POWER, KNOWLEDGE AND LANGUAGE

The critical researcher‟s role is one of facilitating more open discourse, which, Alvesson and Deetz (2000) contend, is best achieved if critical studies offer counter-pictures to prevailing ideals and understandings, thus initiating discussion of images widely spread by dominant groups through drawing attention to hidden aspects and offering alternative readings. As a criticalist concerned with critiquing the dialectics of enlightenment (Alvesson & Wilmott, 1996) in the careers discourse, I am influenced by the critical edge of the post-modern tradition, which challenges the status quo and supports silenced or marginalised voices (Alvesson & Deetz, 2000). In particular, I am motivated by Foucault‟s (1978, 1979, 1980, 1982) understanding of power and Derrida‟s (1976, 1978a, 1978b, 1982, 1989)means for deconstructing objective truth.

Foucault invites researchers to explore the ways in which discourses are implicated in relations of power and how power and knowledge serve as dialectically reinitiating practices that both assist and limit a range of social practices (Ainsworth & Hardy, 2004; Kincheloe & McLaren, 2003, 2005; Knights, 2009). For Foucault (1978, 1979, 1980, 1982), power exists only in relationships and when it is expressed in action. Power relationships can be best understood from the techniques and forms in which they are expressed. The exercise of power is the central issue, that is, the practices, techniques and procedures that render power effective. Power is expressed in various micro contexts, such as the prison and the psychiatric institution, and the practices in and through which power exists are potentially everywhere (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009; Knights, 2009; Smart, 2002).

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For Foucault, phenomena like reason, madness and criminality do not figure as natural objects that have an independent existence as part of the functioning of human beings, but are regarded as non-natural objects that have been constituted in such a way that they are objects of particular forms of knowing and targets for historically specific reform and regulation projects. For example, madness is not merely something that exists in the heads of a certain group of people; rather, it is through various techniques and procedures that madness is identified as a special object for knowledge, resulting in action such as incarceration and treatment (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009).

Different forms of knowledge are in the service of power and they function in a disciplinary way by creating normality and deviation. Established conceptions of what is normal and reasonable thus contribute to regulating the self-consciousness and actions of individuals. According to Foucault, knowledge cannot be extricated from power, as power and knowledge are parallel concepts. Foucault has „focused attention on the power in, rather than the power of knowledge‟ (Deetz, 1992: 77, emphasis in original). The exercise of power, and the application and development of knowledge, have an intimate relationship with each other. Knowledge is at the base of the exercise of power, while the exercise of power also produces knowledge. Power becomes a crucial dimension in knowledge supported by institutional practices, as well as institutional practices based on knowledge. Knowledge is, therefore, linked to power and functions in a disciplinary way (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009).

Foucault provides examples of the disciplinary techniques of power within the institution of the prison, which have as their aim the normalisation of delinquent, dangerous and undisciplined individuals (Foucault, 1979). He describes the series of institutions and organisations employing disciplinary techniques of normalisation as

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carceral networks (Foucault, 1979). It is Foucault‟s contention that society is not maintained by the army, police and a centralised visible state apparatus, but by techniques of discipline and diffused power in these carceral institutions (Sheridan, 1980). With the diffusion of disciplinary technologies and methods, and the formation of a carceral network, a normalising power spreads throughout the entire social body. Within institutions and organisations, and on the part of individuals themselves, judgments, assessments and diagnoses begin to be made of normality and abnormality, in addition to the appropriate procedures to achieve rehabilitation, or a restoration of, and to, the norm (Smart, 2002).

Intrinsic to the growth of a normalising power are particular relations of knowledge, notably judgment and examination, which effect an objectification of human behaviour (Smart, 2002), where subjects are transformed into objects within structures (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009). This is an example of what Foucault (1988) calls governmentality (the conduct of conduct), which involves structuring the possible field of conduct, or action of others. It is a question of power; where power is exercised over free subjects, subjects are able to refuse to submit to guidance, to being led, to influence being exercised over their conduct. According to Foucault (1988), power relations are embedded in social life and governmentality is an inevitable element of social life. Life in society inexorably involves action(s) being exercised over other(s) (Smart, 2002).

