed to components of a system. It challenged a number of dominant theories (Marxist, existentialism, phenomenology, etc.), however it fell about as quickly as it rose. It grew out of the shift with respect to earlier linguistic, quantum physics, and other developments which began to destabilize other disciplines.

Structuralism began to lead the the destabilization of history. It did this by beginning to focus on the object and attempting to name the structures within. This deconstruction isn't possible on such a historic object.

Saussure started structuralism by beginning with language. Breaking with the tradition that language was a series of actual elements, he posited that all the elements of language were arbitrarily assigned (by the culture using the language) to the items they signified. Thus, much (all) of language is arbitrary and socially constructed. Thus, language is a system of arbitrary signs. Many linguists which followed insisted that Saussure only intended this to be applied to language, however there is evidence that he was thinking much larger. The real becomes known through these signs (both innerlanguage and interlanguage signs). One must for the moment accept that there is a real to perceive and process linguistically.

Levi-Strauss takes this new linguistic model and applies it to Anthropology. By reading culture as a series of signs, he reworked how anthropology had been done. He hoped to create a "scientific" anthropology. His shift also distanced himself from historians of the time, which he considered to just be studying events of the past. He viewed myth as an attempt by a culture to deal with the past and apply its lessons to the present. Thus, he saw myth as removing time from the system of culture. This in turn leads to questioning history in the Western sense.

Levi-Strauss has been labeled as anti-historic and anti-humanist by his detractors. He is not fully either, but he is against certain forms of history and certain forms of humanism, especially positivistic ones. He also very strongly defends the position that histories are "history-for." There will always be elements left out of any historian's narrative. This will inevitably lead to a history which is biased and lacking pure objectivity.

Four major critiques explored:

Ricoeur: He argued that structural linguistics presented a closed system with no outside referent (reality). This clearly violates the lived experience of human language. However, parts of structuralism were useful when applied properly. He thought that Levi-Strauss limited himself to the "savage mind" which made it nearly impossible to apply his tools to other modes of beings (say, modern humans). Ricoeur suggested that Levi-Strauss should have studied texts such as the Hebrew Bible or Greek Myth. Levi-Strauss points out that these myths have been turned into texts and thus removed from their original purpose and setting. (This act of "canonization," both the original formation of the texts as they are and the development of a "holy book" would certainly have altered the perceived meanings of the texts with the ideology of the redactors. Can this ideology be recovered? If so, can this ideology be removed from the texts in order to attempt a recovery of the original intent?) Levi-Strauss also argued that the "savage mind" is not so foreign from our own, despite our "higher" level of understanding.

Derrida: He argues that Saussure's demotion of writing under spoken does not align with Saussure's position that symbols are arbitrary. Derrida argues that the written word signifies two things: the sounds of the spoken word and the thing signified by that word. (This is a very alphabet-centric concept of writing, ignoring pictographic systems of writing where signs have multiple phonetic values.) He argued against Levi-Strauss' continued demotion of written language and his presentation of the written word as being the implied downfall of native cultures.

Anderson: He shows that Levi-Strauss's paralleling of linguistic "objects" to physical objects is not logically sustainable. Language is moreover the product of individuals while culture is the product of culture groups. (Uncertain how applicable this criticism is, as while a specific bowl may only be used by one individual, the concept of a bowl can be used by whoever might fashion one.)

Macherey: He argued that structural literary theory assumes meaning is "in" a text and can be discovered, with this being not very different from traditional literary theory. Macherey would argue that a text must be read in light of what it does not say just as much as what it says. The critic must be able to show a work to be more than what that work is alone by bringing in what the work does not explicitly or implicitly do itself.

Structuralism does provide a number of useful emphases: rigor, the goal of a "meaningful whole" and the admission that language is more than what it states itself to be. Further, structuralism has influenced history by removing much of the positivist baggage from it: cultures are not necessarily "natural," language signs (and other signs) are arbitrary, culture much like language is a system of signs, and so on.

Clark, Elizabeth A. History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA: 2004.

Clark: History, Theory, Text (Ch 2)

Anglophone philosophers turned to language with the hope that they could, through precision, remove a number of the problems that philosophy of history had run into. Eventually, they move out of science and into the realm of narrative and its relationship with history. The appeal to "science" assumed a fairly uniform method throughout all sciences, which was far from what existed in actuality.

Popper posited that historians and natural scientists both attempted to use "prediction" to explain phenomenon and point to universal laws. History cannot be a science, though, because of the nature of its data: unique, unrepeatable events. Thus if those laws exist, they cannot be firmly found. Hempel attempts to push back against Popper's position that the laws are not extant, pushing back toward casual explanation as part of history. Hempel's disciples attempted some form of experimentation, but since history's events are unique by nature, this proved less than useful. Dray argued that Hempel's insistence on law be abandoned as it was not helpful.

