bacchi

Foucault selects his sites—his “problematizing moments”— by identifying times and places where he detects important shifts in practices—for example from flogging to detention. As Flynn (1989a: 138) explains, for Foucault, “The problem in the case at hand is to account for the fact that from about 1791 a vast array of penal methods was replaced by one, incarceration”. In these “crisis” moments (Foucault, 1985a: Chapter 2), “givens” become questions, or problems, providing an opportunity to inquire into the emergence of what comes to appear self-evident because it is firmly in position, in this instance incarceration as a method of punishment.

As I go on to argue, “The WPR approach broadens Foucault’s agenda” 

It does not look for “crisis” points, places where practices change, stirring up debate. Rather, it suggests that all policy proposals rely on problematizations which can be opened up and studied to gain access to the “implicit system in which we find ourselves”.

Carol Bacchi