This article presents the concept of dispositives as it has been introduced by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. The concept will be contrasted with competing approaches from discourse analysis, and it will then be explored in its potential as a basis for empirical analysis. Dispositive analyses provide insights into how discourse, power, and knowledge shape society on a very general macro-level. Instead of linguistic, textual analyses, dispositive analysis helps to re-read the emergence, the development, and, as an example here, the inner composition of academic fields. This article sketches insights from a dispositive perspective into the field of intercultural communication research that is then interpreted as maintaining the dispositive of intercultural communication even if recent debates primarily aim at transcending old cementations of the discipline. The article will close with a discussion of shortcomings of the method that culminate in the challenge of argumentative circularity.
Current Trends of Intercultural Communication Research in Japan