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Foucauldian Discourse Analysis
Michael Arribas-Ayllon and Valerie Walkerdine
INTRODUCTION
Since the 1970s, the term 'discourse' has referred
to an extraordinarily diverse field of research con-
cerned with the analysis of language, signs and
text. Some have described the 'linguistic turn' as
a major development in Western thought (Rorty,
1967), a 'growth industry' among Anglo-
American academics (Hook, 2001a, 2001b), and
the product of 'marketing' aimed at undergraduate
pedagogy (McHoul, 1997). What has become
known as 'discourse analysis' reflects a distinct
interest in the social, political and psychological
characteristics of language use. Given the variety
of approaches that now exist, discourse analysis
means different things to different tribes within
the social sciences. For us, discourse refers to
institutionalized patterns of knowledge that
govern the formation of subjectivity. This is quite
different to other approaches that apply Foucault's
ideas as a method of applied linguistic analysis. In
this chapter, we show how a Foucauldian approach
to discourse analysis might be usefully applied in
critical psychological research.
It is customary to warn that there are no set
rules or procedures for conducting Foucauldian-
inspired analysis. To avoid formalizing an
approach that clearly refuses formalization, we
are also cautious about prescribing a specific way
of using Foucault. Over the course of his writings,
Foucault's ideas and methods had changed in rela-
tion to the problems he worked on: the exclusion
of madness, the birth of clinical medicine, the
disciplinary practices of the prison, the regula-
tion of sexuality, the governmentality of society,
and the ethics of subjectivity. As such, there is
no consistent programme of work from which to
extract a methodology. Furthermore, Foucault's
ideas are challenging to understand and apply,
partly because his elliptical style of writing often
avoids explicit formulation, and because his
view of discourse is more diffuse than linguistic
approaches. Indeed, it would be wrong to assume
that Foucault equates 'discourse' with a system
of language. Given the difficulties of explaining a
body of work that is both diffuse and variable, in
this chapter we aim to give a broad sketch of the
relevance of discourse to psychology.
The relationship between discourse and psy-
chology assumes a commitment to being criti-
cal of psychology as a body of knowledge, and
it involves doing psychological research in a
different way. In the first instance, discourse
analysis is a method of exposing the historical
conditions through which psychological knowl-
edge has played a part in shaping the conduct of
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FOUCAULDIAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 111
individuals in Western societies. But it is also a
method of understanding the contemporary prac-
tices through which individuals constitute them-
selves as subjects of knowledge. Foucault (2010:
3) once described his framework as a history of
'focal points of experience' which he studied
along three axes: the axis of knowledge, the rules
that govern discursive practices that determine
what is true or false; the axis of power, or the
rationalities by which one governs the conduct
of others; and the axis of ethics, or the practices
through which an individual constitutes itself as
a subject. We believe this framework provides
an important basis for the analysis of subjectiv-
ity. In the next section, we briefly discuss how a
Foucauldian version of discourse has been taken
up in Anglo-American psychology to re-theorize
subjectivity.
CHANGING THE SUBJECT
A Foucauldian conception of discourse was intro-
duced to Anglo-American psychology in the late
1970s. The new left critique in France was taken
up in Britain under the name of 'poststructural-
ism', which offered new ways of dissolving the
political impasse between humanism and anti-
humanism within the social sciences. Humanist
psychology was intent on discovering the per-
sonal, motivational and rational properties of a
foundational subject, while anti-humanist psy-
chology saw in the former the development of
instruments for the regulation of social life. For
the radical humanist, the only means of rejecting
'bourgeois' psychology was through the positive
removal of state power. However, the events of
May 1968 were decisive in outlining the limita-
tions of 'emancipatory politics'.
Poststructuralism introduced new theoretical
tools for dismantling a monolithic view of power
proposed under Marxism and structuralism.
Rather than directing a radical critique at 'soci-
ety', one could side-step the individual-society
dichotomy by showing that individuals are the
product of historically specific 'discourses' that
seek to know and govern the social as a domain
of thought and action. The birth of psychology
played a significant role in making the 'social'
a reality that could be governed more effi-
ciently. A poststructuralist critique of psychol-
ogy therefore assumes a different starting point
from critiques that seek to resocialize the sub-
ject of psychology. Instead, it applies Foucault's
methods of genealogical investigation to show
how psychological knowledge emerged not as
a unified programme of ideas and theories, but
from specific sites and problems concerned
with the administration of social life. The birth
of psychology as a distinct discipline is no less
than an account of the reorganization of political
power in Western societies.
In the late 1970s, the view of knowledge as both
productive and regulatory was put to work in the
journal Ideology & Consciousness (Adlam etal.,
1977). Within psychology, a rigorous and system-
atic attempt to introduce the writings of Lacan
and Foucault appeared in the work Changing
the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation and
Subjectivity (Henriques et al., 1984). This pio-
neering work formed an inspirational response
to the general dissatisfaction of individualism,
Cartesianism and positivism within mainstream
psychology, claiming that the individual–society
dualism was an obstacle to theorizing subjectiv-
ity. Outside psychology, Nikolas Rose adapted the
work he developed in Ideology & Consciousness
(Rose, 1979) to give a sociological account of the
'psy-complex' (Rose, 1985).
In these works, the turn to discourse provided
new and productive ways of dissolving the uni-
tary subject of psychology. The subject whose
coherence and rationality was the discovery of
repeated measurement, classification and calcu-
lation was now opened up to the very apparatuses
and techniques through which it was constituted.
Psychology's subject emerged from multiple
domains in which psychological instruments
could be applied and later refined: the asylum,
the hospital, the family, the school, the court. It
took shape among the diversity of concerns –
racial degeneration, intellectual decline, juvenile
delinquency, industrial inefficiency, childhood
sexuality and development – made visible and
calculable by political authorities. Far from guar-
anteeing its discovery, positivism formed the very
regime through which a psychological subject
appeared. In short, 'changing the subject' began
with linking its production to various technolo-
gies of power.
However, the turn to discourse does not really
offer a theory of subjectivity. Instead, it provides
a set of explanations of the local and heteroge-
neous subject positions within discourse and
power. That subjects occupy 'positions' within
discourse means we can only write, speak or
think about a social object or practice in specific
ways within a given historical period (see 'Ways
of Doing Foucauldian Discourse Analysis'
later in this chapter for a detailed explanation).
Positions are therefore historical delimitations
of what is sayable, thinkable and practicable.
But Foucault's account of power also denies
a theory of the subject. If power is constitutive
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of individuals (operating through individuals
by acting upon their actions) then the subject is
merely the effect (an epiphenomenon) of power/
knowledge relations. The subject is neither a
'role' nor an 'individual' but a multiplicity of
positions which are contradictory and discontin-
uous. Poststructuralism therefore creates a new
theoretical problem: by exposing the multiplicity
of relations through which subjectivity is con-
stituted there is no clear path for explaining 'the
continuity of the subject, and the subjective expe-
rience of identity' (Henriques etal., 1984: 204).
