On politics and social science – the subject-object problem in social science and Foucault’s engaged epistemology

Abstract

The epistemological problem of the relationship between the subject of knowledge and the object being known has it’s form in social science as a problem of the relationship between a social scientist as a researcher and society and it’s phenomena as an object of this inquiry. As Berger and Kellner note in their book “Sociology Reinterpreted” a social scientist is necessarily a part of the object he studies, being embedded in a position in society from which he studies it. Hence social sciences as scientific endeavors face a problem of the inseperability of their researchers from object they study. Two main solutions two this problem have arisen: positivism and interpretivism. Positivism postulates that rigorous methods for research will insure that objective knowledge will be produced while interpretivism sees society only as an aggregate of individuals whose interactions should be interpreted. A third epistemological framework has arisen in the first half of the twentieth century usually called “critical theory”. Critical theory states that researchers should aim their research towards changing the object they are researching, therefore their scientific practice should have extra-scientific effects, namely political effects. This perspective violates Webers postulate of value neutrality which claims that social sciences can only study the state of affairs but can’t subscribe desirable ways of action. As we will see the main topic of our paper is the epistemological framework of the work of Michel Foucault and his contribution to the resolution of the problematic relation between a researcher and his research object in social science. We will claim that Foucault broadly falls into the critical theory paradigm but manages to solve it’s conflict with the value neutrality postulate. Foucault envisions society as an amalgam of discursive and non-discursive practices that interconnect in a way that gives them regularity and coherence through time. As Gayatri Spivak notices for Foucault discursive practices create meaning and in doing so chart a way for nondiscursive practices and therefore for action. This can be seen as an explanation for Foucault’s well known postulate of the relationship between power and knowledge, discursive practices create knowledge that makes visible certain paths for action. Both of these types of practices intertwine to create what Foucault calls “dispositifs” that can be seen as mechanisms that bind discursive and non-discursive practices in a coherent manner and enable their regular repetition through time. Foucault calls his methodology “genealogy” and sees it as a historical research of the emergence of dipositifs. Genealogy is a historical research of the contingent ways in which practices got interconnected in the past to create dispositifs we see today. As Foucault claims genealogy begins with a “question posed in the present” about a certain dispositive and then charts historical events and processes that led to its current form. The main aim of genealogy is to show that there is no transcendental necessity for a certain dispositif to exist in it’s current form by exposing the historical contingency that led to it’s current state. Foucault claimed that his intent was to show that there is no metaphysical necessity that grounds the existences of dispositifs and hence that their current form is arbitrary. As we can see Foucault follows his postulate on the relationship between knowledge and power and formulates his scientific practice as an opening of possibilities for different forms of action. This is way he calls his books “experiments” and claims that they are to be used for readers to re-examine their own links to the currently existing dispositifs and possibilities of their alternative arrangements. But as Foucault claims the genealogical method doesn’t include normative prescriptions and can be seen only as a form of an anti-metaphysical “unmasking” of current dispositifs. This unmasking doesn’t prescribe a desirable form to any dispositive but only shows that it can be arranged in different ways. Hence we can say that Foucault sees the relationship between a researcher and his object of study as a form of an intervention of the subject that aims at showing that the object is an arbitrary construction. In that regard Foucault falls into the critical theory paradigm. Where he differs from critical theory is his anti-normative stance that refuses to prescribe any desirable form of action unlike for example Horkheimer who in his essay on critical theory claims that “the task of the theorist is to push society towards justice”. Foucault claims that his research results should be used as “instruments” in political struggles but he himself doesn’t ever proclaim a desirable political goal. So we can conclude that Foucault solves the problem of the subject-object relation in social science by envisioning the research process as a practice of production of tools for social change. Therefore he connects social science to extra-scientific political goals but doesn’t violate the value neutrality postulate because his research doesn’t prescribe any concrete political goals but only shows the possibility for social change.