Foucault’s archeological discourse analysis with digital methodology—Discourse on women prior to the first wave women’s movement

Abstract

In L’archéologie du savoir (1969), Foucault specifies the method of discourse analysis as the identification of statements. Few digital humanities projects have set out to conduct discourse analysis in this tradition. A certain degree of confusion relates to what the Foucauldian statement consists of and how it can be operationalized in order to identify discourse, using digital methods. This article demonstrates, however, that such an operationalization becomes possible if we take Foucault’s own distinction between statement (énoncé) and enunciation (énonciation) into account. As an example, the article shows how discourse on women prior to the first wave women’s movement in Western countries has been identified in almost 7,000 books digitized by the Norwegian National Library. This article concludes that a digitized Foucauldian discourse analysis is possible, using a combination of digital methodology and close reading.