In the absence of a theory of subjectivity, dis-
course provides a clearing for reconstructing the
subject. Foucault was reluctant to ascribe interi-
ority, though at times he alluded to the 'soul' as
the inner life of the subject of power (Foucault,
1977; Butler, 1997). Many would turn to psy-
choanalysis, especially Lacan, to show how the
unconscious is constituted by one's positioning
within discourse through fantasies, dreams, and
flows of desire (Walkerdine, 1988; Hollway,
1989; Zizek, 1992, 1997; Parker, 1997). More
recently, Blackman etal. (2008) have argued that
there is still need for a 'distinctive ontology' of
the subject. Some have turned to neuroscience
to reveal a materiality out of which subjectivity
is fashioned (Connolly, 2002; Massumi, 2002;
Cromby, 2004), while others have turned to the
concept of 'affect' to articulate a domain of non-
conscious bodily forces (Massumi, 2002; Thrift,
2008; Wetherell, 2012). Some of these theoreti-
cal moves are antagonistic towards discourse,
seeking to 'liberate' subjectivity by splitting the
discursive and the non-discursive. But discourse
need not be an obstacle to theorizing subjectiv-
ity. As Wetherell (2012) argues, discourse studies
are entirely compatible with affect insofar as the
discursive can enhance its power and allow it to
travel to new domains.
In what follows, we retrace some of the early
applications of Foucault's ideas of discourse and
power to reconstruct the birth of psychology and
deconstruct contemporary psychological problems.
'DOING HISTORY'
In this section, we give two early examples of
analysis that are faithfully 'Foucauldian' in their
application. What is common to these analyses is
the genealogical approach they take in analysing
psychological knowledge as discursive practices.
Both case studies give a demonstration of how
histories of the formation of psychological dis-
course are put to work.
The psy-complex
For Nikolas Rose, genealogy is a critique of psy-
chological knowledge by reconstructing an 'event'
in its history. The purpose is not to uncover a truer
version of psychology's history, but to radically
alter our present relationship with psychology. For
Rose, genealogy is an exercise in the 'gathering of
clues' to understand how various methods and
techniques of psychological measurement were
involved in constituting the 'social'. What he calls
the psychological complex – 'a heterogeneous but
regulated domain of agents, of practices, of dis-
courses and apparatuses which has definite condi-
tions and specifiable effects' (Rose, 1979: 6) – is
not a genealogy of psychological measurement
but a genealogy of the social.
Rose begins with an event that breaks with the
assumption that psychology emerged as a coherent
discipline, animated by a general rational princi-
ple or by an underlying cause that could recon-
struct a global history of psychology. He begins
with the discourse on intelligence to trace out the
relationship between the problem of the 'mentally
defective', the development of mental measure-
ment, and the practice of social administration.
The mental defective appeared in the nineteenth
century as a new object of eugenic discourse in
America, which formed part of a strategic politi-
cal project of social and biological reform. It was
systematically linked to a whole cluster of con-
cerns regarding the good-order and well-being of
the population. Criminality, pauperism, mental
deficiency and inefficiency appeared as aberra-
tions which eluded methods of detection and clas-
sification. The ambiguity with which these objects
evaded the inspection of the state would give rise
to a double strategy of control: moralization and
medicalization. The instruments of mental mea-
surement would emerge from a discourse centred
on questions of degeneracy.
The focus of Rose's inquiry is to understand
how psychology participated in this project
of administration by acting as a relay (savoir )
between other forms of knowledge – political
economy, the law, medicine, education. But before
it could occupy this role, psychology required a
Darwinian conception of 'population' and 'nor-
mal' variation, both of which formed a powerful
combination for regulating individual differences .
The discovery of the 'normal curve' would bear
out a systematic relationship between four terms –
population, norm, individual and deviation –
providing the vital conditions for a science of
mental measurement. Combined with the much
older discourse of ancestry, it was now possible to
calculate distributions and variations of intellectual
ability via the law of ancestral heredity. According
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FOUCAULDIAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 113
to Francis Galton, the father of eugenic theory, the
lower classes were deemed unfit to compete in the
stakes of life; their social position was a testimony
of their inferior fitness. The new eugenic discourse
exposed what was thought to be an alarming dete-
rioration of the national stock. Statistical calcula-
tions of census material estimated that the lowest
twenty-five per cent of the adult stock was produc-
ing fifty per cent of the next generation.
Rose's analysis shows that the problem of
degeneracy opened a space for the formation of a
psychological complex. First, psychology would
deploy around the behaviours of children various
instruments for the detection of feeble-minded-
ness, and second, devise techniques of measure-
ment that would distinguish the 'normal' from the
'idiot', the 'intelligent' from the 'deficient'. So
had begun the great campaign of socialization in
which the individual of psychology emerged as a
specific, rational ideal of civilized society. Rose's
Foucauldian reconstruction of psychological
knowledge shows how its conditions of formation
emerged from 'a complex series of struggles and
alliances between distinct discourses organized
into various strategic ensembles' (Rose, 1979:
58). This strategic dimension of power/knowledge
reveals the complex linkages and operations in
which psychology served as a technology in the
administration of the social.
Developmental Psychology/Pedagogy
Valerie Walkerdine's (Venn and Walkerdine, 1978;
Walkerdine, 1984) work on developmental psy-
chology and child-centred pedagogy applies
Foucauldian genealogy to give a sharper focus to
a contemporary problem. Taking the apparent
failure of the 'pedagogy of liberation' in the late
1970s as her starting point, she traces a history of
the discursive practice of child-centred pedagogy.
The purpose of genealogy is to demonstrate that
the claims of developmental psychology are his-
torically specific, and that the psychological basis
of 'the problem of pedagogy' forecloses the pos-
sibility of posing radical solutions. The genealogi-
cal approach adopted here is an explicitly
deconstructive enterprise for investigating the
conditions of possibility of modern primary
school education in Britain, and the circumstances
in which 'the child' emerged as a specific object
of science (for more on this, see also Chapter 27
in this Volume).
Walkerdine begins by asking a series of ques-
tions which frame a specific problem in the
present. How did pedagogic practices acquire
the notion of a normalized sequence of child
development? And how did psychology transform
classrooms from the disciplinary apparatus of
speaking, hearing and replicating to child-centred
practices of fostering autonomy, exploration and
play? The first step is to disentangle the scientific
discourses from practices of child-centred peda-
gogy. Notions of development are separated from
the self-evident continuity of 'ontogenesis' and
traced back to nineteenth-century technologies of
classification and individual regulation.
