(Non-)Use of Foucault in LIS Journal Literature, 1990-2015

What is it about?

This article is based upon checking, one by one, several hundred citations of two of French philosopher Michel Foucault's classic books, The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Order of Things, that appeared in a large sample of English-language Library and Information Science (LIS) journals from 1990 to 2015. The goal was not only to see that the books were cited, but also how they were used by later authors in terms of depth of use, which of Foucault's ideas were used, and so on. The results offer an overall comparative framework for considering exactly how LIS scholars have incorporated two of Foucault's works that address issues of particular concern for LIS professionals such as classification and categorization of information.

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Why is it important?

Citation analysis traditionally relies almost exclusively upon counts of citations and assumes that the raw numbers correlate to quality of citations. Studies like this one that focus closely on quality as well as quantity of citations are quite rare. The results of this study challenge the association of quality and quantity of citations in finding that the great majority of citations of Foucault's two books by LIS scholars are only brief, imprecise passing references. Although Foucault and his two books are iconic, they prove not to have been used in much depth very frequently. Even scholars with an interest in Foucauldian ideas often rely upon other scholars' interpretations of Foucault's ideas rather than Foucault's own works. Works that are central to the development of discourse analysis are thus relatively little used for discourse analysis. The results regarding actual use of Foucault's classic works tend to prove Foucault's own theories on the evolution of knowledge: the inevitable distancing from and eventual loss of the original sources of ideas within an amorphous, constantly changing, historically and politically varying cloud of interpretation known as a Foucauldian discursive formation. In short, Foucault himself has become a discursive formation.