Page 134 - Cultural Theory

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Foucault
CHAPTER SEVEN
•••••••• Interpretive analytics

and the constitution

of the social

Tim May and Jason Powell

Introduction

My objective has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in
our culture, human beings are made subjects.

(Foucault, 1983: 208)

Michel Foucault’s work covered an enormous range of topics and has been influen-
tial across a variety of disciplines. At the same time it can be puzzling for those wish-
ing to understand its implications for analysing cultural relations. Foucault was a
‘masked philosopher’ who deliberately sought to avoid being aligned with any par-
ticular school of thought: ‘It is true that I prefer not to identify myself, and that I’m
amused by the diversity of the ways I’ve been judged and classified’ (1997: 113).
Despite this preference, writers have identified affiliations, influences and the pro-
ductivity of encounters with the work of other scholars and traditions: Nietzsche and
Weber (Braidotti, 1991; Owen, 1997); Marx (Smart, 1983); Kuhn (Dreyfus and
Rabinow, 1982); Gramsci (Kenway, 1990) feminisms (Sawicki, 1991; McNay, 1994)
and Habermas (Ashenden and Owen, 1999). Commentators have also suggested new
terminologies to capture the essence of his approach: ‘interpretative analytics’
(Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982), ‘modes of information’ (Poster, 1984), ‘governmental-
ity studies’ (Burchell et al., 1991; Dean, 2004), and the analysis of ‘dispositifs’
(Deleuze, 1992). In addition, his ideas have become influential in a variety of fields
of investigation aside from cultural studies: criminology (Garland, 1985), manage-
ment and organization (Knights and McCabe, 2003), social research (Kendall and
Wickham, 1999), philosophy (Armstrong, 1992) and sociology and politics (Burchell
et al., 1991).

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