Compulsory education in nineteenth-century
Britain emerged from specific concerns about the
moral degeneration of the population. Schooling
would stimulate the intellect, give instruction in
an orderly and virtuous course of life, and foster
a spirit of independent labour. These were the
principles of Bentham-like 'monitorialism' – a
disciplinary mechanism for the moral regulation
of souls through constant monitoring and cease-
less activity. Against the backdrop of these nor-
malizing interventions some intellectuals began
to demand the promotion of 'understanding'
over the discipline of habits. Philanthropists and
progressive educators like Kay-Shuttleworth and
Owen believed that monitorialism did nothing to
foster 'affection, imagination and the realization
of potential'. Pedagogy should not be a mechani-
cal reproduction of moral life but the extension of
natural and normal behaviour. It was these coun-
ter-arguments that transformed the 'schoolroom'
into the 'classroom' as sites for the normalization
of affection and understanding.
By the twentieth century, Walkerdine traces
two parallel developments that related to the sci-
entific classification of children: child study and
mental measurement. First, a Darwinian discourse
conducted systematic observations on the natural
development of the young child as a 'species'.
Second, a discourse of mental measurement builds
on a Darwinian view of biological selection and
variation. At the intersection of these two move-
ments 'the child' emerges as a specific moral
concern dressed in scientific respectability. The
naturalization of mind as the object of psychologi-
cal development was later investigated by Piaget.
Though Piaget was not taken up in any systematic
way, he occupied a position within 'an ensemble
of discursive practices … in helping to legitimate
and redirect forms of classification of stages of
development as regulatory and normalizing peda-
gogic devices' (Walkerdine, 1984: 176–177).
The idea of 'individual freedom' is a new theme
that appears among many experiments of peda-
gogy in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Freedom in a 'state of nature' would come to sym-
bolize romantic opposition to coercion and exem-
plify the liberal turn to natural self-government. As
the links between scientific experimentation and
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pedagogy were tightened, the concept of 'play' no
longer specified a natural context of learning but
a specific mode of learning. Play became a cru-
cial site for the observation and normalization of
children, and a central pedagogic device for the
production of self-governing citizens.
A child-centred approach became fully
enmeshed in contemporary practices of pedagogy
through the political apparatus. By the 1930s,
concerns over child poverty and juvenile delin-
quency gave rise to 'adolescence' as an object of
scientific thought and action in the UK. Under a
Conservative government, the Hadow Consultative
Committee (1928–1933) formed the tripartite sys-
tem of education still in place today. Among its
justifications were psychological arguments that
specified a normalized sequence of development.
The age of 11 or 12 years emerged as the crucial
break at which point psychology would provide
ready-made techniques for distinguishing those
fit for further education and those more suited
to work. By 1933, the second and third Hadow
reports integrated both discourses – mental mea-
surement and development – to produce modern
child-centred pedagogy. At the centre of this sci-
entific production of the child were three inter-
locking themes: (1) the imperative of individual
freedom; (2) the biological foundation of natural
development; and (3) the pedagogical technique of
observing and recording naturalized development.
Together, the physical, emotional and mental com-
prised the total facts of child development.
By today's standards good pedagogy is the
ability to observe, monitor and intervene in the
development of the child by accurately reading
their actions. Using naturalistic data of a learn-
ing context, Walkerdine shows how one child's
(Michael's) failure to learn mathematical prin-
ciples of place value is experienced by the teacher
as a personal failure rather than a by-product of
the pedagogy itself. Is it possible that Michael's
actions are intelligible according to a different
regime of sense-making? Rather than learning
place value through the internalization of action
(i.e. play), Michael possibly recognized a relation-
ship 'between the written signifiers and their com-
bination on the paper', in which case his actions are
not an aberration to the child-centred approach but
a sophisticated method of grasping mathematical
principles (Walkerdine, 1984: 193). The point of
Walkerdine's genealogy is not to dismiss psychol-
ogy or dispense with current methods of pedagogy,
but to show that one can deconstruct the tendency
of reducing problems of learning to psychological
explanations of normative, rational development.
In both case studies, we have tried to show how
genealogy is a meticulous study of the formation
and transformation of objects and practices by
studying the complex linkages between discourses.
Both analyses show genealogy can be conducted
in a variety of ways and according to different
objectives. Rose's reconstruction of psychology is
almost exclusively an engagement in primary and
secondary historical material. His focus is not so
much on a contemporary problem but retracing the
birth of psychology to its political conditions of
emergence. Walkerdine's genealogy is a counter -
point for understanding practices of child-centred
pedagogy. She combines historical material with
video and interview data to give clarity and sharp-
ness to a contemporary problem. Neither of these
analyses prescribe solutions but each seeks to
establish an alternative relationship to our contem-
porary regimes of psychological knowledge.
WAYS OF DOING FOUCAULDIAN
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
In this section, we explain that Foucauldian
discourse analysis (FDA) differs from other
language-based approaches because it conceives
discourse at a different level of organization. We
offer a light sketch of what a Foucauldian approach
might look like and provide some methodological
signposts that analysts might apply to their work.
In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault
(1972) provides a rather obscure but important
account of the archaeological method he used in
his previous works. His premise is that systems of
knowledge are governed by rules that determine
the limits of thought and language within a given
historical period. When referring to 'discourse',
Foucault does not mean a particular instance of
language use – a piece of text, an utterance or lin-
guistic performance – but rules, divisions and sys-
tems of a particular body of knowledge. Discourse
approximates the concept of 'discipline' in two
ways: it specifies the kind of institutional parti-
tioning of knowledge we find in medicine, science,
psychiatry, biology, economics, etc. But it also
refers to techniques and practices through which
objects, concepts, and strategies are formed. Let
us examine this claim more closely. At the begin-
ning of 'The Order of Discourse', Foucault asserts
the hypothesis:
I am supposing that in every society the production
of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organ-
ized and redistributed according to a certain
number of procedures, whose role is to avert its
powers and its dangers, to cope with chance
event, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality.
(Foucault, 1972: 216, emphasis added)
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The emphasis upon 'procedures' suggests that
disciplines maintain their own system of produc-
ing statements that count as true or false. Foucault
is interested in the rules that govern the possibility
of true and false statements rather than speculat-
ing on the collective meaning of such statements.
This is quite different to Anglo-American tradi-
tions where discourse is construed as an instance
of linguistic usage. Foucault's (1972) explanation
of the 'statements of discourse' eludes precise
definition, however, he seems to be emphasizing
an important difference between formal structures
of meaning and historically contingent rules that
render an expression (a phrase, a proposition or a
speech act) discursively meaningful. In this sense,
'meaning' is not tied to the internal structure of
language (signification) but the external condi-
tions of its expression (the rules that govern a way
of speaking). Kendall and Wickham (1999: 42–46)
adopt a similar understanding of discourse when
emphasizing the relationship between 'rules' and
'statements' in their five-step approach of FDA. In
the next section, we explore other ways of doing
FDA by offering a set of flexible guidelines for the
analysis of relevant materials.
