What is Foucault’s notion of “problematization”?
This is a key term in Foucault (as indicated by the valuable discussion over it at the Biopower and the Contemporary blog). It is defined in the late interview with Francis Ewald (“The concern for truth” May 1984, DE350) and addressed in “Problematics” (OT-08 in the Lynch bibliography). Another important interview is “Polemics, politics and problematizations” (DE 342).
Problematization is an example of Foucault’s difference from regular historians:
The history of thought–that means not simply a history of ideas or of representations, but also the attempt to respond to this question: how is that thought, insofar as it has a relationship with the truth, can also have a history? (DE 350.4, p. 456).
So this is a history of how things have been problematized, that is “reflected upon and thought about”:
Problematization doesn’t mean the representation of a pre-existent object, nor the creation through discourse of an object that doesn’t exist. It’s the set of discursive or nondiscursive practices that makes something enter into the play of the true and false, and constitutes it as an object for thought (whether under the form of moral reflection, scientific knowledge, political analysis, etc.). (DE350.4, pp. 456-7).
A number of things to note: this is not an analysis of representations, nor is this purely discursive, nor does it mean that everything is socially constructed. There is material analysis of practices.
It is, therefore, a history of truth.
Filed under: Key terms
Hi Jeremy,
I’ve always had a particular, perhaps peculiar, feeling about Foucault’s use of problematization as a description of his methodological practice. It seems to me that he’s taking a cue from phenomenology: looking at the ways in which problems are construed in texts enables Foucault to bracket out metaphysical irruptions. An analysis of representations would require some kind of hermeneutic (Marxism or humanism or whatever) to pre-determine how one understands/makes meaning from these representations. So rather than asking about the relationship between sexuality and capitalism (or sexuality and revolution), Foucault asks how different eras have problematized sexuality and thus made sexuality an object of thought. I’m not arguing that problematization is a pure science (though it is, as you point out, a materialist approach), but one can see from the sexuality example why Foucault would take up problematization as an antidote to discussions of sexuality (such as, say, Marcuse’s) that already assume particular relationships between representation and subjectivity, assumptions that Foucault didn’t want to make. The irony is that Foucault seems to be, in this light, upholding objectivity to some degree, a statement that would make many historians snort derisively.
Best,
John
[...] And even though we got a fair bit on Foucault in the last carnival, I’ll admit that I can’t get enough. The Valve keeps the Foucault conversation going with “The Warden Will See You Now, Mr. Foucault” and Jeremy at Foucault Blog discusses an important term for Foucault: “Problematization”. [...]
[...] Key term: problematization [...]