My previous post outlined a new provisional thesis question.

A friend suggested a variation with the aim of being more “…explicit about which Foucauldian theories/modes of analysis you will be using.”

Here’s the suggestion (with thanks to S.):

“What do the application of Foucault’s Panopticist theory reveal about the employment tensions found in and around dooce and QueenofSky?”

I’ll be covering some of Foucault’s other theories so here’s my edit:

What do Foucault’s theories on power and subjectivity reveal about the employment tensions found in and around dooce and QueenofSky?

I think I’m onto something.

Again, thanks S.

Will I ever tire of re-working my thesis statement? I already am, but I’m going to continue.

This is what I outlined in my honours presentation:

• Examine the tensions arising from the publication of personal blogs by employees
• Employing a Foucauldian analysis
• Of contestation located around two prominent personal bloggers

I want to work it into a more concise question.

What would a Foucauldian analysis of the contestation found on and around dooce and QueenofSky reveal about the tensions arising from the publication of personal blogs by employees?

It seems clunky. How about:

What do Foucault’s theories say about the contestation found on and around dooce and QueenofSky?

I dropped the last part because that’s really something that may come out of the analysis rather than what I’m doing.

And then:

What do Michel Foucault’s theories indicate about the employment tensions found on and around dooce and QueenofSky?

This last one is more concise. I like.

Best I run off and get some feedback from super coach M.

Here’s thesis statement v2.01.

Analyse the potential effects on the subjectivity of employees in an employment relationship arising from their publishing of work-related personal blogs?

Is it focussed enough? Does it make sense?

Re-focus the analysis of personal blogs away from legal debates about human rights and employment law to an investigation of the processes through which work related posts found on personal blogs become a cause for conflict and contestation between employers and employees.

I’ve just met with my supervisor and what came out of that meeting was a few ideas – lots in fact- of the direction my thesis could go. So here are my thoughts in very raw form and quite unedited.

We started out with what I meant be emancipation and my answer was that I really didn’t have an answer that was theoretically sound. What I intended from the use of that word was to highlight the struggle with employers through which personal bloggers often proceed. To my way of thinking these struggles reminded me of some form of Judeo/Christian struggle to achieve enlightenment. Through a struggle comes a realization of ones self and an understanding of our limits and abilities. There’s something mythically compelling about David and Goliath stories where the small and disadvantaged has taken on the behemoth and won. That’s the notion I was attempting to convey; but I understand that there are significant theoretical difficulties.

I’ve been reading a lot in and around Foucault’s theories of power/knowledge, and I believe this may be fruitful ground. Much can be said about the way in which personal blogs that mention or relate to an employees work are creating a new domain for the contestation of power. They provide a new means to articulate a new form of power relationship between employer and employee.

The nature of a personal blog is a many faceted artifact. Is it a public or private space (a blog about work can be password protected and available to only family and close friends or it can be available to anyone with an Internet connection), how does technology (RSS feeds, blog aggregation sites) change the nature of the blog, what effects are created by the use of pseudonyms, and what can be said about fictionalised accounts of a person’s working life?

Then there are the numerous examples of bloggers getting dooced (fired for the content of their blogs) and what these examples tell us about the perceived nature of the power relationship between employer and employee. We’ve tentatively agreed to focus on just one example, that of Heather B. Armstrong. Armstrong, on her blog dooce, made a number of remarks (using various methods to obfuscate the real life identities of the characters in the narrative) about her work and this led to her being fired. Much of the literature I’ve reviewed to this point treats Armstrong’s (and other employee bloggers) from the perspective of established power structures; the rights to free speech emanating from the US First Amendment and ‘at will’ US employment contracts whilst only a small body of literature has focussed on the underlying negotiation and renegotiation of existing power structures as a result of Armstrong’s blog. The nature of the blog and Armstrong’s case could form a second chapter.

I believe there is enough published about Armstrong’s blog and her sacking from which I could build an extensive Foucauldian analysis about the agonism of the power relationship between employer and employee. I have not read sufficiently to describe two further chapters here but certainly I would want to address issues of surveillance and the hierarchical gaaze (Panopticism complimented by Deleuze’s Postscript on Societies of Control) that lead to her blog being found, the examination of her blog (the obectification of Armstrong-as-blogger who then becomes a subject in the realm of power that has now extended to the Internet), and normalising judgement wherein the employer refers back to notions of normality as defined by management, (possibly) corporate lawyers, and popular business practice surrounding the censorship of employees. I could also discuss the matter of the power relationship existing between her and her employer and the ways that is agonised and the ways by which the intransigence of Armstrong’s free will became evident. There is much more that can be found in Foucault’s Power and the Subject that could provide fascinating analysis of the scenario. Finally I could turn to the matter of how Armstrong’s actions have changed the balance and nature of the power relationship by turning the gaze back to the company (hmmm, Armstrong didn’t name the firm she worked for but this would work with the QueenofSky example) where the company’s work practices became the object of observation after the fact of the termination (I think I could build something here, but it’s early days in my thinking).

