No knowledge stands outside language and power. Study how truths are produced, what they do, and what they exclude.
- +Fits Post-structuralist Ontology
- –Tension with Naturalism, Critical Realism
Key thinkers: Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze
The longer story
Post-structuralist epistemology is suspicious of knowledge claims. Foucault showed how power and knowledge intertwine—'power/knowledge' isn't two things but one. What counts as true reflects who has power to make it count. Categories that seem natural are historical constructions. What can be thought is shaped by discourse. This is uncomfortable because it implicates your own knowledge claims too—you can't stand outside the systems you're analysing. But it's powerful for asking: how did this way of knowing become dominant? Whose interests does it serve? What does it make impossible to say or think?