Selecting a Corpus of Statements
A 'corpus of statements' is a selection of dis-
course samples about an object relevant to one's
inquiry. Discourse samples can be intellectual
theories or discussions, governmental reports,
policy statements, news articles, and interview
transcripts. A criteria for selecting discourse
samples depends on whether they constitute or
problematize an object (see Fairclough, 1992;
Parker, 1992; Kendall and Wickham, 1999;
Carabine, 2001; Kendall and Wickham, 1999;
Parker, 1992 for useful guidelines). Given the
historical dimension of Foucault's analyses, a
corpus of statements should also include exam-
ples of how the construction of objects varies
over time. This temporal variability is important
to show how power/knowledge relations operate
within different historical periods and within dif-
ferent disciplinary regimes. For instance, how
are the different ways in which madness, crimi-
nality or delinquency spoken about justify differ-
ent forms of intervention? How do different
ways of describing a problem demand different
solutions? Statements are not only historical and
institutional in character, but they reveal the
epistemological antecedents for our present
inquiry. In other words, the historical variability
of statements should set out the conditions of
possibility for the studied phenomenon. Finally,
statements should also highlight evidence of
discontinuity where objects undergo abrupt his-
torical transformation.
The types of texts we choose to include in our
corpus, again, relates to the kinds of questions we
are asking. FDA can be applied to any kind of text,
though Foucault was more interested in historical
documents, legal cases, rules, and descriptions of
institutional practice, and even autobiographical
accounts and personal diaries (see Foucault, 1978a
for an unusually lucid explanation of how he con-
ducted his inquiry). Parker (1992: 1) suggests that
FDA can be carried out 'wherever there is mean-
ing', although Foucault actually resisted reducing
discourse to meaning (cf. Rose, 1996; Foucault,
1972; Hook, 2001a). Rather than how meaning is
constructed in an interactional setting, he was con-
cerned with how 'games of truth' are played out in
political domains. But to say this is the only way to
conduct FDA is unnecessarily limiting. From our
perspective, any context or setting is suitable for
analysis as long as it contains a historical sensitiv-
ity towards the objects and problems investigated.
There are many kinds of 'text' that are suitable
for FDA, which may include:
• spatial arrangement
• social practice
• political discourse
• expert discourse
• social interaction
• autobiographical accounts
Texts can refer to personal observation and
description of spatial/architectural surroundings,
and the kinds of social practices they engender.
These ethnographic texts are derived by the
researcher's field notes of a given setting, e.g.
parks, hospitals, urban architecture, and sites of
cultural production. FDA is commonly performed
on political discourse such as policy documents,
parliamentary debates, press releases, and official
reports on matters relating to governmental pro-
cesses. Discourse analysis usually attends to
expert discourses found among intellectual texts
including official publications and empirical find-
ings. FDA is also widely conducted on a variety of
speech activities and settings such as in situ inter-
action (e.g. naturally occurring talk), institutional
talk (e.g. doctor–patient relations), research inter-
views (e.g. participant's accounts and narratives),
telephone conversations (e.g. therapeutic counsel-
ling), focus group discussions, and audio-visual
documentation of interactions (e.g. classroom
activities). Conversation analysis is a more techni-
cal approach to understanding the structured
nature of talk and the forms of social organization
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they produce. Lastly, autobiographical aspects of
conversations and interviews provide ways of
accessing experience, descriptions of moral and
ethical practices and ways of constructing the self
through various kinds of knowledge (e.g. medical,
biological, economic, psychological, etc.). Forms
of narrative analysis are particularly useful
for evidencing practices and techniques of self-
management and behaviour modification (see
'subjectification' below).
Problematizations
There are many ways of beginning one's analysis.
Selecting an object of discourse will usually relate
to a research question or topic (Fairclough, 1992;
Willig, 2001), but it might also relate to giving
analytic attention to problems that render a certain
kind of thought possible. In drawing attention to
problems, the analyst is concerned with how the
construction of a discursive object allows us to
establish a critical relation to the present, to
decompose the certainties of our being human (cf.
Rose, 1996), or to engage in a 'progressive poli-
tics' of the present (Foucault, 1978b). Discourse
analysis throws into relief practices and objects by
attending to how certain problematizations are
formed (Foucault, 1985). The discourse analyst
might ask: under what circumstances and by
whom are aspects of human being rendered prob-
lematic? In other words, problematizations draw
our attention to the material practices that render
aspects of our being human thinkable, manage-
able, and governable.
In the previous section, Walkerdine (1984)
shows how three different problems emerge in
relation to her work on child-centred pedagogy.
The first serves as a point of departure for genea-
logical analysis by problematizing the liberatory
politics of education in which developmental psy-
chology plays a part. The second problem emerges
in relation to the present: the young boy, Michael,
whose grasp of mathematics is thought to be a
'conceptual failure' because he strays from con-
crete practices of learning. And third, the teach-
er's reaction to Michael's failure as one of guilt
and insecurity because she felt she had 'pushed'
the child and not let him learn 'at his own pace'
(1984: 193). By foregrounding these problems,
it becomes possible to show how developmental
psychology reduces all problems of learning to the
acquisition of the child and forecloses the possi-
bility that learning is achieved via other creative
and conceptual means. Focusing on problems
allows two things: (1) it constitutes the point of
departure for grounding one's inquiry within the
wider politics of the present; and (2) it focuses on
the ways in which objects are constructed in local
and specific settings. Thus, problematizations
foreground the material relations through which
constructions are produced or contested, and it
invites us to think differently about the present by
taking up a position outside our current regimes
of truth.
Technologies
In 'Technologies of the Self', Foucault (1988)
describes his own work as a critical inquiry of
how humans develop knowledge about them-
selves. Rather than taking knowledge at face-
value, he suggests we accept it as 'very specific
truth games' of understanding ourselves. He goes
on to elaborate four types of technologies, each of
which are 'a matrix of practical reason': (1) tech-
nologies of production, (2) technologies of sign
systems, (3) technologies of power and (4) tech-
nologies of the self (Foucault, 1988: 18). FDA
usually focuses on the technologies of power and
self. We can think of the relationship between
these technologies in two ways. The first is more
sociological and indicative of the kind of work
conducted by Rose (1996). Technologies are not
specifically located within an interactional con-
text, but refer to 'any assembly of practical ration-
ality governed by a more or less conscious goal'
(Rose, 1996: 26). They refer to an assemblage of
knowledge, instruments, persons, buildings and
spaces which act on human conduct from a dis-
tance. In this sense, Rose is more interested in
understanding the constitution of human subjects
through technologies of power. But there is
another way of thinking about technologies which
is suited to psychological inquiry. Technologies
can also make sense of the interaction between
oneself and others and how power is exercised
over oneself as technologies of the self.
