On Foucault: Engaging with Foucault's Critical Theory and Methods

This chapter discusses the central concepts and tenets of Michel Foucault’s work, reflect on the relevance and potential applications for public relations scholarship, and explore a number of tensions that emerge from a Foucauldian consideration of public relations. It focuses on the major themes of Foucault's work: discourse, power/knowledge, and subjectivity, and in particular, the ways in which Foucault's work may be applied to issues of change. The chapter demonstrates the rich contribution that Foucauldian theory may make to public relations practice and scholarship by moving beyond a focus on excellence toward an understanding of public relations as a discourse practice with power effects. He identified four discourse "technologies" that allowed people to understand and transform themselves: technologies of production, sign systems, power, and the self. Each of these technologies comprised sets of discourse practices of domination and governmentality. Foucault's analytical approach of focusing on discontinuity has been subject to considerable criticism