Page 186 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

PRACTICE

Power/knowledge After Foucault, the concept of power/ knowledge concerns the
mutually constituting relationship between power and knowledge so that the
production of knowledge is understood to be intertwined with regimes of power.
That is, knowledge is formed within the context of the relationships and practices 163
of power and subsequently contributes to the development, refinement and
proliferation of new techniques of power. Consequently, theory is not neutral but
always implicated in questions of social power since power and knowledge are
mutually constitutive. However, no simple uncontaminated ‘truth’ can be
counterpoised to power/knowledge for there is no truth outside of or beyond
power/knowledge itself.
The concept of power/knowledge can be understood by contrasting it to the
predominant Enlightenment idea of a universal and objective truth. For Foucault,
truth and knowledge do not possess metaphysical, transcendental or universal
properties as they do for Enlightenment thinkers. Rather they are the products of
socially located human beings that are specific to particular times and spaces. Since
knowledge is not neutral, universal or objective but always a human product so it
is also always implicated in questions of social authority.
The concept of discourse is important to Foucault’s understanding of
power/knowledge since discourse constructs, defines and produces the objects of
knowledge in an intelligible way while excluding other forms of reasoning as
unintelligible. Here knowledge as discourse is a product of the way statements are
combined and regulated, that is, subject to power, under particular and determinate
historical conditions. Thus power forms and defines a distinct field of knowledge/
objects constituted by a particular set of concepts. This ordered domain of language
delimits a specific ‘regime of truth’ (that is, what counts as truth).

Links Discourse, Enlightenment, episteme, epistemology, ideology, power, truth

Practice A practice is a way of doing things, an action, application or performance that
occurs as a consequence of intention, habit or routine. Within cultural studies the
significance of the concept derives from its implicit and explicit contrast with
notions of a disembodied language, text or discourse.
From within cultural studies, ‘culture’ has commonly been understood to work
‘like a language’ in that representations are assembled and generate meaning with
essentially the same mechanisms as a language. That is, the formation of
meaningful representations involves the selection and organization of signs into
texts that are constituted through a form of grammar. Further, language endows
material objects and social practices with meanings that are brought into view and
made intelligible to us in terms which language delimits. While the metaphor of
culture as ‘like a language’ has a great deal to recommend it, it is not sound thinking
to allow language to be separated off from practices since language is always
embedded in practice. Further, all practices signify so that there is no special layer
of signifying practices as such. Indeed, Foucault’s much-used concept of discourse
refers to a unity of language and practice and not simply to rule-governed
combinations of statements.