Because technologies are forms of 'practical
reason' they are realized simultaneously as mate-
rial and discursive practices. A conversation, for
instance, is not merely the construction of an object
in language and thought but also the act of accom-
plishing or performing an activity. In this sense, it
is feasible to draw on the rhetorical and presenta-
tional aspects of interaction. For example, Michael
Billig's (1991) work on rhetorical psychology
explores the argumentative and persuasive nature
of talk as resources for everyday reasoning. Here,
we might think of technologies as particular kinds
of 'truth games' in which participants engage in
conflict, competition, and power. Technologies
may also take the form of technical and subtle
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FOUCAULDIAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 117
forms of interactional activity, like account-building,
turn-taking, and case formulation (Pomerantz,
1986). By attending to the technical organization
of talk, conversation analysis tends to shift the
focus away from issues of materiality and power
by assuming the equal participation of speakers
(see Wooffitt, 2005 for an excellent discussion on
the differences between rhetorical psychology and
conversation analysis). But in another sense tech-
nologies also apply to how individuals problema-
tize and regulate their own conduct in relation to a
moral order. We examine these ethical relations of
the self later in the section.
Subject Positions
Discourses also offer positions from which a
person may speak the truth. A subject position
identifies 'a location for persons within a struc-
ture of rights and duties for those who use that
repertoire' (Davies and Harrè, 1999: 35). But
'positioning' also involves the construction and
performance of a particular vantage point
(Bamberg, 1994), offering a version of reality as
well as a moral location within spoken interac-
tion. This is similar to how the 'moral adequacy'
(Cuff, 1994) of people's accounts are linked to
the 'moral order' in which they seek to locate
themselves (Sacks, 1992). A key point is that
moral location and moral order are intimately
linked in spoken interaction and serve as practi-
cal technologies for speaking the truth (Hodge,
2002). Margaret Wetherell (1998) also shows
how a poststructuralist conception of subject
positions finds compatibility with conversation
analysis. In her ethnography of middle class
masculine identities, she shows how conversa-
tion analysis provides greater analytic potential
for understanding subject positions within con-
versational processes. Wetherell (1998: 401)
shows how subject positions are 'local, highly
situated and occasioned', and that claims of
'sexual prowess' by one young male is managed
by occupying a variety of subject positions:
diminished responsibility ('drunk'), external
attributions of success ('lucky'), internal attribu-
tions of success ('out on the pull'), an agent
engaged in consensual sexual play ('she fancied
a bit a rough'), moral management of self
('moral low ground'), etc. The variability of
these speaking positions are given order by refer-
ring to broader discourses of male sexuality as
'performance and achievement' and an ethics of
sexuality justified in terms of 'relationships and
reciprocity' (Hollway, 1984; Wetherell, 1998:
400–401).
Subjectification
The term 'subjectification' arises out of Foucault's
later work on ancient Greek ethics and subjectiv-
ity (Foucault, 1985, 1997a). It refers to the making
of subjects through technologies of power and
self. In the first instance, subjects are constituted
through technologies of domination by acts of
'subjection', but they are also constituted by
working on the self through acts of 'subjectifica-
tion'. Foucault understands 'ethics' as the self-
forming activity by which subjects establish a
relation of self to itself, to 'transform themselves
in order to attain a certain state of happiness,
purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality'
(Foucault, 1988: 18). Ethical conduct is the practi-
cal and intentional work of an individual on itself
within the limits of morally approved conduct. Ian
Hodge's (2002) work on therapeutic discourse
provides a nice illustration of how techniques of
conversation analysis are applied to interactions
between callers and psychotherapists about sexual
relationships. Rather than a 'moralizing' technol-
ogy, these interventions work at the level of ethi-
cal problematizations, providing 'the means
through which callers might regulate their own
behaviour and normalize their future possible
conduct' (Hodge, 2002: 455). By reframing call-
ers' problems in an ethical form, Hodge shows
how counsellors recruit the self-regulating capaci-
ties of the caller by establishing that both caller
and counsellor share a moral universe (see Box 7.1
for a summary of methodological guidelines for
conducting FDA).
EXAMPLE OF FDA
In what follows, we provide a brief illustration of
how FDA might be applied to contemporary
research. An example is taken from Arribas-
Ayllon's PhD work on Australian welfare reform.
Here, FDA investigates practices of subjectifica-
tion at the interface of political technologies that
seek to regulate welfare recipients and ethical
technologies through which recipients constitute
themselves as morally defensible subjects.
Subjects of Welfare
The problem of 'welfare dependency' forms the
basis of conducting FDA to reconstruct a geneal-
ogy of contemporary welfare rationalities and to
investigate the effects of welfare reform on
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practices of self-formation. The study begins
with problematizations of welfare recipients in
Australia. The discovery of 'welfare depend-
ency' in 1999 signalled the government's com-
mitment to reforming the Australian social
security system through policies of 'mutual
obligation'. These policies effectively contractu-
alized welfare services for the chronically ill,
lone parents and the long-term unemployed, and
imposed work-for-the-dole schemes on young
people. They seek to continuously monitor the
behaviour of the poor and counteract the demor-
alizing effects of welfare dependency through
psychological readjustment.
The discourse of dependency has a long his-
tory, extending as far back as feudal bondage,
which undergoes significant transformation in
the early nineteenth and late twentieth centuries1 .
Today, dependency assumes the characteristics of
a behavioural syndrome, singling out the passive,
Selecting a corpus of statements
A corpus of statements refers to samples of text that express rules for how an object is constituted. Criteria for
selecting statements might include:
1 samples of text that construct a social problem, i.e. how are objects problematized?
2 samples of text that show how an object is described or explained, i.e. how are objects constructed?
3 descriptions of practices that illustrate how an object is acted upon, i.e. how are objects regulated?
4 samples of text that show historical variability in the construction of objects
i.e. how are objects and their problems discussed across different historical periods?
i.e. how and why do statements change over time?
5 collection of primary and secondary materials:
i.e. policy documents, intellectual texts, print and new media, interview data, autobiographical accounts,
ethnographic observations and thick descriptions, etc.
Problematizations
Problematizations refer to historical events in which objects and practices are made 'problematic' and therefore
visible and knowable. They often form at the intersection of different discourses and expose power/knowledge
relations. Problematizations serve an epistemological and methodological purpose of allowing the analyst to take
up a critical position in relation to how problems are formed and to show how they constitute objects and practices.
Technologies
Technologies are practical forms of rationality for the government of self and others. There are two kinds of
technologies appropriate for psychological inquiry: technologies of power and technologies of self. Technologies of
power seek to govern human conduct at a distance while technologies of the self are techniques by which human
beings seek to regulate and improve their conduct. Technologies are also 'truth games' realized either on a larger
political scale or among local and specific instances of local interaction.
Subject Positions
Subject positions define the historical limits of what can be written, said or practiced. Identifying subject positions
allows the analyst to investigate the cultural repertoire of discourses available to speakers. They are not only positions
on which to ground one's claims of truth or responsibility, but they allow individuals to manage, in quite complex and
subtle ways, their moral location within social interaction.
Subjectification
Subjectification refers to the ethics of self-formation. Foucault understands 'ethics' in a practical sense of human beings
constituting themselves as subjects of a moral code. Ethics is the practical work of submitting oneself to a set of moral
recommendations or obligations. Practices of self-constitution may adhere to standards or techniques imposed upon
the self in order to attain wisdom, beauty, happiness, perfection, etc.
