On the Methodology of Dispositive Analysis

Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines 1 (1): 115-123 On the Methodology of Dispositive Analysis Joannah Caborn DISS (Duisburger Institut für Sprach- und Sozialforschung) Email: [email protected] Abstract Foucault never wrote an explicit methodology of discourse analysis, let alone dispositive analysis. In this paper, I first briefly outline definitions of the dispositive, drawing on a combination of the everyday French language use of the word ‘dispositif’ and Foucault’s own writings. From Foucault’s emphasis on the heterogeneity of the elements of the dispositive, I look at how Siegfried Jäger has suggested using this characteristic of the dispositive to operationalise dispositive analysis. I propose to add a semiological approach into the method of dispositive analysis, using an example from my own work on the analysis of state architecture in Germany and introducing the concept of the ‘Foucauldian sign’. Then Jürgen Link’s writings on the dispositive are considered, which add the concepts of power and knowledge into the analysis. The paper concludes with a graphical representation of the dispositive, and a suggestion of a three step process of dispositive analysis. Keywords: Dispositive, Methodology, Heterogeneity, Semiology, Power 1. On the methodology of dispositive analysis 1.1 Introduction In some reviews of the historical development of linguistics, a movement from smaller to larger units of study is presented.1 From initial preoccupations with the word, and in fact its smaller units of phonology and morphology, the sentence then became the largest unit of linguistic study. Attention to pragmatics widened the view again, and more recently text linguistics has emerged. Text linguistics in turn is in some quarters now felt to be facing a challenge from discourse analysis as the next largest unit of analysis.2 Each time the development was prompted by a feeling that while the current unit of study was important, it was not enough to explain all the phenomena that the researchers encountered. In order to get to grips with them, it was necessary to move to the next largest unit of language. The step from discourse to dispositive with Foucault can be seen as part of a similar process. After The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Order of Things where he had focused on the development of knowledge in the form of statements, archives and epistemes, he then introduces the term dispositive to expand the theoretical basis of his analyses. There are two points (at least) that the dispositive adds over discourse as a unit of analysis. One is the question of the heterogeneity of what can be studied with dispositive analysis as opposed to discourse analysis. The second is the question of power. In this talk I shall use the work of two German scholars to show how the questions of heterogeneity and of power are worked into the concept of the dispositive. Furthermore, I shall consider how reflection on these two points can be used as part of the development of a method of dispositive analysis. 112 Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines 1 (1): 115-123 1.2 Defining the dispositive Before addressing the methodology of dispositive analysis, it is necessary to outline the definition of a dispositive. Rather than go straight to Foucault, I would like first to recall that in everyday French, the word ‘dispositif’ is used to describe a system set up for a specific purpose. For example, an alarm system, consisting of say motion and/or heat sensors installed in the place where you want to apprehend burglars, attached to the alarm itself by cables, and a control panel inside the house for which only the owner knows the code to arm and disarm it, would be labelled a ‘dispositif d’alarme’. An intercom to enter a block of flats is known as a ‘dispositif de communication’. Foucault’s conceptualisation of the dispositive in discourse theory is perhaps not too far removed from these prosaic examples. He says that a dispositive is a ‘decidedly heterogeneous ensemble’ (Foucault 1994 (1977): 299) of elements ranging from buildings to laws to scientific statements.3 The elements of the alarm system are indeed decidedly heterogeneous, including not only the hardware, consisting of plastics and electronics, but also, for example, the owner’s exclusive knowledge of the code. A second important aspect of Foucault’s definition of the dispositive is the importance of the connections between the elements. To illustrate this with the everyday example of the alarm system, if the alarm is not connected to the sensors, the system will not work. Equally, Foucault points out the potential interchangeability of the elements. The code the owner chooses for the alarm may well be the same one that in another ‘dispositif’ allows him or her to withdraw money from the bank. Finally, Foucault says that a dispositive must respond to an ‘urgence’ which can be translated as an emergency, or a need. This also applies to the alarm system which has a highly strategic function of protecting private property in a capitalist economy that places such high value on private ownership, to the extent that a need to protect it is created. This is not to say that an alarm system in itself represents a dispositive in terms of Foucauldian analysis (although it might be considered part of one, for example considering its function of protecting private property in a capitalist society). I introduce these ideas in order to illustrate an everyday French language notion which may have contributed to Foucault’s conceptualisation of the dispositive and which may be helpful in grasping the abstract concept it became in his writings.4 2. Heterogeneity in the dispositive Considering that this is a paper on linguistics, it may seem strange to be preparing to work on a definition of a unit of analysis which includes not just language but many non-linguistic elements. This is precisely the addition that dispositive theory makes to discourse theory. Whereas Foucault’s work on discourse theory had focused on the statement and the archive (particularly in the Archaeology of Knowledge), the addition of the dispositive (from the History of Sexuality onwards), allowed him to begin to theorise the analysis of non-linguistic elements. In the definition of the dispositive quoted above, Foucault addresses the question of heterogeneity as one of the defining qualities of the dispositive. He starts his definition by emphasising that a dispositive is a ‘decidedly heterogeneous ensemble’ (Foucault 1994 (1977): 299), and then lists possible elements of a dispositive as: 113 Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines 1 (1): 115-123 discourses, institutions, architectural structures, prescriptive decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral or philanthropic propositions, in short: words, but also what it not expressed in words. (Foucault 1994 (1977): 299)5 Some of the elements are textual (‘du dit’), but others such as the institutions and the architecture are not (‘du non-dit’), meaning that the heterogeneity is couched as a question of language versus object. In the course of the text quoted (which takes the form of a discussion between academics) Foucault’s colleagues later ask how the new term dispositive relates to his previous work on epistemes, and discursive formations, to which he replies: In ‘The Order of Things’, in trying to write a history of the episteme, I got into an impasse. Now what I want to do is to try and show that what I call a dispositive is a much more general form of the episteme. Or rather that the episteme is a specifically discursive dispositive, compared to the dispositive itself which is discursive and non-discursive, its elements being much more heterogeneous. (Foucault 1994 (1977): 300-1)6 Foucault seems to be using the term discursive to refer to language, text, writing, and contrasting it with non-discursive items, such as institutions, architecture, and administrative measures, to take his own examples from the possible heterogeneous elements of the dispositive. He is suggesting that while the episteme was entirely language-based, the new term dispositive allows him to go beyond that and analyse non-linguistic elements. Later in the discussion, one of his questioners in fact suggests to him just that: ‘With the dispositive you want to go beyond discourse’, to which Foucault replies ‘Ah yes!’ (ibid.: 301). It has to be said at this point that the division into discursive and non-discursive defined as language-based and non-language-based elements is in Foucault’s own terms not unproblematical. Firstly, he himself frequently insisted on the fact that discourse analysis should go further than an analysis of language: In the Archaeology of Knowledge (written before the interview quoted and before the History of Sexuality where the term dispositive is most fully developed) he wrote that discourses were not to be treated as: groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Of course, discourses are composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things. It is this more that renders them irreducible to the language (langue) and to speech. It is this ‘more’ that we must reveal and describe. (Foucault 1982: 49) Secondly, his empirical analyses such as Birth of the Clinic, or Discipline and Punish, do indeed go much further than linguistic analyses in their study of the conditions for the creation of knowledge in the history of the human sciences. One could perhaps make the argument that Foucault’s own theory lagged behind the depth of his analyses, and introducing the dispositive was a way of catching up with what he was already doing.

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