Michel Foucault's archaeology of knowledge and economic discourse

Abstract

The literature in economic methodology has witnessed an increase in the number of studies which, drawing upon the postmodern turn in social sciences, pay serious attention to the non-epistemological-discursive elements of economic theorizing. This recent work on the "economic discourse" has thus added a new dimension to economic methodology by analyzing various discursive aspects of the construction of scientific meanings in economics. Taking a similar stance, this paper explores Michel Foucault's archaeological analysis of scientific discourses. It aims to show that his archaeological reading of the history of economic thought provides an articulate non-epistemological framework for the analysis of the discursive elements in the history of economics and contemporary economic theorizing.

Economics as the scientization of politics

“…For Foucault ontology and epistemology are political. Economics claims the mantle of a 'science', but what knowledge is regarded as scientific or otherwise is, Foucault suggested, not fixed but instead historically situated and governed by rules, which determine what is to count as truth, what is to count as evidence, and what questions can be asked (Foucault 1968, see also Kologlugil 2010). Foucault called these rules 'discursive rules' and their practice 'discourses'.…”

“…This study Foucault referred to as an 'archaeology' (the study of the archive). By showing how the claims to scientific truth constantly shift, we can undermine the claims of economics to a universal 'truth', and make manifest the political foundations of the discipline (Kologlugil 2010).…”