Box 7.1 Some methodological guidelines for conducting Foucauldian discourse analysis
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FOUCAULDIAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 119
indolent and work-shy from 'at risk' sectors of the
welfare population. A genealogy of dependency
therefore interrogates the historical conditions out
of which it became possible to pathologize the
poor as morally and psychologically deficient. The
following analysis examines the effects of current
welfare rationalities, like discourses of depen-
dency, among those receiving welfare assistance.
The task is to examine the interface between work
and welfare and investigate the conditions for pro-
ducing subjects of neoliberal welfare reform.
Consider the experience of Angela, a 19-year-
old welfare recipient, who lives in a rural commu-
nity with high unemployment. Angela narrates a
story of humble working-class beginnings, living
a comfortable rural life where financial disadvan-
tage is counterbalanced by feelings of freedom
and security. At the age of 16, Angela leaves
school and moves to Sydney to live with friends
and find work. The transition to a large city is nar -
rated as a growing sense of maturity and personal
autonomy. Fantasies of urban life are short-lived
after friends begin to migrate to other cities, and
the precarious circuits of shared accommodation
raise feelings of isolation despite regular casual
work in a call centre. The return home is narrated
as a painful loss of autonomy, coupled with the
isolation of receiving benefits and working spo-
radically in the local service economy. Despite
struggling to narrate a coherent sense of self,
Angela still manages to articulate an acute sense
of psychological agency:
I think that there is a lot more choices else-
where, like when I moved back from Sydney
and I said to mum 'I am never going to work
in a supermarket, I am not going to do this
and I am not going to do that', and then
after about a year I asked mum 'I wonder if
they have got any jobs at the checkout' … I
don't know if it is just the situation I am in
and I am not happy and I am starting to real-
ize that you can't be too choosy and money
is money and work is work and you have to
do the shitty jobs sometimes to move on and
do something better, that's how it goes, you
can't just jump into the right job straight
away and expect that that is going to be it,
then um the fact that I am open minded
about it all rather than 'I am only going to do
this', especially in town where there are not
that many opportunities, or that many differ-
ent kind of jobs … everyone has so many
options, it is only limited by what they think
is, the limits around them, but I mean like if I
really wanted to I could get up and leave, I
mean I have done it before on less than what
I've got now and did it, so it is just myself
that is making it a problem … so in that sense
that is where my freedom if you like is a little
bit limited … it is a lot harder to do it, but
like really I have got nothing holding me
back, I can go and do whatever I want.
There are two problematizations of interest here.
The first precedes the narrative in terms of the pos-
sibility of reading Angela's story as one of depend-
ency – a subject who lacks the personal resources
to find regular work in the community. The second
relates to the personal and affective aspects of the
narrative – the growing loss of autonomy and the
awkward moral management of stigma. The posi-
tion of the 'welfare dependent' threatens to sub-
sume the more virtuous position of the 'jobseeker',
in which case Angela presents herself as having
undergone some kind of personal and moral trans-
formation. Also interesting is the particular 'tech-
nology' from which the affirmative voice draws.
In the absence of any real change in her material
circumstances, insecure work is justified by a psy-
chological relation to self: the 'shitty' checkout
job is a means to an end, not because her circum-
stances demand any form of paid work, but
because 'self-realization' is a more praiseworthy
way of articulating self-reliance. To neutralize the
stigma of dependency, Angela draws on a psycho-
logical technology of self-improvement to align
herself with a moral order.
Despite the limited opportunities of community,
the welfare recipient is morally obliged to evalu-
ate her circumstances in terms of 'choice'. This
account constitutes the kind of resilience and fan-
tasy of flexibility that has become a condition of
modern wage-labour. For the young worker there
is no sense of work offering long-term security
other than forming a transient relay in the maxi-
mization of experience and the on-going construc-
tion of biography. Angela's narrative exemplifies
the kind of psychological autonomy that younger
generations of workers are now enjoined to think
as real possibilities for the active construction of
identity and lifestyle. The fantasy of unlimited
choice becomes the goal of self-formation only
when the structural constraints of work and com-
munity recede into the background. The moral
management of the self ensures that material
contradictions of political economy, community
and employability are transposed into personal
difficulties.
The new technologies of self-actualization
coincide with political authorities seeking more
active solutions to the problems of freedom and
security. The new post-welfare regime insists
that society is to be 'active' as welfare recipients
undergo continuous monitoring for the ethical
reconstruction of the self. In the Australian case,
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120
a range of techniques are used on recipients that
mix coercion and exhortation with constant sur-
veillance to incite active forms of citizenship. But
income support also presupposes a position where
ethical activity is already precarious or impossible
to achieve, in which case the narratives of welfare
recipients reveal an intensification of moral man-
agement, self-blame, ambivalence, and psycho-
logical reconstruction. FDA shows how Angela's
account of subjectification poses a particular prob-
lem of experience which is more clearly under-
stood in a genealogical context.
SOME CONCLUDING REMARKS
In this chapter, we have set out what a Foucauldian
approach might look like and how it applies to
critical psychological work. We have offered
some methodological signposts and cautioned that
perhaps there is no such thing as 'Foucauldian
discourse analysis'. If such a method does exist
then it would bear little resemblance to linguistic
versions of discourse. Others have warned
(Pennycook, 1994; Threadgold, 1997; Parker,
2004) that as discourse analysis crystallizes into
its own discipline, radical approaches (i.e. post-
structuralism) will be subsumed by more market-
able forms of applied linguistics. This is partly
because non-linguistic versions of discourse are
susceptible to misunderstanding; their high level
of abstraction may imply that 'everything is dis-
course'. Since the early 1980s, discourse has been
criticized for its object-status (reification) and its
alleged agency (anthropomorphism). These
related accusations of 'discourse babble' are the
symptoms of a persistent ambiguity about French
continental theory. In this chapter, we hope to
have provided some clarity on these issues. After
all, discourses are not objects but rules and proce-
dures that make objects thinkable and governable,
and they do not 'determine' things but intervene in
the relations of what can be known, said, or
practiced.
Other criticisms of discourse invoke an either/
or relation between relativism and realism.
Foucault's position on discourse is unique in
the way that he eschews foundationalism with-
out necessarily sliding into nihilism, relativism
or realism (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982). This
raises a curious ambivalence in relation to dis-
course and 'the real'. If discourse eschews the
possibility of apprehending a reality indepen-
dent of discourse it is because there is no foun-
dation for guaranteeing knowledge. But at the
same time we must avoid the kind of universal
suspicion that maintains that truth is consciously
concealed (Gordon, 1980). 'The real' is a histori-
cal question rather than a general epistemologi-
cal question about the status of truth. It requires
a meticulous reconstruction of events that breach
what is obvious, natural or inevitable in order
to rediscover 'the connections, supports, block-
ages, plays of forces, strategies, and so on, that
at a given moment establish what subsequently
counts as being self-evident, universal, and nec-
essary' (Foucault, 2000: 226–227).
