CONSTRUCTIONISM
Attributing greater autonomy to the discursive, Foucault’s approach affords a greater role to the constructionist dimension of knowledge. This is to say that under certain circumstances, and varying according to time and place, discourses may be instrumental in constructing the objects of which they speak. Foucault believed this to be the case with regard to the objective referents of psychiatric knowledge, and in his earlier works, as stated above, he tended to overgeneralize the view. In his later writings, however, while the constructionist theme is retained, it is qualified considerably in relation to the issue of realism. This gives Foucault’s constructionism a dynamic quality (Hacking, 1986; Olssen, 1995). It is a constructionism that, while recognizing the generative potential of discourse in relation to the world, also recognizes the variations that might exist in relation to different domains of inquiry and different forms of knowledge. It also recognizes the existence of real-world structures and practices and the limits and boundaries within which discursive constructions are possible, and yet perceives the existence of numerous kinds of knowledge claim that are “not demarcated prior to the discourse but [come] into existence only contemporaneous with the discursive formation that made it possible to talk about them” (Rouse,1994: 93).