Regime Of Truth Research Articles

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Deficit Model, the Diffusion Model and Publics in STS

The start of the twenty-first century witnessed the flourishing of both the biosciences (particularly genomics) and initiatives around public engagement in science, particularly in the UK and USA. STS researchers have both followed and fuelled this latter trend. Hence, it may be helpful to review the genealogy of these recent developments and of STS concern for the publics of science. This provides a way of assessing whether STS activities have been contributing to making the sciences more open and accountable to their publics. One trail returns to the institutionalisation of Public Understanding of Science (PUS) in the mid-1980s. The critique of this movement by STS scholars through reference to the deficit model (of public understanding of science) also figures here. However, less attention has been given to other modes of conceptualising science and publics, including what Cooter and Pumfrey label as the ‘diffusionist’ or ‘diffusion’ model (of scientific knowledge), which they contend entrenched traditional views of scientific knowledge and of publics as receivers of such knowledge. More recently, investigations of the making of science in diverse locations, attention to multiplicity and co-production have taken STS in new directions. Nevertheless, the legacies of both the deficit and diffusion models of science and publics continue to influence STS and its ‘regimes of truth’. Questions remain around STS researchers' persistent failure to acknowledge the diffusion model, in particular, and the consequent retrenchment of traditional views of how science works, limiting prospects for substantial public engagement and more open, democratic modes of science.

Reflexive professionalism: reclaiming the voice of authority in shaping the discourses of education policy

The nature and value of “professionalism” has long been contested by both producers and consumers of policy. Most recently, governments have rewritten and redefined professionalism as compliance with externally imposed “standards.” This has been achieved by silencing the voices of those who inhabit the professional field of education. This article uses Foucauldian archaeology to excavate the enunciative field of professionalism by digging through the academic and institutional (political) archive, and in doing so identifies two key policy documents for further analysis. The excavation shows that while the voices of (academic) authority speak of competing discourses emerging, with professional standards promulgated as the mechanism to enhance professionalism, an alternative regime of truth identifies the privileged use of (managerial) voices from outside the field of education to create a discourse of compliance. There has long been a mismatch between the voices of authority on discourses around professionalism from the academic archive and those that count in contemporary and emerging Australian educational policy. In this article, we counter this mismatch and argue that reflexive educators’ regimes of truth are worthy of attention and should be heard and amplified.

WikiLeaks

Wikileaks can safely be considered a revealing experience in testing the limits of power. Julian Assange’s intent is to uncover the roots of power abuse, publicly exposing what is supposed to be the fabric of a hidden authoritarian regime underlying formal democracies. Despite the many—though generally unsurprising—Wikileaks revelations, the whole operation did not have the enormous effects Assange and his supporters anticipated, suggesting that perhaps something was wrong with Assange’s prediction, and the theory underlying it. To be sure, the opposition secrecy vs. transparency was presented in Wikileaks’ founding texts as a contradiction. Wikileaks assumes, first, that one could reach transparency, and second, that transparency, by the mere fact of existing, will be the best guarantee for a democratic power and a free society. This article argues that the main assumption underlying Wikileaks is wrong, since in modern power, transparency and secrecy are much more complementary than contradictory, all the more so when power is conceived of—as Assange himself does—as a reticular structure, a network, or a web. When transparency is not opposed to secrecy anymore, it can become the most refined form of secrecy. In such a regime of truth, whoever tries to get rid of secrecy and promotes transparency, instead of being freed of a “totalitarian regime,” gets entirely entangled in the dialectics of modern power.

Investigating Homelessness: In Defence of a Declared and Concerned Ontological Politics*

Quantification and pathological individualization are the two dominant trends within homelessness research. In acquiring near-exclusive status in this research, they constitute a regime of truth and produce a series of unsustainable negations: they deny that they produce the realities which they study, they deny that other realities may be produced, they delegitimise any alternative methodological positionings, and render power relationships and domination invisible, thus obscuring the injustice of life on the streets. As an alternative to this regime of truth, this article argues for the mobilisation of a declared ontological politics that is concerned with the welfare and dignity of homeless people.

Critique is a thing of this world

Although Foucault was clearly a critical thinker, his approach also provides for the possibility of a genealogy of critique. Such an approach problematizes critique, and I trace the emergent problematization of critique in Foucault’s later works, and briefly in Latour and Boltanski. From this I move on to the ‘critical problematic’, that is, how critique operates as a form of power/knowledge, as a discourse that creates subjects through a critical regime of truth and critical truth-games. Specifically, I argue that critique is a discourse which transforms and unmasks other ‘truth-claims’, replacing them with a starker vision of reality, which in the end is also a specific cultural vision. To elaborate this view, I return to Foucault’s discussion of Kant, his late lectures on Cynicism and also on ordo-liberalism. The wider circulation of critical discourses is demonstrated through an analysis of ‘cool’ or critical consumerism. In conclusion, the relationship between critique, crisis and modernity is considered.

