(Non-)use of Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge and order of things in LIS journal literature, 1990-2015
| Date | 09 May 2016 |
| Published date | 09 May 2016 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-08-2015-0096 |
| Author | Scott Hamilton Dewey |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management |
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(Non-)use of Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge and order of things in LIS journal
literature, 1990-2015
Introduction
Postmodernism has been called “the most influential intellectual trend of the last third of
the 20
th
century, and one of the central trends in the Western cultural-theoretical thinking since
the 1960s” (Viires, 2011, p. 451; Lopez and Potter, 2001, p. 3). As such, postmodernism has
significantly impacted many academic fields, including archival, library, and information
science/studies (hereinafter LIS) (Brothman, 1999, p. 65; Buschman and Brosio, 2006, p. 408).
Of all the figures associated with postmodernism, the most widely known and widely
cited is French intellectual historian and theoretician Michel Foucault (1926-1984) (Times
Higher Education online, 2009; Cronin and Meho, 2009, p. 401). Foucault has been called “‘the
central figure in the most noteworthy flowering of oppositional intellectual life in the twentieth
century West.’” (Olsson, 2007, p. 221, quoting Radford, 1992, p. 416). He is especially
remembered for offering radical critique of conventional assumptions, methods, or systems of
knowledge and meaning. As LIS scholar Gary Radford notes, “The dissolution of taken-for-
granted structures is a hallmark of Foucault’s work” (Radford, 1998, p. 622). The structures
Foucault challenged include not only governments, academic and professional disciplines, and
other authoritative institutions, but language, knowledge, power, and authority in general.
Because much of Foucault’s critique is rooted at the essential, fundamental level of
language and communication itself, the concept of discourse is especially central to Foucault’s
thought, and Foucault is particularly identified with discourse (Day, 2005, pp. 589-593;
Hannabuss, 1996; Radford, 2003; Frohmann, 1994, p. 119). For Foucault, discourse tends to
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build in assumptions and “taken-for-granted structures” that ultimately and cumulatively take on
a life of their own by controlling, confining, and defining thought, understanding, knowledge,
and what may be recognized or understood to be true in any particular community or context. As
Radford explains, “For Foucault, objectivity and truth are sites of struggle among competing
systems of discourse. What is scientific at any particular historical juncture is determined by
which system is dominant and which system is true” (Radford, 1992, p. 418). Searches of
academic journal article databases indicate that discourse analysis, whether expressly
Foucauldian or not, has profoundly impacted many fields, including LIS.
In light of the significant influence of Foucault and discourse analysis upon LIS among
other fields, this study attempts to trace the visible impact on LIS scholarship of two of
Foucault’s most influential early works exploring discourse and his trademark “archaeological”
approach used to recognize, uncover, and dissolve the taken-for-granted structures built into and
unquestioningly assumed within established systems of discourse that Foucault labeled
“discursive formations”: The Order of Things (1970) [hereinafter referred to as “Order” for
brevity’s sake] and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) [hereinafter referred to as
“Archaeology”]. This study analyzes how these two works have influenced LIS scholars and
practitioners, as evidenced by visible discussion, citation, and use of the works in LIS scholarly
journal literature. To do this, the study traces precisely which scholars have appropriated either
or both of Foucault’s works, for use in precisely which publications, out of a lengthy list of
digitally available and electronically searchable LIS journals.
As originally conceived, the study also sought to trace any visible patterns of variation in
the use and understanding of these two books between different sectors of the wider LIS field, to
determine whether there is discernible evidence of significant differences in rates of use or
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citation, in depth or extent of use, or in understandings or interpretations of the works and their
meaning and significance between different sectors of LIS. This focus of the research was based
upon a preliminary hypothesis predicting that in practice, the extent, nature, and quality of use
and understanding of one work relative to the other might tend to serve as an indicator
mechanism marking tacit self-identification with one or another sub-area of LIS by LIS scholars
or practitioners, based upon the way the work is characteristically appropriated (or not) by
particular clusters or communities of scholars. It was hoped that the study’s fine-grained,
bottom-up approach of monitoring and measuring appropriation and use of Foucault’s two works
within the wider LIS field/community might serve as a proof of concept experiment for using the
bottom-up approach to map boundaries between sub-areas of LIS, rather than conventional, top-
down assumptions regarding such disciplinary subdivisions.
In the end, the study failed to reveal this hoped-for result. This was partly due to a
substantial disparity in use of the two works overall: within the LIS arena generally, The Order
of Things appears to be relatively little-used compared to The Archaeology of Knowledge. Yet
the fine-grained, bottom-up approach used in the study reveals other interesting, suggestive
patterns regarding the particular dynamics of the dispersion, diffusion, and, perhaps, dissipation
of influential ideas and concepts within a scholarly community. Notably, and perhaps ironically,
the study tends to confirm Foucault’s own thoughts and ideas regarding the nature of discourse
and discursive formations, by showing how Foucault and his important early works have, in a
sense, themselves become a Foucauldian discursive formation.
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