Another serious criticism is the claim that post-
structuralism eliminates a social actor. But per-
haps this criticism is unwarranted. When Foucault
(1970) provocatively declared 'the death of man'
at the end of The Order of Things, he was sug-
gesting that humanist philosophy had finally run
its course. Where anti-humanism dispenses with a
theory of agency it does not mean that poststruc-
turalism can no longer speak sensibly about act-
ing subjects. Anti-humanism reminds us that what
we call human being is now 'under erasure' – no
longer stable, reliable or serviceable (Hall, 1996).
Following Derrida (1981), we are not forbidden to
think of human subjects as capable of action but
what can be thought about subjectivity, identity,
personhood, etc., is now placed at the limits of
thought. Poststructuralism requires only a mini-
mal conception of the human material on which
history writes (Patton, 1994).
Since the introduction of poststructuralism in
the 1980s, subjectivity still remains a theoretical
problem. Foucault's ideas about discourse and
power have created the means of radically dis-
persing 'the subject' among the multiplicity of
discourses, speaking positions, and power rela-
tions that establish the limits of 'who we are' and
'who we can be'. But there is also a persistent
ambivalence that subjectivity is more than the sum
of these things. Indeed, there is a tendency to dis-
solve subjectivity only to seek out its conditions of
substance and continuity. It seems that contempo-
rary social theory, while gratefully acknowledging
Foucault's legacy, seeks to reconstruct subjectivity
to reconcile multiplicity with a distinctive ontol-
ogy. The question of 'ontology' has become a key
term for grounding the theoretical limits of sub-
jectivity. Foucault's ontology was unapologeti-
cally historical, while others ground their claims
in 'vital' (Rose, 2007), 'embodied' (Thrift, 2008),
and 'immanent' (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987)
processes. These process ontologies of time and
space, surface and depth, singularity and relation-
ality, are just some of the limits of our current
regimes of thinking. For discourse analysis to have
a future beyond 'conditions of possibility', it will
need to assemble the diverse threads and entangle-
ments of discursive and non-discursive processes.
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FOUCAULDIAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 121
Rather than separating these processes, the study
of discourse will need to seek out the limits and
possibilities of their integration among the cre-
ative assemblies and materials of life.
Note
1 Space prohibits a full discussion of the genea-
logical context of Australia welfare reform. Suf-
fice to say, the regulation of the poor through
the moral reconstruction of conduct is not a
new technique, but emerged from classical lib-
eral thought, particularly among policies that
were instrumental in the birth of state welfare.
The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 can be
read as an attempt to distinguish the undeserv-
ing poor from the deserving poor, leaving the
undeserving to fend for themselves in the new
national labour market, while placing the deserv-
ing poor under the cruel and deterrent conditions
of the workhouse. The intellectual contribution
of Bentham, Malthus and Ricardo were influen-
tial in naturalizing a domain of poverty, while at
the same time distinguishing 'pauperism' as the
proper object of regulation. This resonates with
present arguments about 'welfare dependency'
which arguably reactivate a discourse of pauper-
ism. But nineteenth-century virtues of indepen-
dence, self-responsibility and self-discipline are
given a new ethical gloss: independent labour
is said to foster self-respect and self-esteem, to
restore confidence and identity. Arguably, the
present conditions of assistance are designed
to elicit the self-managing capacities for whom
psychological training ensures the moral refor-
mation of self, the ethical reconstruction of will,
so that the poor might be quickly recycled into
flexible labour markets.
FURTHER READING
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Kendall, G. and Wickham, G. (1999). Using Foucault's
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Rose, N. (1996). Inventing Ourselves: Psychology,
Power and Personhood. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Walkerdine, V., Lucey, H., and Melody, J. (2001).
Growing Up Girl: Psychosocial Explorations of
Gender and Class. New York: University Press.
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![Rashid Gabdulhakov]()
Amid the intensification of state control over the digital domain in Russia, what types of online activism are tolerated or even endorsed by the government and why? While entities such as the Anti-Corruption Foundation exposing the state are silenced through various tactics such as content blocking and removal, labelling the foundation a "foreign agent," and deeming it "extremist," other formations of citizens using digital media to expose "offences" performed by fellow citizens are operating freely. This article focuses on a vigilante group targeting "unscrupulous" merchants (often ethnic minorities and labour migrants) for the alleged sale of expired produce-the Hrushi Protiv. Supported by the government, Hrushi Protiv participants survey grocery chain stores and open-air markets for expired produce, a practice that often escalates into violence, while the process is filmed and edited to be uploaded to YouTube. These videos constitute unique media products that entertain the audience, ensuring the longevity of punitive measures via public exposure and shaming. Relying on Litvinenko and Toepfl's (2019) application of Toepfl's (2020) "authoritarian publics" theory in the context of Russia, this article proposes a new category to describe state-approved digital vigilantes-citizen-critical publics. A collaboration with such publics allows the state to demonstrate a façade of civil society activism amid its silencing; while state-approved participants gain financial rewards and fame. Through Foucauldian discourse analysis, the article reveals that vulnerable groups such as labour migrants and ethnic minorities could fall victim to the side effects of this collaboration.
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![Rashid Gabdulhakov]()
Amid the intensification of state control over the digital domain in Russia, what types of online activism are tolerated or even endorsed by the government and why? While entities such as the Anti-Corruption Foundation exposing the state are silenced through various tactics such as content blocking and removal, labelling the foundation a "foreign agent," and deeming it "extremist," other formations of citizens using digital media to expose "offences" performed by fellow citizens are operating freely. This article focuses on a vigilante group targeting "unscrupulous" merchants (often ethnic minorities and labour migrants) for the alleged sale of expired produce-the Hrushi Protiv. Supported by the government, Hrushi Protiv participants survey grocery chain stores and open-air markets for expired produce, a practice that often escalates into violence, while the process is filmed and edited to be uploaded to YouTube. These videos constitute unique media products that entertain the audience, ensuring the longevity of punitive measures via public exposure and shaming. Relying on Litvinenko and Toepfl's (2019) application of Toepfl's (2020) "leadership-critical," "policy-critical," and "uncritical" publics theory in the context of Russia, this article proposes a new category to describe state-approved digital vigilantes-citizen-critical publics. A collaboration with such publics allows the state to demonstrate a façade of civil society activism amid its silencing; while state-approved participants gain financial rewards and fame. Through Foucauldian discourse analysis, the article reveals that vulnerable groups such as labour migrants and ethnic minorities could fall victim to the side effects of this collaboration.
An ever-expanding literature now exists critiquing the theory and philosophy of positive psychology, however, research has yet to provide a critical analysis of its practical application. The current study extends on these critiques by exploring how positive psychology is applied to the workplace by investigating practitioner-based sources including interviews with workplace coaches who use positive psychological interventions and applied published texts. The study draws on Michel Foucault's concepts of power/knowledge and discourse as a theoretical and methodological framework. Three dominant discourses were identified which illustrate the ways in which positive psychology is applied to the workplace. These include the promotion of its scientific credentials, employing a strength-based approach and using goal-setting and behavioral reinforcement interventions. When applied to the workplace, these discourses psychologize workplace problems, resulting in potentially negative outcomes for employees. However, interviews with some of the workplace coaches indicate they practice a degree of reflexivity, providing a salutary lesson for the science of positive psychology.
