A Foucauldian gaze in nursing: A critique of the politics of difference in nursing

"In 1982, when questioned about his intellectual ability, French philosopher Michel Foucault replied: I don’t feel it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book, what you would say in the end, do you think you would have the courage to write it? (Martin, Gutman & Hutton, 1988, p. 9) This thesis presents a post-structuralist gaze at the politics of difference in nursing from the perspectives of Foucault and Jacques Derrida, with the aim of presenting a new text that challenges the maintenance of the status quo of nursing. The thesis will use nursing as a discipline to examine subjectivity of the self through the conceptual lens of Foucault and Derrida and those factors that influence the politics of difference in nursing, such as ‘othering’, neoliberalism, managerialism and globalisation. Until nursing moves beyond binary thinking and considers a new politics of difference, the generation of new knowledge will endorse the philosophical thinking of the Enlightenment project and fail to progress nursing beyond this and into the post-structuralist ethos. Moreover: This post-structuralist approach to the politics of knowledge challenges the individual who is rational and coherent and has a rational and coherent story about themselves and society (Horton, 2013, p. 24)."