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The dispositive is a valuable theoretical concept which integrates
the work I have done, and raises more questions at other levels.
It is an overall system which involves three aspects of knowledge:-
- Discourse as a flow of knowledge,
- Manifestations (material objects and designs) as materialisations
of knowledge, and
- Non-discursive practices (decisions and events) which are implementations
of knowledge
The dispositive should form a seamless picture of a topic. For
example, a business may have done research (used discourse as a
flow of knowledge, ideas, information in the field of health nutrition
and marketing) and created a new type of margerine (as a materialisation
or design based on that knowledge, both about food substances and
marketing) and then they have made decisions and applied them to
producing, advertising and supplying that product to the consumers
(using decisions and events to implement the knowledge). Though
this is a simple example, it shows a high level of self-consistency
of knowledge.
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I am testing the dispositive to see if it can be applied more widely,
and I have created 3 pages to investigate this, loking at the Government
itself, at Industrialisation,
and at animals and industry
I have looked at these topics as whole knowledge systems, and extracted
some information from them - that the fields are not continuous and
self-consistent (seamless), there are major gaps at some of these
'higher' levels, and in particular that my context survey shows a
dominant process of industrialisation in the food sector, but this
is forgotten / ignored / hidded in all the Government and public discourses.
Discussion of the Dispositive
The dispositive is not a standard concept, and I am not sure how
widely it is academically accepted, especially in the way I have
used it. It has given me a useful perspective as formalising a triangulation
process - the results from the subsidiary parts of my study (context
analysis of websites - government - discourse analysis) can be integrated
into one picture using the dispositive.
However, using the dispositive may imply that "there is a
continuous field of knowledge penetrating all that we do" (
this is similar to some Hindu philosophies). I think it is more
fair to state that "by imagining a continuous field of knowledge,
some interesting results can been obtained". Further discussion
of this might be very interesting (but perhaps inconclusive !).
To return to the dispositive itself, by trying to include discourse,
events and physical reality into one system, we can develop new
types of question which could be very interesting :-
- How is knowledge about objects used ? - Aim 1 begins "good
quality food
" This implies considerable knowledge
by all the readers as to what constitutes 'good', 'quality' and
also 'good quality'.
- How are external objects used in the discourse ? - The Government
text uses only generalisations and concepts, and there are no
specific objects mentioned (except perhaps the EU and CAP)
- Is the discourse intended to impact on external objects and
physical reality ? - Yes, it is Government policy, and is intended
to steer some aspects of the national interest
- How are events included in the text ? - they are omitted entirely.
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