Might it be possible to uncover new perspectives and understandings about the power relationship between Armstrong and her employer by utilising a Foucauldian analysis of the various texts that serve to define the events related to the termination of her employment?

I’m pressing the publish button without proof-reading so don’t be to upset if you find a typo or three.

My supervisor has asked me to start thinking about my chapter layouts and I can say, at this early stage I’m struggling with how this might look.

The part I’m struggling with is the “emancipation” part of my research question. The more I read the further I seem to be straying from any concept of emancipation. There are three major concepts that are jumping out about employees and private blogs and they are power/knowledge, surveillance (feeds back into power/knowledge), and free speech. I’ll attempt to explain here how they might fit into my thesis, but whether they can be worked up into a chapter in their own right is another question, although I believe they probably can.

I’m reading and writing about Foucault’s concept of power/knowledge, particularly his article The Subject and Power. I think I could build up an argument about the manner in which companies employ a constant gaze through technologies of surveillance (RSS, Bots, web crawlers, Technorati alerts) that objectify individual employees and submit their blogs and themselves to examination. There are a number of notions here about the importance to power of the pre-existence of the essential freedom of the individual to create a relation of power, and this could matter could be explored more fully. By this I mean that, in most advanced democracies free speech is considered to be a basic human right, and in many companies free speech receives numerous platitudes in company mission statements. The issue though is the manner in which companies respond to individuals who chose to avail themselves of this human right bringing. Here is where the strategies of power come into play through a series of steps used to limit a person’s free expression.

The chapter might address some of these questions:

• How do companies use surveillance technologies as a means to increase the field of visibility and therefore expand their domain of power?
• In what ways to employees become subjects of power relations and how does the agonism of power relations show up?
• What broader categories of knowledge are at play in determining the “normal”. Here I refer to those assumptions that are at play that are go unquestioned in an employment relationship (I pay you wages and therefore can tell you what you will and won’t say about my company)

As I write this, a very rough and unedited stream of thought (TOL – thinking out loud) I’m thinking that what I may have just described is my whole thesis. My general theme would then be power relations between organisations and employees with private blogs. Maybe my chapters would be:

1. A detailed exploration of Foucault’s concept of power/knowledge (possibly including Deleuze as his theories relate to surveillance).
2. The case for free speech – why it’s important, what it means.
3. How employees with private blogs lose their free speech through the expansion of domains of power.

My thesis question/statement would read:

• Do employees risk losing their right to free speech by maintaining private blogs?

A response to my post about Jodi Dean can be found here. A comment on that post raises issues about my use of the term emancipation and I will continue to discuss this matter with my supervisor. I have so much to read and learn about emancipation. I may just stick with a Foucauldian analysis of blogging by employees in relation to power/knowledge and Panopticism.

This journey is both exciting and frightening.

I’m having trouble with the term personal emancipation and the way it is so related to Kantian notions of emancipatory struggle. Perhaps something more along the lines of ‘sites of resistance’ which refers back to Foucault’s Power and the Subject and possibly to some of Deleuze’s work might work better. I want to demonstrate struggle, but more from the perspective of an essential human freedom.

I’m starting to think that I may need to lose the word “emancipation” from my thesis question. It tends to drag the research back to the Enlightenment and struggle. Since then much has been written about the creation of the self and subjectivity which has moved understandings beyond a static self and emancipatory struggle to much more complex and subtle notions of what it means to “be”.

As I read more of Foucault, Giddens, Poster, and Derida I think I’ll come up with a replacement word. Nonetheless the basic direction of the research remains unchanged.

In relation to my thesis question, where do I stand? A story or two here may help.

Firstly, when I was a councilor at REIWA I was censured by council for submitting a review of one of the acts to the Ministry of Fair Trading. My review differed in substance and conclusion from REIWA’s views, and I went to some length to distance myself from REIWA and to show the work represented my opinion and not that of REIWA. I thought then, and still do, that REIWA had no jurisdiction to tell me what I could or couldn’t say on matters of public interest. As a councilor I was happy to support the organisational line, as a private citizen I had the right to say my piece in a legitimate public environment. The fact that I was censured smacked of insecurity and fear on the part of the leadership group and failed to respect my rights as an individual.

The second comes from my experience growing up as a member of the Jehovah’s Witness religion. At lay person level there exists no mechanism by which a person may question, especially publicly, dogma as handed down by church hierarchy. The use of thought and reason for the purpose of questioning such dogma was, and, as far as I’m aware still is actively discouraged, with the ultimate indignity to be disfellowshipped thus losing favour and contact with family and friends. I believe that such rules and regulations affect peoples lives in a very direct and negative manner and it is this form of abuse of power I believe everyone should be on guard.

For these reasons I position myself as holding that the greatest organisational good is achieved through creating an environment that respects the fundamental rights of a person to seek their own enlightenment through self-expression seen in the broadest possible terms. At times these expressions of the self may appear on face value to be opposed or to actively question authority within the organisation, however, allowing such expression, and the resultant debate provides for a far healthier, more nurturing, and prosperous working environment.