Page 137 - Cultural Theory

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••• Tim May and Jason Powell •••

methodological ‘tools’ to disrupt history at the same time as giving history a ‘power/
knowledge’ re-configuration and that makes his approach so distinctive and relevant
to social theory and cultural analysis. In The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972),
Foucault discusses ‘archaeology’ as the analysis of a statement as it occurs in the his-
torical archive. Further, archaeology ‘describes discourses as practices specified in the
element of the archive’ (ibid.: 131), the archive being ‘the general system of the for-
mation and transformation of statements’ (ibid.: 130). While an understanding of
language would ask what rules have been provided for a particular statement, the
analysis of discourse asks a different question: ‘How is it that one particular state-
ment appeared rather than another?’ (ibid.: 27).
The use of an archaeological method explores the networks of what is said and
what can be seen in a set of social arrangements: in the conduct of an archaeology
there is a visibility in ‘opening up’ statements. For example, the work of Brooke-Ross
(1986) illustrates how the rise of ‘residential care’ in Western culture produces state-
ments about the ‘residents’ old age’ while statements about ‘their ageing’ produces
forms of visibility which reinforce the power of residential care. Such visibility is con-
solidated by resource allocation; the cost of residential care stands at £8 billion per
year (Powell, 2001) – hence the consolidation of statements pertaining to ageing
reinforces institutions such as residential care and the revenue they generate. In this
context archaeology charts the relationship between statements and the visible and
those ‘institutions’ which acquire authority and provide limits within which discur-
sive objects may exist.
In this approach we can see that the attempt to understand the relations between
statements and visibility focuses on those set of statements that make up institutions
such as prisons – instructions to prison officers, statements about time-tabling of
activities for inmates and the structure and space of the carceral institution itself.
This leads to the production of:

a whole micro-penality of time (lateness, absences, interruptions of tasks), of
activity (inattention, negligence, lack of zeal), of behaviour (impoliteness, dis-
obedience), of speech (idle chatter, insolence), of the body (incorrect attitudes,
irregular gestures, lack of cleanliness), of sexuality (impurity, indecency).
(Foucault, 1977: 178)

The crucial point is that this approach draws our attention to the dynamic inter-
relationship between statements and institutions. Second, the attempt to describe
‘institutions’ which acquire authority and provide limits within which discursive
objects may act, focuses again on the institution which delimits the range of activi-
ties of discursive objects (Powell and Biggs, 2000) – it is at this point that an explo-
ration of the architectural features of the institution would be used to understand
spatial arrangements. In a similar context, Goffman (1968) wrote about how spatial
arrangements of ‘total institutions’ operate to provide care and rehabilitation at an
official level and capacity, underneath the surface. Such institutions curtail the rights
of those within them:

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