Danto argues that simply because history's data is not directly observable does not make it any less scientific than, say, physics. History's meaning cannot be seen in the present of an event, but only from a point after the event (and its repercussions) have unfolded. In the end, the issue became that historians and philosophers were interested in different questions, so any discussion which might have occurred ended up not affecting the practice of historiography.

Most modern historians do not attempt to define their approach to historiography, despite however much this might be "best practice". Most fall into one of two camps: Putnum's pratical/internal realism or popular pragmatism (Rorty contra Pierce).

Putnum argues that there is no possible way to view history from a "God's eye view." That is, the omniscient narrator is an impossibility for a human author, despite the long history of attempts by historians to provide such a perspective. He argues for an "objectivity for us" with an admission that such a perspective will never attain the objectivity desired from the "God's eye view". But what we can attain is a "good enough" attempt which is internally consistent with itself, reason, and with the historian's [given] social-historical setting.

Rorty argues that Putnum's approach is uncontroversial. Further, he argues it is unnecessary. Histories are written for a specific audience, thus it is through use that a history provides meaning, not through some appeal to a hidden truth,

These theories are widely used, but often misunderstood. Rather than disavow the attempt at moving toward a pure objectivism, modern historians will often claim that these approaches allow them to be purely objective. This misses many of the positions that both Rorty and Putnum rejected.

Clark, Elizabeth A. History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA: 2004.

The End of Positivism?

Looking at Positivism from a post-modern perspective presents a number of issues. When potential causes of the 19th/early 20th century phenomenon are labeled, arguments against such claims virtually build themselves. Further, positivism's influences waxed and waned in different fields at different times. This causes a number of issues if one attempts to establish causation for different philosophical phenomenon that are linked to positivism.

Positivism and Modernism are linked, thus working definitions should be established for both. Positivism is the belief that knowledge-seeking endeavors ("sciences", including social sciences and the humanities in some incarnations) should be done by collecting empirical sense data and then theories and laws extrapolated from that data. It holds that this is true in all forms of study, whether this be a "pure" science such as mathematics or a social science such as psychology. Modernism takes the Positivist ideal and postulates that since the current (modern) era has more data available to it than previous eras, it must therefore be empirically better than previous eras. It might further argue (especially in its 19th/early 20th century contexts) that societies which have adopted the newest technologies and scientific theorems are empirically better than other societies.

One of the primary influences on these theories was the so-called Industrial Revolution. The benefits to industrialization for a society were seen as inherently better than the best pre-industrial societies could offer. This pushed a view that the Western powers which had been the first to industrialized were "better" than the rest of the known world. Since many of the problems of industrialization were virtually invisible to the upper classes of society of the time due to those problems affecting lower classes disproportionately, there was little negative attention in much of "high society" of the time.

This is clearly a generalization. Many persons were very vocal about the problems of industrialization, both in the upper class and the lower ones. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is an example of attempts to correct these problems. The beginnings of the labor movement is another. However, the insular nature of many of those in the "thinking" class often lead to them being inured from much of this criticism until it becomes too loud to ignore.

For the theological example, one can look at the dominance of Schliermacher in German theology up until the Second World War. Barth's criticisms of Schliermacher's general optimism and positivist attitudes in the 20's and 30's highlight much of the tension that came to focus around positivism/modernism in the period between the World Wars.

It was these wars which forced much of the world to question the value of modernism and positivism. Since the conflict of the First World War essentially boiled down to Europe's attempt to decide the "best" western power (at thus the "best" race-nation in the world), its complete failure to produce this in any empirical sense began the process of destroying the tenants of positivism. The Second World War is now seen as the inevitable continuation of the First, due in large part to the world power's failure manage any real sort of change in attitude. At the conclusion of the First World War, Europe effectively attempted to continue much of the same policies and thought processes which led to the war itself with only a few minor rule changes.

While the two World Wars are the clearest voices to grow out of the problems of Modernist and Positivism, they are not the sole causes of their downfall. Industrialization itself made many of its problems known to those who were looking for them well before industrial war brought them screaming into the headlines. Yet these two wars are perhaps the clearest voices of the dangers of this sort of thinking.

Despite the deep scars the wars left, there are still academic areas which have not engaged this challenge to modernist thinking. Many biblicists still approach texts as if there is a single "correct" meaning which can be drawn from the data (the text), provided one is objective enough. Arguments on objectivity aside, searching something as vague as language for a concrete, singular meaning ignores work from current linguistic scholars on the vagaries of language (see Relevance Theory). There are clearly "more correct" interpretations than others, but there cannot be a single "correct" interpretation of a text, especially ones which are now so removed from their original context and intent as religiously canonical writings.