A few things in response to Robin Neill's post of 12/7/95:
A quote from Foucault prefaces Robin's question about the
disjunction between economic discourse and "reality" (but
never defines what this reality "is"). I couldn't find exactly
where, but I believe the quote is from Foucault's "The Order
of Things." For the question posed, Foucault, particularly his
"Order of Things," is not a very good (contemporary) guide
for understanding this.
First of all, it is well known that "Order" was written as a
sort of tongue-in-cheek parody of Descartes' "Meditations."
Therefore, one has to be careful not to lend Foucault's
account or method too much weight. Perhaps, as Ron
Stanfield points out, your statement that you "ask questions
to expose intellectual history, not to propose anything" is
tongue-in-cheek as well in homage to Foucault?
Unfortunately, Foucault IS proposing something--not a
historical account, but a way of looking at history. The
question now is whether that way of looking at history is a
proper guide to your question.
You ask, in conjunction with a paraphrase from P.R. Saul,
"can the signs we use, the instruments of discourse, become
so disassociated from reality that they become
disfunctional?" Because Saul's quote refers to a seeming
disjunction between economic "reality" and economic
discourse (disciplinary discourse, that is). Foucault's
concept of episteme may be appropriate for how we think
about our disciplinary discourse since we operate in a fairly
closed system with fairly stable signifiers. His search for
referential guides--epistemes--is not necessarily to provide
structure (Foucault has vehemently denied being a
structuralist, then this "structure" is shifting one). While
episteme may be yet another epistemological novelty, it
is not intended as a discursive anchor.
However, in relating economic discourse to the
world-at-large, as Robin's question seems to, our
"instruments of discourse" are placed in manifold different
systems of signification. As some of the criticism
lobbed at economists is that they no longer try to
communicate with the public, it can be argued that they no
longer try to relate their work within those other systems of
signification. Yet, our discourse still makes it way to the
outside world and, to some degree, legitimizes
policy--policies which might be responsible for the
"persistent decline of North America."
To use Foucault to explain the situation Robin highlights
would be to totalize his concept of episteme--as if there
were only ONE episteme at work which could explain this
disjunction. Yet, it is exactly the sort of referentiality
that post-structuralists like Foucault critique.
A better guide for the question you ask might be
Baudrillard. Like Foucault, he questions assumptions about
referentiality, but he analyzes the structure of
communication in a world dominated by the media, whereby
media images are both referent and reality. The situation
Baudrillard terms "hyperreality" could be one way of looking
at the disjunction between economic discourse and the
world-at-large, that is, the production and consumption of
signifiers as similar to that of capitalist production. The
striving for innovation renders impotent any single coherent
system of referentiality. To take it a step further, de Certau
theorizes that people, in "consuming" these signs, in turn
resignify the meanings that are presented to them.
Therefore, the economic discourse that may appear stable
for us, becomes a jumble of meanings in the world-at-large,
and, perhaps, totally at odds with their "original" meaning
within economics.
Jonathon E. Mote
1822 Chestnut #3F
Philadelphia, PA 19103
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