Welcome to the list Ian.
I was reading something the other day that discussed this issue.
I think it might have been Dominick LaCapra's History and Reading: Tocqueville, Foucault, French Studies (University of Toronto Press, 2000). You might start there.
You are right to assume that Foucault generally avoids searching for a meaning 'underneath' or 'behind' discourse in that hermeneutical sense, but I'm not sure how explicit he is about a lot of that. It seems to be more a general feature of his work, rather than something he intervenes on repeatedly. For that kind of thing you might get something more sustained in Deleuze, Althusser, or Macherey. The points where their positions on this intersect with those of Derrida perhaps indicate a general doxa - obviously there are divergences between all of these thinkers that are distinctive and mark out their different and opposed positions on certain points, but there is something to be gained by considering their shared assumptions, which indicate the shared terrain on which their disagreements play out.
Unless someone can suggest a better alternative I'd say LaCapra's book's not a bad place to start.
DM
On 22/05/2009, at 6:08 AM, <ian.walmsley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I was reading something the other day that discussed this issue.
I think it might have been Dominick LaCapra's History and Reading: Tocqueville, Foucault, French Studies (University of Toronto Press, 2000). You might start there.
You are right to assume that Foucault generally avoids searching for a meaning 'underneath' or 'behind' discourse in that hermeneutical sense, but I'm not sure how explicit he is about a lot of that. It seems to be more a general feature of his work, rather than something he intervenes on repeatedly. For that kind of thing you might get something more sustained in Deleuze, Althusser, or Macherey. The points where their positions on this intersect with those of Derrida perhaps indicate a general doxa - obviously there are divergences between all of these thinkers that are distinctive and mark out their different and opposed positions on certain points, but there is something to be gained by considering their shared assumptions, which indicate the shared terrain on which their disagreements play out.
Unless someone can suggest a better alternative I'd say LaCapra's book's not a bad place to start.
DM
On 22/05/2009, at 6:08 AM, <ian.walmsley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I am fairly new to Foucauldian methods and am currently trying to understand whether the idea of interpretation has any place in using Foucault's methods. I understand that for Foucault there is no inside or outside of discourse so in using his methods it is important to aviod searching for meaning.
My question would be, when analysing data am I just describing the practices? But then surely my descriptions are only my interpretation? From what I can see (with my noice minds eye) there is no way out of interpretation, or am I just talking about two different things?
Any feedback about this, or useful and informative pieces to read, or some general feedback on using Foucault would be much appreciated.
Regards
Ian
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