Knowledge, power and ‘ways of seeing’: Foucault and his discourse analysis
From Colebatch to Frank Fischer, all the modern interpreters of policy processes and policy actions extended the existing discourse in the public policy studies to the interests, values and normative, from a mere inputs and outputs considerations. Among all of these ways of seeing, Foucauldian analysis make us available the tools which can help in unraveling the ‘truth’, especially in figuring out on how something gets established as the ‘truth’ at the first place. This is even truer when one of the most critical engagement, for the public policy scholars has been with the nature of knowledge, the knowledge which shapes the policy process and the knowledge which guides the implementation and this is exactly where the Foucauldian lenses become very critical, by providing us with the ‘alternatives’ to the reality. For Foucault, all social practices should be understood by their discursive construction. It is the discourse which provides a certain social action with the necessary legitimacy and constructs the conceptual categories, under which these practices are generally understood. Any given discourse, both allows and limits the possibilities of understanding and action. It enables and constrains what can be said, by whom, where and whom?
In his work, through knowledge-power praxis, Foucault tries to unravel how knowledge and power are interlinked. Unlike other social scientists (Weber, Lukes and Gramsci), Foucault’s power is not always coercive. For him, power could be both repressive and productive and it is most effective when it is productive. It constructs individuals as objects of knowledge and as subjects which are controlled, and perhaps, by themselves. His analysis turns the table on the understandings of modernity, making us realize that while we might think we have achieved greater freedom, we are, in reality, more tightly constrained than ever before. Also, it is not just that we accept practices and the discourses that go with them, we also locate (position ourselves) on that conceptual map. We take the roles defined by those very concepts and think of ourselves in those terms. The kind of subject positions we take, in turn, define our identities and selves.
In Foucault’s scheme of things, the dominant discourses tend to privilege the versions of social reality which legitimizes the state-quo. Some discourses are so entrenched (reified existence) that it is difficult to see them being challenged, as they are now a part of the ‘common sense.' For example, the discourse around the public education limit itself to whether there should be a government support to public education (from the rights discourse) or the citizens should be left to themselves (from the choice discourse) to decide over the education of their children, ignoring second order questions such as ‘what kind of education we are talking about?’ or ‘what is it meant to be a child?’ etc. Discourses are not just way of speaking or writing about things, but ways of organizing, regulating and administering social life. These discourses give rise to a plethora of institutions. For example, being positioned as ‘patient’ in a medical discourse means that one’s body is now an object of interest for medical professionals, and can be violated legitimately. Bodies are controlled, administered and violated with the consent of the subjects.
A Foucauldian analysis of a given phenomenon would ask a different set of questions than the classical evaluation studies might have asked. It would be more interested in looking at how a certain discourse arose and then try to locate it historically and culturally. Further investigations in the phenomena might be followed by these questions;
(i) What kind of subject positions does the discourse offer?
(ii) What kind of categories or types of people or activities are on offer that people can adopt for themselves or assign to others?
(iii) What kind of actions do these discourses make possible or what kind of actions do they prohibit?
(iv) How do these discourses support institutions and reproduce power relations?
A Foucauldian way of looking at the reality would essentially be interested in finding out the hidden relationships in a text or practice. Who is exercising the power and what is left unspecified or unsaid are the legitimate questions which need to be asked.
Thus, for Foucault, our attempt should not be wasted in constructing a general theory of the human subject or a reality, rather it should be invested in revealing the layers of complexities in presentations and representations in our daily lives. He places importance on mapping out the discursive conditions which “make possible the emergence of specific subjectivities, the technologies which operate to shape such subjectivities and the practices in which we turn ourselves into what is deemed desirable – to govern ourselves – the conduct of conduct”.