The difficulty I am facing is the difficulty of producing a structured thesis through a postmodern approach. This in certain respects is a contradiction because unlike the rational scientific method, post modernism decries the notions of truth and theory based on a pre-eminent position of the author.

This can be readily shown in the context of the literature review which in a positivist terms will often attempt to define the research context in terms of essentialist ideas of culture and history. The tension arises from the fact that postmodernism doesnt recognise a unified and coherent form of history. In contrast, the likes of Foucault and Said suggest that definitions of history are in fact localised, fragmented, relative and subject to interpretation. Ergo, Historicism is a subtle form of oppression that reformulates and distills events in the form of a narrative that re-presents historical facts to suit the political and ideological aims of the author.

Hence, postmodernism raises concerns regarding the accepted authority of the author and the need to reconceptualise and prioritise the notion of human subject (attack on Sartres humanism and existentialism), the reader and the text. Foucault first identified knowledge in terms of discursive eras suggesting that knowledge is social (and constructivist) and only emerges from within specific settings (Archaeology as a philosophical rather than an historical analysis). The three periods (ages) he identified were: Classical,

What Foucault suggests is that the ontology of the marginalised cant be expressed from within the modern paradigm as (by its very definition) marginalised views are beyond this rational domain. Rather than attempt to present these views directly (you cant get into peoples minds), Foucault reconceptualises knowledge to illustrate the (historical) changes that have occurred in relation to accepted modern truths: penality, sexuality etc and suggests that knowledge and modernity are not in fact the coherent, unified entities they appears to be but contingent on the social and discursive settings that shape the dominant discourse. Knowledge within the social settings is therefore a political phenomena that is subject to the influence of power (reflexive relationship) i.e. there is no truth, no human nature, no definitive subject all are created within the bounds of society and the institutions that emerge, consolidate and support it.

Foucault always focused on the societies outsiders and believed thats an analysis of society and knowledge (an analysis of power) is more effective from the bottom, up. In line with postmodern thought, this approach will provide an often fragmented, partial even contradictory reflection of events however its purpose it to reveal social realities rather than solve specific social issues, capturing the views of the marginalised who are most effected by the use and abuse of power. In this context, Foucault suggests that power inscribes the soul (During, 1992; pp135).

In practical terms what Foucault appears to be suggesting is that individual identity within the SOLE is far more significant that the potential impact of culture (which is an essentialist and historical notion). Instead of looking for the purpose and intelligibility in history, Foucault presents it as a nexus of tensions comprised of discrete categories i.e penality, sexuality, poverty. Examples of the types of questions that arise from Genealogy include (ibid, 138):

1) How do aims, institutions and discursive formations change
2) What problems and struggles do documents about poverty address
3) How do these discourses, struggles, institutions affect lives

In the Order of Things foucault suggests that Western thought started in the Renaissance and since there have been four systems of possible discourse; categorising, ordering and connection of things and determining what passes for knowledge (ibid, pp54)

1st episteme: resemblance of things.
2nd episteme: Classical concerned with relations of identity and difference
3rd episteme: Modern

In terms of cross cultural research, ethnology can assume its proper dimensions only within the historical sovereignty….of European thought and the relation that can bring it face to face with all the other cultures as well as itself.(pp56)