Formations of Masculinity and Higher Education Pedagogies

Recent attention to men’s decreasing levels of participation in higher education (HE) has produced overly simplistic analyses that men are the new disadvantaged sex and the “feminization thesis” (Leathwood & Read, 2009, p. 20). Men are often homogenized as a group, posing them in a battle of the sexes and ignoring the complex ways that masculinity intersects with other social differences, including age, class, ethnicity, race, and sexuality. Despite the moral panic that has emerged in many countries about men’s HE participation rates compared to women’s, there has been a dearth of research that explores the relationship between formations of masculinity and HE pedagogies. However, some research has drawn attention to the important interconnections between formations of masculinity and other social, generational and cultural differences and inequalities, which profoundly shape men’s dispositions to and experiences of learning and teaching (Archer, 2003; Burke, 2006; HEA, 2008). This paper explores the complex formations of masculinity at play in students’ and academics’ accounts of pedagogical experiences, relations and practices, drawing on a major qualitative research project concerning gender and higher education pedagogies, funded by the UK’s Higher Education Academy. Pedagogies are conceptualised in this paper as constitutive of gendered formations through the discursive practices and regimes of truth at play in particular pedagogic and disciplinary spaces. The article shows that pedagogies do not simply reflect the gendered identities of academics and students but that pedagogies themselves are gendered, intimately bound up with historical and masculinised ways of being and doing within higher education.

A memória em três atos: deslocamentos interdisciplinares

Este texto pretende elaborar uma reflexão sobre a problemática do tempo, da memória e do esquecimento no campo do conhecimento histórico. Por essa via pretendemos contribuir para a discussão de como os historiadores tecem as formas atuais da história nas relações que estabelecem entre a história, o tempo e a memória, nas ligações que constroem entre o passado, o presente e o futuro, na sua tensão com os regimes de verdade da disciplina histórica, ou no seu inevitável trânsito nas fronteiras de outras disciplinas e formas de conhecimento, face às suas responsabilidades com a contemporaneidade.

A Prescription for Violence: The Legacy of Colonization in Contemporary Forensic Mental Health and the Production of Difference

In this paper I will argue, through the example of the “treatment” of racialized minorities diagnosed with mental illness, that the mental health system (including its unique laws, production of different identity categories and ruling disciplines), with its dogmatic adherence to and reliance on alleged expert opinion and internal inquiry, allows for the erasure of subaltern voices. Often we hear about a tragic incident as reported by the media about someone diagnosed with a mental illness who has committed a crime. These representations routinely present the person as violent, aggressive, uncontrollable, and unpredictable. Repeatedly the voice of the accused is not represented; his or her social, historical, and political contexts are not considered relevant. The technologies of the criminal justice and mental health system’s use of physical or chemical restraint, coercive treatment, or practices such as deportation are also not reported, thus reproducing systems of harm. We don’t get to look inside the asylum. Patients’ voices are excluded from the discursive practices, disciplinary hegemony or dominant regimes of truth within the mental health system. This creates a system impermeable to criticism, where violence continues to prevail. Through a discussion of the disproportionate criminalization and deportation of the mentally ill, the false associations between mental illness and violence, the colonial ancestry of internal inquiry, and example cases from the media, this paper reviews how these particular technologies of violence owe their inheritance to the orientalising, discursive practices and disciplinary hegemony developed during colonization that when ignored, reproduce the dehumanizing outcomes upon which they were built.

Language endangerment and revitalisation as elements of regimes of truth: shifting terminology to shift perspective

This paper seeks to explore how the language endangerment/revitalisation discourse was gradually established as a new Foucauldian regime of truth. I characterise this regime of truth as one that not only essentialises the link between language and community, but also as one that constructs communities as homogeneous and seeks to minimise internal and external conflict. Through the example of how this discourse is becoming dominant in France, I then suggest that there are alternative ways of looking at minority language processes, and draw on works developed in France in the 1980s in the Occitan school of sociolinguistics to propose an approach centred on social actors and processes rather than on languages. I thus propose that one way of analysing (and responding to) ‘language endangerment’ may reside in looking at it from a different perspective such as the one developed by Robert Lafont around the Occitan case.

Neoliberalism, education and the integration of ICT in schools. A critical reading

This article explores a contemporary perspective of education that aims to radically re-construct schools through the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT). Through the analysis of key texts produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, leading ICT industries, and international educational researchers, the article looks at the apparently neutral and desirable regime of truth surrounding education, where concrete problems are created and certain solutions provided. The findings discuss how the integration of ICT in schools is embedded in a perspective of education based on: new modalities of soft government, the centrality of a self-regulated and entrepreneur learner, and the representation of schools as flexible, autonomous and non-hierarchical environments organised around non-standardised modalities of public ‘accountability’.

