Working Definition of Problematization

I have now been working with the methodological or analytical device of problematization for long enough that I am comfortable offering a (merely tentative!) ‘definition’ or ‘specification’ of this device of inquiry.

Problematizations are formed by congeries of conceptually-specified vectors which intersect one another in such a way as to create tensions and instabilities that both render old practices problematic and provide bases for the elaboration of new practices.
– Problematizations are thus complexes.
– Problematizations are thus formed by tensions between different vectors or levels, e.g. power and knowledge.
– Problematizations are thus objects with dual functionality in that they both render problematic and provoke solutions.
– Problematizations are thus hinges of historical emergence and descent.

As I understand it, problematization is a mode of inquiry developed primarily in the work of Michel Foucault, but also in other work by Gilles Deleuze, and also in other work by certain contemporary philosopher-historians working in the Foucault-Deleuze tradition, most notably Ian Hacking, Arnold Davidson, and Paul Rabinow.

One way of inquiring into the complex vectors which enable the emergence of problematizations (particularly clear in the work of the three contemporaries just noted) is by way of the ‘objects’ (Deleuze, Difference and Repetition) and ‘practices’ (Foucault, “Introduction” to The Use of Pleasure) which are taken up and worked over in a given problematization.  We can study a problematization, in other words, by studying that which is being problematized.  Foucault in his last two books, for example, studied the problematization of sexuality by inquiring into the specific practices which were taken up as vexed objects of difficulty in certain periods of historical emergence and descent.  These practices/objects are themselves complex and formed by intersections of diverse vectors.  The intersections of these vectors form these practices/objects in such a way that they appear problematic, both in the sense of obviating prior practices/objects and calling forth new practices/objects.  The practices/objects which are the focal points of problematizations thus offer us a potential view into the conditions of the possibility of both the egress and the emergence of certain historical formations.

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