Foucault and Hermeneutics

Foucault didn't accept to be labelled as a post-modernist or post-structuralist. His ideas and methods were inspired in many instances by those of Nietzsche. When it comes to hermeneutics which is the science of interpretation, and for example objectivist hermeneutics seeks “understanding of underlying meaning, not the explanation of causal relations”. (Alvesson and Sköldberg, p.91)

As we have seen while discussing Foucault and his methods, his aim is not interpretation or explanation and he sees also the hermeneutics of suspicion which was developed by Freud, in which people we supposed to understand themselves as part of the problem and not the solution. Because Foucault saw that also the process of understanding oneself is interwoven with the power problem. Hermeneutics and other sciences contributed in creating “bio-power” that is the power of controlling the human beings.

“Bio-power can be described as «a set of historical practises which produces the human objects systematized by structuralism and the human subjects explicated by hermeneutics»” (Dreyfus and Rainbow, quoted in Alvesson and Sköldberg, p.254)

So bio-power is that power which is found in institutions such as schools, hospitals, etc.

Some points about Foucault

What I find interesting about Foucault is that he takes words like discourse, genealogy, archeology and uses them in ways that are different from the usual understanding. I think that is exactly what he tries to do, tries to challenge the way we see, think and interpret knowledge. He never provides us with clear definitions and it is my opinion that he does not believe in such things. He just tries to point out to things that are taken for granted and writes:

"The object, in short, is to define the regime of power-knowledge-pleasure that sustains the discourse on human sexuality in our part of the world." (Foucault, "The history of sexuality" Volume 1, An introduction (1976), p.11)

Discourse is used differently by Foucault, it the production of knowledge by language, it is a way of speaking about social practises, objects etc., that makes the other ways of speaking as unacceptable and untruthful. He also wrote that nothing exists outside of discourse and called people "docile bodies" that are ruled by discourse. In his later writings he changed this perspective somewhat but I will not go into that here.

"Discourse constructs, defines, and produces the objects of knowledge in an intelligible way while at the same time excluding other ways of reasoning as unintelligible. Foucault attempts to identify the historical conditions and determining rules of formation of regulated ways of speaking about objects, that is discursive practice and discursive formations.”

(Chris Barker “Cultural studies” (2008), p. 20)

Foucault

This time the discussion is about a famous French philosopher (postmodernist) Michel Foucault. His main writing deal about discourse, archeology (different definition) and genealogy. What characterizes him is that he does not give definitions or does not look at texts per se, he looks for the relation between power and knowledge and how they are interrelated.
I will post here some of my points from this discussion from the school's forum.

The role of standardization

So I would like just to write some things about the standardization of the language and the role it plays in the creation of identity. As Le Page and Tabournet-Keller write, making one dialect the norm, makes people believe that one way of speaking is better than the other. It creates groups whose dialect becomes the norm as the group with prestige and the other group whose dialect is marginalized as the powerless and uneducated group. Do the people who speak bokmål have more prestige than those who speak other dialects of Norwegian? I haven't noticed anything about this, on the contrary people who speak other dialects of Norwegian have told me that they don't attach any more importance to bokmål than to the other variations of Norwegian. Is this true? Maybe that explains the attitude that “meeuh” has to different variations of Norwegian that he uses.

Philip Riley in his book “Language, culture and identity” (not pensum, but relevant to the issue of standardization) writes about the importance of the issue of standardization of a language:

“Of all the linguistic factors contributing to the formation and expression of social identities probably the most prevasive is the complex social and historical process of standardization, whereby one or more language variety is codified and for that,... is considered as superior in many ways to non-standard variations.” (page 234)

He continues by saying that the standard language becomes the main language of the institutions, therefore it will be linked with power. What he emphasizes is that making one language standard compared to the other is the social and political conditions, and not something regular or special about the language that is standardized.

p.s This is one of the posts in the discussion I am doing at school.

Crisis over

The discussion day 1, almost over and it went much better than I expected. And I was in such a bad mood in the morning. But got to write more and more during the day. The topic is language, identity, how these two are interconnected, how we present ourselves through the language we use, variations and mixtures.
Another thing we have to discuss is the standardization of language, what that means for the group whose language is marginalized and how standardizations is done not because one dialect is better than the other, but because the sociological and political conditions.

Language and identity

Today I got the topic for the second discussion on the internet (we have two discussions on the internet for each subject). The teacher posts what he wants us to discuss and then the group posts their opinions. It is like a forum, but closed only to our group.
So, the topic is language and identity and we got a web discussion on scandinavian languages and we have to discuss the profile of one user on how his identity develops in here. I have read all we had to for this discussion and have no idea what the teacher wants us to do. And the funny thing is that I am the discussion leader. I am the one who is supposed to make the decisions about what we will talk about, what we will go deeper into.
So now I have all my material in front of me, a headache because of the frustration and just want to eat something.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I have to figure out this...