Review: Brigitte Kerchner & Silke Schneider (Eds.) (2006). Foucault: Diskursanalyse der Politik. Eine Einführung [Foucault: Discourse Analysis of Politics. An Introduction]

Abstract

Although Michel FOUCAULT's work offers a deep insight into the interconnection between the human sciences, power and politics, his analytic tools are hardly applied in German political science. This is the starting point of the edited book by KERCHNER and SCHNEIDER. How can FOUCAULT help us to understand policy making and political phenomena in general? What are the methodological implications of his perspectives? What are the rules for empirical work using his conceptions and terms? These are both the main questions the book poses and the main objects of this review. In sum, the book shows the value of FOUCAULT's thoughts for an analysis that goes beyond political institutions and concrete actors. In particular, the "genealogical tactics" of FOUCAULT underline the importance of being historically informed in terms of political discourses. But who is responsible for events, for knowledge, for decisions? These questions are central for political science. How these questions can be transformed into FOUCAULT's vocabulary and answered still remains open in this book. On the level of empirical work there are some important hints concerning how to produce a valid discourse analysis. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0702161