QUEER VAMPIRES AND THE IDEOLOGY OF GOTHIC

The French philosopher Michel Foucault is one of the most influential figures who contributed to the shaping of the notion of power in contemporary culture. According to him, “power is everywhere,” it is embedded in our actions, life-styles, our beliefs and in every other concept that claim to be neutral (Foucault, 1998, p. 93). What’s more, it is embedded in language, and through discourse it creates “regimes of truth” (as cited in Rabinow, 1991, p. 73). He equates power and the knowledge of truth because he thinks that power is established through socially accepted forms of knowledge. He suggests that

Communicating ‘normalcy’ in Israel: intra/intercultural paradox and interceptions in tourism discourse

This case study of Israeli tourism discourse during a time of heightened violent conflict compares official state discourse, which situates tourism in Israel as safe and the country's status as ‘normal’, with material–symbolic interceptions of individuals and occurrences. I locate an intra/intercultural dialectic of ‘normalcy’ used to signify several paradoxical meanings, to achieve and preserve security of being, and to strategically situate an ‘interpretive mismatch’ for ideological and economic intercultural consumption. I also reflexively examine the complicit and resistant roles of foreign media press trips in co-constructing state tourism promotion strategies, in part looking at my own role as a journalist as echoer of strategic intercultural regimes of truth and filterer of interceptions.

Representation of Islam in the publications of the newspaper "Arrad"

The problem of the internal ideological diversity of Islam has become the subject of close attention of researchers more than once. In the absence of a single institution that would regulate the "regime of truth" for most Muslims, Islamic orthodoxy appears to be rather blurred and essentially, as A. Knysh writes, depends to a large extent on the political forces that support this or that direction of Islamic thought.106 In this context, the situation of institutional pluralism in the Muslim Umma of Ukraine is a logical continuation of world trends. At the same time, the identification of a center of religious authority or organization from the point of view of its dogmatic or ideological direction is often a rather difficult task. First of all, the reason for this may be the reluctance of the organizations themselves to openly determine their position so as not to be criticized by competitive structures. On the other hand, the focus on the preaching of Islam in the Ukrainian context often requires the need to rely on the most general, basic principles of the doctrine that do not require special training for new converts.

Casual sex as ‘not a natural act’ and other regimes of truth about heterosexuality

This paper analyses online texts concerning the supposed ‘rules’ and ‘etiquette’ of heterosexual casual sex, exploring how ‘ideal’ casual sex was constructed – as object and practice. We examine how casual sex was constituted by authors who positioned themselves as knowledgeable and/or expert in relation to casual sex and demonstrate the discourses that their accounts drew on in constructing archetypal casual sex. Our analysis is situated within feminist/critical theorising and debates regarding the institution of heterosexuality and, in particular, construction of monogamy as ‘ideal’ when it comes to heterosexual relationships. We argue that casual sex was constituted as not a natural act through the specific instructions of how to ‘do casual sex right’. We outline the construction of an attraction imperative in relation to casual sex, its hierarchies of respectability, and address what an analysis about casual sex tells us about contemporary heterosexuality. This paper demonstrates that although casual sex could possibly offer an alternative to the currently pervasive mononormativity, it fails to provide this in accounts of ‘ideal’ casual sex as relayed in the public arena.

Negotiating Halil: Concomitant Marginalization and Agency as a “Non-Native English Speaker” Student, Scholar and Teacher Trainer

This co-constructed narrative explores one “non-native” English-speaking graduate student, scholar, and teacher trainer's experience challenging the native speaker construct as a regime of truth in the field of English language teaching. Though marginalized academically and professionally by its discourses, Halil's storyline is nevertheless one of an individual actively and methodically creating space for agency and advocacy in the classroom, in his university and in his professional activities as a member of the English language teaching and research community.

Asexuality: from pathology to identity and beyond

This article draws attention to the constitutive mechanisms of asexual identity. It identifies a shift in expert discourse: a move away from pathology towards recognition of asexual identity. While this discursive shift, propelled by recent research in psychology and sexology, could pave the way for the inclusion of asexuals in public culture, it also reaffirms dominant terms and formations pertaining to sexuality and intimacy. The article argues that the discursive formation of a new asexual identity takes place through a process of objectification and subjectification/subjection at the interface between expert disciplines and activism. The recognition of identity is constitutive of subjects that are particularly suitable for self-regulation within the parameters of (neo)liberal citizenship. Yet, at the same time, the discursive shift also makes room for critical intervention akin to queer critique of naturalised gender and sexuality norms. The recognition of asexual identity could serve to destabilise the sexual regime (of truth) that privileges sexual relationships against other affiliations and grants sexual-biological relationships a status as primary in the formation of family and kinship relations. The article concludes that asexual identity encourages us to imagine other pathways of affiliation and other concepts of personhood, beyond the tenets of liberal humanism – gesturing instead towards new configurations of the human and new meanings of sexual citizenship.

