This time we'll be discussing the statement... so something in order to read that concept would work. It is interesting that Foucault doesn't give examples of his work. He leaves it pretty conceptual. That is, until later when he reads closely things like madness, prisons, and sexuality in light of the foundations he's established.
Maybe this will help, though: "it is not in itself a unit, but a function" (87). AND it's a function that "reveals [structures and possible unities]" (87).
I can't help but think of a 'statement' in a normal way that I would --- about somethign "making a statement," or something "saying something." Like Avatar "making a statement" about war. I feel like that's a rather over-simplified understanding of it... but because Foucault does his best to NOT give us a clear understanding, I feel like that's what I am left with.
The University of Phoenix instructs of faculty to use Emoticons. Perhaps this pertains to the statement in an interesting way. Emoticon as statement.
:)
So we have symbols that make up statements that then create discursive formations. Wikipedia is a discursive formation.
And as I take it, we can't have statements without symbols. Because statements have to have a level of materiality to exist--whether it's oral, written, etc.
Although, as far as I can tell, Foucault doesn't give examples of visually rhetorical statements... they are primarily linguistic for him.
Statements exist in a complex web with other statements and absolutely cannot stand by themselves in order to be a statement; their existence depends on the existence of the other statements with which they relate. Although this connection to other statements is distinguished from "context."
Also, a statement cannot be defined by a proposition or an author, but can contain both. I am not sure at this point if it can contain just one or the other, but I think so. Sometimes the creator of a statement is an actor or even a reader... So an "author," in its broadest sense, is very likely always there in some sense.
This is all just background to get my head about it. I think statements in Wikipedia definitely qualify because a. It's a level of materiality 2. There are other statements to create a web of meaning 3. There are authors and propositions but they don't alone define the statements 4. There are rules with which the statements in Wikipedia must operate, or actually Wikipedia will throw them out or write a note that the sources aren't adequate...what else
One thing I was confused about is in the Enunciative Function chapter, Foucault discusses how statements can't exist alone--like I mentioned previously--but how did statements ever even begin? I mean in terms of Wikipedia, that concept isn't hard to digest. Also, in relation to Wikipedia--multiple authors/ enunciators / what have you can repeat the same statement, just a different occurrence of enunciation. It's like, someone goes into Wikipedia, gets some information/ meaning /group of statements, and passes that information on to a friend or a report...same statement, different enunciation.
Also, since Foucault says a statement is deeper, structurally--though not always meaningfully--than some sort of psychological function (such as a speaker acting on a rhetorical situation, I guess, or a certain motive), it would make sense that Wikipedia is a collection of statements. At the root of Wikipedia is something much deeper than a rhetorical situation--some sort of more unmoving meaning to things. Fact, I guess, for lack of a better term. Would statements be that term I am looking for?
Wikipedia is a classic example of social construction, so yes it is a much deeper rhetorical situation. Maybe that is where the enunciation comes into the discussion.
Also, I like on page 104 where he uses the term "agreed code" when discussing statements. I feel like Wikipedia, in all its socially-constructed glory, centers around this "agreed code" or what is truth. I think that "agreed code" is what Foucault means are statements--meanings that follow establish rules, codes, ideologies, etc. of other units of discourse, and form a complex web of meaning--but meaning nonetheless. Or perhaps that statements exist in relation to this agreed code, both abiding by it and creating it. For a discourse to exist, those involved must be "talking about 'the same thing', by placing themselves at 'the same level' or at 'the same distance', by deploying 'the same conceptual field'" (126).
[Though, for all the social-constructioniness of Foucault, I can understand how one would read him as a structuralist, with Foucault saying things like: "there are not, in such cases, the same number of statements as there are languages used, but a single group of statements in different linguistic forms" (104). I don't think Foucault was really trying to be structuralistic there, as there is context to that sentence, but I can see one viewing that extracted statement as a logical unfolding of Foucaultian thought.]
Another quote I like: a statement is "too bound up with what surrounds it and supports it to be as free as a pure form (it is more than a law of construction governing a group of elements), it is endowed with a certain modifiable heaviness, a weight relative to the field in which it is placed, a constancy that allows various users, a temporal permanence that does not have the intertia of a mere trace or mark, and which does not sleep on its own past" (105).
I feel like this quote has social construction of truth written all over it. (No pun intended). First of all, a statement cannot ever be merely relative even though it can change itself to become a new, more meaningful statement. Or newly meaningful statement...anyway--a statement has "temporal permanence." Semi-permanence in that it belongs to a field, is caught up with other statements that are the basis for it's definition, etc.--but it's only "temporal permanence." Such as his example for what the theory of the Earth being round meant before they actually discovered it...how that statement changed because the field changed. In terms of Wikipedia, just think of all the statements that will change and become new statements over time. Because as he also says on page 105 as well--""men produce, manipluate use, transform, exchange, combine, decompose and recompose, and possibly destory." It's not something "said once and for all." And if there was any Truth with a capital T behind a statement, it would be once and for all, and have that finality. Which is so great about Wikipedia--there's no finality at all. We can go in there and change any entry we want right now. I feel like it embodies a collection of statements in Foucault's terms even better than an old school encyclopedia.
The discussion of Wikipedia is an interesting example because it exists at this intersection of some important Foucaultian concepts. On one hand, Wikipedia is an opening up of discourse - affording individual voice that counters hegemonic institutional knowledge. Wikipedia is not the same as Encyclopedia Britanica. Yet, it is bound by institutional practices - even discipline. Foucault could almost have been defining Wikipedia on page 130, saying, "the archive defines a particular level: that of a practice that causes a multiplicity of statements to emerge [...]; between tradition and oblivion, it reveals the rules of a practice that enables statements both to survive and to undergo regular modification. It is the general system of the formation and transformation of statements."
And let us not forget that the word archive is etymylogically connected to the word, archon, which means ruler. Thus, our archives have attained a kind of rule over our ways of thinking. See my project concerning this issueat http://theyellowrobot.com/foucault.html.
Lastly, we may consider how the statement, while interstingly explored through the constructs of Wikipedia, may exist without meaning, context, or referent at all. Foucault writes, "Nor is it [the statement] superposable to the relation that may exist between a sentence and its meaning" (90). Foucault's example of AZERT shows that there can be a statement that exists aside from traditionally held conceptualizations of reality or intended thought. So, while Wikipedia includes many, many carefully and socially constructed statements, there may be statements out there that lack many of the aspects that are necessary for the language to be used in a distinctly encyclopedic manner.
The question is just how bare bones can a statement be? I tried to look for a statement this morning at 5:30 a.m. in the water droplets on my shower curtain, but couldn't find one there. But maybe someone else could have...
