The PhD thesis as 'text': a post-structuralist encounter with the limits of discourse

Abstract

In a humorous fictional exchange between a PhD student and an established professor of Actor-Network Theory, Bruno Latour provocatively asserts that a PhD thesis is a text and that, like all texts, it is finished when it is completed (148). There are multiple ways in which the PhD thesis can be understood as a 'completed text'. Applying a post-structuralist analysis, this paper addresses the idea of the PhD as a completed text in a political sense: as a text bound by discursive rules, limits, and conventions. It argues that, as a text, the PhD thesis has a specific and limited purpose which always escapes the content (context) of its narrative and arguments. More precisely, the paper draws out the implications of understanding the PhD as a completed text for those who apply a post-structuralist ethic in their analyses, arguing that an implicit tension arises in treating the PhD thesis as itself being a discursive practice: an aspect of the system of power/knowledge. Engaging with this tension, the paper reflects on the way that the PhD thesis has a subjectification effect, arguing that the PhD thesis, as a 'completed text',' can be read as the site through which the student emerges as discoursing subject.