Becoming ‘culturpreneur’: How the ‘neoliberal regime of truth’ affects and redefines artistic subject positions

In relating to the politico-economic concept of ‘creative industries’, the paper explores in what way the art field and its actors are discursively repositioned within ‘flexible cultural capitalism’. Through empirical material from the independent Austrian theatre scene, the paper, moreover, illustrates how the ‘culturpreneurial’ transformation of the field affects the specific artistic practices, forms of organizing and conduct. In this regard, it will be shown that the artists’ modes of conduct are, at least to some extent, precarious: due to their ascetic and disciplined self-concept, artists seem to contribute, in parts, to their own marginalization as well as to the strengthening of certain ‘neoliberal orders’ and ‘culturpreneurial subject ideals’ of flexible capitalism – even though they are actually keen to resist current governmental technologies like the promotion of competition and market-determined assessment.

The Uses of History in the Unmaking of Modern Suicide

This paper explores the notion that the writing of history has played a role in the making of modern suicide, and that it can have its uses in its “unmaking.” Examples of the making of modern suicide come from the writings of nineteenth century doctors concerned with formulating new medical truths of suicide, and who came to describe well-known historical “suicides” (e.g., that of Cato) in terms of pathology as part of this project. The medicalized suicide that was formed in the nineteenth century has come to dominate how the problem is conceptualized and managed. The author’s own experiences of working in a community mental health team and his involvement in suicide prevention are drawn on here, and a critique is offered of the “regime of truth” centering on the “compulsory ontology of pathology” that seems to govern so much thinking in this area. It is argued that the writing of history can provide useful tools when seeking to “denaturalize” particular ways of thinking and acting that have come to be taken as necessary, real, and true. The paper draws on the work of Michel Foucault, and examples are given of how the writing of the history of self-accomplished death can be a form of critique. Histories that seek to map the establishment and circulation of new “truths” of suicide—and the formation of objects, concepts, and subjects in relation to these “truths”—offer possibilities in terms of problematizing unquestioned contemporary assumptions and practices, enabling us “to think against the present.”

What is Social Sciences and Humanities Research ‘Worth’? Neoliberalism and the Framing of Social Sciences and Humanities Work in Canada

This article offers a critique of the discursive politics represented in attempts to frame social sciences and humanities work in the mould of neoliberal knowledge capitalism. The critique offered is inspired by Foucault's critical thought on neoliberalism and an interpretation of ‘neoliberal governmentality’ that flows from his Collège de France lectures on ‘the birth of biopolitics’. As a launching point, a particular document is explored — a 2008 report from a private consulting firm called the Impact Group, commissioned by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (the benefactor of the postdoctoral research fellowship from which this present inquiry emerges). The author explores here the significance of how a deeply economic-reductionist — or, in the author's terms, neoliberal — way of looking at social sciences and humanities work can find utterance in a context of a hegemonic discourse of what the author (and others) terms ‘neoliberal knowledge capitalism’. As one particular — if dominant at present — ‘regime of truth’ in Foucault's terms, this discourse represents well the imperatives of neoliberalism, which are construed here as imperialistic and colonising. From a neoliberal perspective, anything and everything in society ought to be perceived as a commodity, to be privatised, bought and sold, and considered solely within a framework of utility towards driving ‘economic growth’ in the most raw and disembedded sense of market relations, working over and above, and outside any category of critical comment or influence. This trend, in turn, is put under scrutiny here towards suggesting the necessary political task of interrupting this particular regime of truth and asserting others based on frames of reference and value not associated with a narrow, myopic neoliberalism, but rather with forms of knowledge socialism.

Regimes of Truth: Review of Bruce Lincoln’s Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars

Abstract In this review of Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars, I shall not so much focus on the concrete analyses, but rather discuss implications of a more theoretical and philosophical nature. First, I shall deal with Lincoln’s method by grasping (if not recasting) it as a sort of discourse analysis. Secondly, I shall critically go through some of the cases by paying a special attention to his distinction between ‘truth’ and ‘regimes of truth’ as well as the concomitant reference to empirical criteria. Thirdly, and finally, I shall I challenge his stance on “weak comparison” and argue for the complementary value of various universalizing theories in the study of religion.