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![Shofi Mahmudah Budi Utami]()
This study aims at revealing how the discursive practices and the discourse on alcoholism in the Native Americans is produced and contested in a short story entitled The Reckoning by Joy Harjo. The problem in this study is approached by Foucauldian concept of discourse production procedure. The method applied here is the Foucauldian discourse analysis by examining the problem through the process of formation including external and internal exclusion. Central to the analysis is that alcoholism is produced as taboo through the mother character which limits the general understanding about alcoholism; hence this discourse is possible to produce by the subject whose credentials can validate the truth. This discourse is also affirmed by the contextual prohibition which authoritatively can state the truth about alcoholism. This is further contested in the current society of how being an alcoholic would be considered as a non-native American way of life. The result indicates that alcoholism among Native American society becomes the discourse within which constraints produce considerable barriers to expose or address to this topic.
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![David Shutkin]()
Distributed cognition, as it considers how technologies augment cognition, informs technology integration in education. Most educational technologists interested in distributed cognition embrace a representational theory of mind. As this theory assumes cognition occurs in the brain and depends on the internal representation of external information, it is informed by a mind/body dualism that separates the individual student from material things. Alternatively, the theory of the extended mind describes the mind as a dynamic system of interactions inclusive of human agents, technologies and other material things. Refusing the mind/body dualism, if one element is removed, the quality of cognitive activity declines. Across the cognitive sciences, there are debates between these representational and extended theories that have implications for what it means to be a student and for technology integration. However, distributed cognition research in educational technology ignores these debates. Instead, this research is conditioned by the discursive practices of a neoliberal assemblage of political, commercial and pedagogical institutions. In this era of high stakes testing, as the individual student is measured, evaluated and otherwise made subject through these practices, this assemblage expresses a tacit commitment to, and is productive of, the subjectivity of the individual student and thus benefits from the representational theory of mind. In this way, regardless of the recognized legitimacy of the theory of the extended mind, sustained by neoliberalism the field of educational technology will not soon question the veracity of the representational theory of mind or the mind/body dualism upon which it depends.
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![Lauren Armstrong]()
Change is not a new concept in the Australian early childhood sector. However, the rate of change has significantly increased throughout the last decade, specifically with the introduction of the curriculum and quality frameworks, changes to regulations, and subsequent reviews (some particularly affecting the Victorian long day care sector). The rapid timeline of these reforms created challenges for early childhood professionals who needed to understand, interpret and translate multiple changes to their practice. This paper presents some key findings from a poststructural study involving 11 participants from the Victorian long day care sector. Foucauldian Discourse Analysis has been applied to explore how reform discourses shape and reshape the positioning and engagement of professionals within the reform process. These findings reveal how specific subject positions and discursive practices within available discourses of knowledge, teacher education and workplace can either challenge and/or support early childhood professionals in their ability to engage in reform.
This article discusses gender mainstreaming (GMS) as a strategy to implement gender equality in public work organisations by analysing discourse in terms of the theoretical notions of translation and circulation in organisations to shed light on how gender equality and the mainstreaming strategy are formulated in the documents which govern the Swedish fire and rescue services. More specifically, it looks at how the goals regarding gender equality are circulated and translated. The results show that gender equality as a practice is created in the translation of national goals in terms of the local context and its specific gender equality challenges. Furthermore, the article discusses how vague formulations in the documents are stabilised through circulation between the government and the public agency in question. The results indicate the central role played by maintaining stable translations over time and the presence of a double logic of change in the processes, as well as the importance of legitimising gender equality initiatives.
- Corine Rivalland
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![Lauren Armstrong]()
- Hilary Monk
Early childhood education has undergone immense change over the years. In Australia, this has included the introduction of curriculum and quality frameworks [ACECQA. 2012 ACECQA. 2012. National Quality Framework. http://acecqa.gov.au/national-quality-framework/the-national-quality-standard. [Google Scholar]. National Quality Framework. http://acecqa.gov.au/national-quality-framework/the-national-quality-standard; DEEWR. 2009 DEEWR. 2009. Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia. Barton: ACT: Commonwealth of Australia. ISBN:9780642778727. [Google Scholar]. Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia. Barton: ACT: Commonwealth of Australia. ISBN:9780642778727; DET. 2016 DET. 2016. Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework: For All Children From Birth to Eight Years. East Melbourne, VIC: Department of Education and Training. ISBN:978-0-7594-0800-5. [Google Scholar]. Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework: For All Children From Birth to Eight Years. East Melbourne, VIC: Department of Education and Training. ISBN:978-0-7594-0800-5], and changes to early childhood pre-service and in-service teacher education [ASQA. 2015 ASQA. 2015. Training for early childhood education and care: Report. https://www.asqa.gov.au/sites/g/files/net3521/f/Strategic_Review_2015_Early_Childhood_Education_Report.pdf?v = 1508135481. [Google Scholar]. Training for early childhood education and care: Report. https://www.asqa.gov.au/sites/g/files/net3521/f/Strategic_Review_2015_Early_Childhood_Education_Report.pdf?v = 1508135481]. This article is based on a broader qualitative study, which was conducted in 2015-2016. It investigated how workplace discourses supported or hindered the ability for early childhood professionals in Victorian long day care settings to engage in education reform. Using a poststructuralist lens and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis [FDA] [Arribas-Ayllon, M., and V. Walkerdine. 2017. "Foucauldian Discourse Analysis." In The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology, 2nd ed., edited by C. Willig, and W. Stainton-Rogers, 110–123. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. ISBN:9781526405555; Willig, C. 2008. "Discourse Analysis." In Qualitative Psychology: A Practical Guide to Research Methods, 2nd ed., edited by J. A. Smith, 160–185. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications. ISBN:9781412930833], specific workplace discourses were identified. These discourses framed the available subject positions which were afforded by directors, centre-coordinators and educators relating to reform engagement. Some of these positions were supportive of reform engagement, while others hindered this process. The findings presented throughout this paper offer some insight into how workplace discourses impact reform engagement in early childhood education.
- M. Wetherell
In recent years there has been a surge of interest in affect and emotion. Scholars want to discover how people are moved, and understand embodied social action, feelings and passions. How do social formations 'grab' people? How do roller coasters of contempt, patriotism, hate and euphoria power public life? This book systematically reviews research on affect and emotion in neuroscience, social psychology, sociology, and political science. It develops a critique of the 'turn to affect' and argues for an approach based on affective practice. It provides new analyses to explain how affect travels, settles, circulates and coalesces.
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Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336871927_Foucauldian_Discourse_Analysis_Second_Edition
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