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It has been suggested that researchers using Foucault should treat all empirical material „as expressions of culturally standardized discourses that are associated with particular social settings‟ (Miller, 1997: 34). For Foucault, discourses are systems of knowledge (e.g., medicine, economics, linguistics) that inform the social and governmental technologies that constitute power in modern society (Fairclough, 2001). Foucault‟s interest in discourse is more in how it constitutes objects and subjects, than in the details of language use in social interaction (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009; Smart, 2002).

Critical researchers, however, have come to understand that language is not a mirror of society (e.g., Alvesson & Deetz, 2000; Billig, 2001; Hall, 2001; Kincheloe & McLaren, 2003, 2005). Linguistic descriptions are not simply about the world, but serve to construct it. Language operates through how the author/speaker and reader/listener construct meaning based on the local context, on how discursive logic forms associations, and through appealing to a pre-structured understanding associated with culture and tradition (Alvesson & Deetz, 2000; Silverman & Jones, 1973) Criticalists study the way language, in the form of discourses, serves as a mode of regulation and domination, that is, the tacit rules that regulate what can and cannot be said, who can speak with the blessings of authority and who must listen, whose social constructions are valid and whose are unimportant (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2003, 2005). Breaking up established ways of using language is a vital task for critical research (Alvesson & Deetz, 2000), as it challenges the prevailing social conditions that appear naturalised, objectively given, being outside of human control, and thus beyond change (Scherer, 2009).

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For Derrida (1976, 1978a, 1978b, 1982, 1989), the meaning of a word is constantly deferred because the word can have significance only in relation to its difference from other words within a given system of language. People who are different from the majority, „them‟ (e.g., non-employed), rather than „us‟ (e.g., employed), are frequently exposed to a binary form of representation of sharply opposed extremes (Bauman & May, 2001; Christie, 2004; Hall, 2001; Kincheloe & McLaren, 2003, 2005). Derrida (1976) argues that there are limited neutral binary oppositions: one pole is usually dominant, the one that includes the other within its field of operations. There is always a relation of power between the extremes of a binary opposition. We should really write:

white/black, men/women, masculine/feminine, and upper class/lower class to capture

this power dimension in discourse (Hall, 2001; emphasis in original). I include career

success/career failure and employed/non-employed in this representation.

Derrida (1976, 1978a, 1978b, 1982, 1989) provides me with an approach for deconstructing objective truth within the careers discourse. Deconstruction is what happens to meaning when language is understood as writing. For Derrida (1976), when language is comprehended as writing, it becomes apparent that designations do not originate in the thought of the language user. Individual language users are understood to be utilising an external system of signs, a classification that exists separately to them. They operate within a structure of connotation that is given to them from outside. Meaning is, therefore, not fully under the control of the individual user and involves some degree of interpretation, negotiation or translation. This necessity for the active construal of meaning by readers when language is understood as writing is why deconstruction takes place.

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According to Alvesson & Sköldberg (2009: 185), there are two stages in „de-con- struction‟. The first step involves a destruction of the previously dominating picture, in favour of what was hidden (dominated). The second comprises a destruction of both of these poles, but at the same time a displacement of them, and thus a construction of something new and wider.

Both Foucault and Derrida‟s work offer me ways to view the careers discourse through a critical lens. In my opinion, the career experience can be considered in the same light as Foucault envisioned phenomena such as reason, madness, criminality and sexuality. For example, non-employment, which is being outside the domain of paid employment, is not merely something that exists in the lives of the non-employed. It is through various techniques and procedures that non-employment is identified as a special object for knowledge, resulting in action such as the Community Employment programme whose objective is to (re)integrate the non-employed into the labour market. (This is similar to how Willis (1977) conceptualises the role of schools in society.) It is my contention that the Community Employment scheme is a carceral network (Foucault, 1979), established with the aim of normalising the „delinquent‟ mindset of the non- employed, whose behaviour is „undisciplined‟ and potentially „dangerous‟ to „normal‟ society, so engagement on such a programme „rehabilitates‟ the participant. As I seek critical enlightenment (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2003, 2005) in the careers discourse, Derrida offers me a lens from which to critically peer at the career concept and to „de- con-struct‟ its meaning (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009), thus offering a wider definition of the career experience and the outcome of that experience. These themes are returned to in Chapter Eight.

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