Shameless self-promotion time again: I have a paper out in the latest issue of the online humanities journal, nonsite.org. The issue as a whole is on the theme of Situation. My paper is entitled On Problematization: Elaborations on a theme in “late Foucault”. It’s an experiment in seeing how much mileage along the path of developing useable social science concepts you can get out of a few passing remarks from a master-thinker . Here is the abstract:

“The notion of problematization has recently been identified as a key to interpreting the arc of Michel Foucault’s work. In the social sciences as well as in the humanities, problematization is often invoked to support a method of critical debunking. I argue that a more nuanced reading of elaborations of this notion by Foucault and others points to an alternative interpretation. This alternative turns on appreciating that problematizations are best thought of as creative responses to uncertain situations, an idea presented by Foucault in an account of the plural rationalities of ethical action. It is argued that to fully realize the potential of the idea of problematization, some of the founding assumptions and manoeuvres of critical social analysis need to be interrupted. The notion lends itself to an understanding of the inherent problematicity of all action, and therefore to a more modest understanding of the tasks of social inquiry.”