Llamadas, referencias, bibliografías

History is a central theme throughout Foucault’s work and adds to the applicability of his methods:

Michel Foucault’s works are now, due to their path-breaking sustainability and range of application, amongst the most commented upon and used corpus in the fields of historical/cultural/discourse analysis (Jenkins, 1997:117).

In describing Foucault’s approach to history, three key features stand out:

• emphasis on the present

• the relationship between history and experience

• the emergence of a “new” history.

Each of these features is discussed below.

2.3.2.1 Emphasis on the present

Firstly, Foucault consistently reminds his reader that he is busy with a “history of the present” (cf.

Kendall and Wickham, 1999 and Gordon, 1980) and tries to account for the way in which human beings have historically become the subject and object of discourses:

We can say that the object of Foucault’s critique is the status of the present. It is in this sense that Foucault characterizes his enterprise as the “history of the present” (Gordon, 1980:241).

Gordon continues by explaining that Foucault does not ‘question the “reality of the past”’ but rather tries to interrogate the ‘rationality of the present’ (Ibid.). It is mainly through Foucault’s genealogical method that an attempt is made to analyse the ‘multiplicity of political, social and institutional, technical and theoretical conditions’, in this way constructing a ‘system of relations and effects’

(Gordon, 1980:243).

2.3.2.2 Relationship between history and experience

Secondly, Foucault makes the link between history and experience, suggesting that we should consider the historicity of forms of experience (Horrocks, 1997:22). Later in his life (in 1969, during his archaeological stage) Foucault rethinks this approach to history, stating that history had

become depersonalised and formed of complex relations and rules, which he defines as discursive formations (Foucault, 1972). Horrocks (1997:64) agrees:

[Archaeology] doesn’t assume that knowledge accumulates towards any historical conclusion. Archaeology ignores individuals and their histories. It prefers to excavate impersonal structures of knowledge.

2.3.2.3 Emergence of a “new” history

A third characteristic of Foucault’s history is his move from a total/traditional history to a general/new history (Foucault, 1972 and 1977, Jenkins, 1997, Kendall and Wickham, 1997).

Foucault (1972:10) argues that a total history that imposes divisions on history is disappearing, and is being replaced with a general history that focuses more on divisions and transitions. Dean (1994, in Kendall and Wickham, 1997:24, emphasis added) provides a fitting description:

A total history seeks a governing principle of civilization, epoch or society, which accounts for its coherence; it seeks to establish a homogeneous network of relations and causality

across a clearly defined set of spatial and temporal coordinates; it imposes a totalistic form of transformation, and it is able to divide history into definite, cohesive, periods and

stages…A general history, on the other hand…seeks series, divisions, differences in temporality and level, forms of continuity and mutation, particular types of transition and events, possible relations and so on.

The interpretation of new history is based on the interpretation that it is now history itself ‘which transforms documents into monuments…it [history] now deploys a mass of elements that have to be grouped, made relevant, placed in relation to one another to form totalities’ (Foucault, 1972:8, emphasis in the original).

The move from traditional history to the new history has several implications (Foucault, 1972:8-11):

the surface effect of the ‘proliferation of discontinuities in the history of ideas, and the emergence of long periods in history proper’; the notion of discontinuities assume an important role in historical disciplines; the new history is ‘confronted by a number of methodological problems’ including the building up of coherent and homogeneous corpora of documents, the establishment of a principle of choice, the definition of the level of analysis and of the relevant elements, the specification of the method of analysis, the delimitation of groups and sub-groups that articulate the material and the determination of relations that make it possible to characterise a group.

2.3.2.4 Summary and relevance to the study

Foucault’s interpretation of history is relevant to the critique of the development and implementation of the NQF for the following reasons:

Through the application of genealogy it is possible to analyse the “multiplicity” of conditions that make up the NQF discourse – a construction of a “system of relations and effects” that are the NQF discourse. By avoiding a distracting focus on the “reality” of past NQF implementation, it is possible to rather ‘interrogate the rationality of the present’ (Gordon, 1980:243). What is important here is that Foucault does not suggest that history is ignored; rather that history be employed to explain the present.

When applying archaeology it is important to ignore individuals and their histories - it is argued that it is more advantageous to consider impersonal structures of knowledge. In this sense, the

application of the archaeological method to interviews (see SAQA, 2004c-h and 2005c-g) and other relevant texts should not be concerned with individuals’ experiences - in place of such a history of experience, it is of more importance to describe the complex relations and rules that describe the NQF discourse as a discursive formation:

Foucault has shown at length that official biographies and current received opinions of top intellectuals do not carry any transparent truth. Beyond the dossiers and the refined self-consciousness of any age are the organized historical practices which make possible, give meaning to, and situate in a political field these monuments of official discourse (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982:xvii).

Another consideration relevant to the current study is the use of a general history of the NQF; one in which series, divisions and differences are sought and are problem-based. This is in contrast to a total history that divides history into distinct and cohesive stages and is period-based. The description of the history of the NQF discourse has to avoid period-based generalisations and must rather remain focused on the problem at hand, namely that power struggles are having a

detrimental effect on NQF development and implementation.

According to Kendall and Wickham (1999:23) history must be used as an analytical tool that settles on ‘a patch of sensibleness in a field of strangeness’. History should not be used to make us comfortable, but must rather disturb the taken-for-granted. Kendall and Wickham suggest that we focus on contingencies and be as sceptical as possible of political arguments to guard against using history ‘to see potential for progress in the future even if it has supposedly not been achieved in the present’ (1999:9).