I ended the last Research Hub entry suggesting that, in a WPR analysis, “we can defend egalitarian precepts so long as they remain open to interrogation, highlighting the importance of ‘self’-problematisation”. The point, in that entry, was to make the case that it is possible, within WPR thinking, to uphold certain normative positions, which is commonly considered incompatible with a poststructural theoretical position. 

Norms become possible, I argue, if they are not treated as “truth” statements. That is, room is retained to interrogate one’s declared “principles”. This is precisely where, I suggest, “self”-problematisation becomes valuable. “Self”-problematisation encourages a critical questioning of one’s stances, beliefs and deep-seated assumptions. In this way, I argue, “self”-problematisation (Process 7; Bacchi 2026, p. 24) protects us from enshrining our normative commitments as “truth”.  But a question arises – in this argument, am I not positing the benefits of “self”-problematisation as a form of “truth”? 

In this entry, I want to ask: how is it possible, within WPR thinking, to prescribe“self”-problematisation as a practice of the self, OR is there a tension here that needs to be acknowledged? 

Privileging “self”-problematisation?

There is no doubt that “self”-problematisation is treated as a “special” task or function within WPR. The format in WPR, in the main, consists of 6 questions (see Table Bacchi 2026 p. 24). Such a format (questions) encourages debate and dialogue. Questions do not tell researchers what to do. This stance is in line with the general reluctance in WPR to become prescriptive about change objectives (see previous Research Hub entry on “WPR and Normativity”). 

Process 7 is more blatant about its recommended analytic approach. If you check the wording – “Apply this list of questions to your own problem representations as a practice of the self” (Bacchi 2026, p. 24), you will see that, unlike Questions 1 to 6, it is not a question. Indeed, it is more of an instruction than a question. 

I have been sensitive to the imperious tone in Process 7 for some time. Over the years I have experimented with different terms to describe it – as a “directive” (Bacchi 2009, p.19), as an “injunction” (blurb on back cover of Bacchi 2009), and currently as an “undertaking” (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 19). An undertaking is described as a task that is (simply) taken on, though it also carries the implication of a formal promise (Cambridge Dictionary). In Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice, the privileging of “self”-problematisation is clear: 

“In terms of practical application of WPR, it is possible to draw selectively upon the forms of questioning and analysis just described, so long as a self-problematizing ethic is maintained” (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 24; emphasis added).”

I should note in passing that the commitment to questioning one’s own proposals for change has been a part of the WPR approach from at least 2009. If you check the chart of questions in the 2009 Analysing Policy book (p. xii) it states: “Apply this list of questions to your own problem representations”. Unfortunately, because the instruction was not assigned a number (here I was undone by grammar – since it was not a question, I felt I could not list it with the other questions), researchers tended to miss it. To ensure attention was directed towards this crucial part of the analysis, I (with Sue Goodwin) called it “Step 7” in 2016 (Poststructural Policy Analysis, p. 20). In my recent book I change Step 7 to Process 7 (Bacchi 2026 p. 24) because of the unfortunate tendency for researchers to treat the matter as an incidental “step” that can be added (or not) at the end of one’s WPR analysis. “Self”-problematisation is not an optional extra!

Questioning “self”-problematisation

In poststructuralism, there is recognition that, as researchers, we are inside the processes we are examining. In line with the so-called “reflexive turn”, it is necessary, therefore, to acknowledge that the researcher/theorist plays an active role in constructing the very reality s/he is attempting to investigate (Eveline and Bacchi 2010, p. 154). It is time, therefore, to ask myself just what “reality” WPR creates. 

Even with its question format, in descriptions of WPR (e.g. Bacchi 2009), there is the implication that WPR produces an organized way to proceed that ought to be followed. The power implications of this form of analysis need to be recognized. As already indicated, within this framework, Process 7 stands out as a didactic form of intervention. To deal with its power effects, I suggest subjecting Process 7 (“self”-problematisation) to a WPR analysis. In an earlier Research Hub entry, titled “Applying WPR to WPR” (30 August 2023), I initiated precisely this form of interrogation. 

Applying WPR thinking, Process 7 constitutes a proposal, a designated starting place for WPR analysis (Bacchi 2026, pp. 18 ff.). With this “directive” as our proposal, we can ask the WPR questions: What is problematised? What presuppositions underlie this problematisation? Where did it come from? What does it omit? What are its effects? How is it replicated and reinforced and can/has it been disputed? 

In thinking about Question 2 on deep-seated presuppositions, I decided to make a modification to the “self”-problematisation proposal. In Poststructural Policy Analysis (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 38) there are no quotation marks in “self-problematisation”. Quotation marks around the term “self” (in “self”-problematisation) appear only in the new book (Bacchi 2026). This alteration reflects important theoretical commitments, as I now discuss. 

The point and purpose of placing quotation marks around terms in poststructuralist analysis is stated clearly in Poststructural Policy Analysis (p. 5). There, Sue Goodwin and I note that 

The skepticism poststructuralism brings to knowledges and other “things” is signaled through the use of what are called scare quotes, such as we have inserted. Indeed, wherever we fear that the contingency of a term is not immediately visible we will place it in quotation marks to make it so, e.g., “subjects”, “objects”, “places”, and “problems”. 

In the 2026 book I decided that the term “self” in “self”-problematisation had itself to be problematised. That is, I recognised that the term “self” in my original version of “self-problematisation” was too fixed, that it sat too close to the very kind of “subject” WPR interrogated. As I explain in the text (2026 p. 81): “The term ‘self’ is placed in quotation marks to keep a focus on the ‘ongoing development” of provisional selves (Bonham & Bacchi 2017)”. 

I continue to probe the presuppositions underpinning “self”-problematisation (Question 2 in WPR) and also about its effects (Question 5). The recent work among WPR researchers on developing WPR as a “group exercise” (see Research Hub entry 29 Jan 2026) raises an important question. How is “knowledge” conceptualized in Process 7? Do individualist premises underpin a call to scrutinize one’s own knowledge processes? What difference to the analysis would a focus on group processes and group “knowledges” produce? 

In response to this thinking, in the 2026 book, I introduce two new “practices of the ‘self’”, a practice of “deep listening” (Bacchi & Eveline 2010, p. 328); and a practice of “allyship” (Dixit 2023). The Aboriginal concept of Dadirri (or “deep listening”), adopted among transcultural mental health practitioners, emphasises that listening is both an inter-subjective and an inter-active practice. Dadirri refers to listening with both “heart and ears”, challenging the assumption that listening is a purely “cognitive” activity. 

We can see here an expanding of the boundaries around assumed forms of “knowledge”. 

In the Research Hub entry on “WPR as a group exercise” (29 Jan 2026), I mention the work of Dixit (2023, p. 1) who introduces “allyship” as a practice of the self in her elaboration of “self-problematisation”. “Allyship” is described as a practice “in which researchers must ask ourselves what we come to problematise and what is left unproblematic in our own work”. In Dixit’s (2024) account, self-problematisation is not confined to individual refection or “reflexivity”. Rather, it involves a practice of building “allyship” and inviting scrutiny, from peers, of one’s research and observations: “Self-problematisation went from so-called ‘formalised knowledge’ practices to substantive discussions and engagements within a peer group and a gradual changing of who is a ‘knower’” (Dixit 2023, p. 11). The recent chapter by Dahl (in M. Rönnblom and R. Edwards (eds) Innovations in Critical Policy Analysis: What’s the Problem Represented to Be? Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 149-160) makes important contributions to this topic. 

As with Dadirri, there are attempts here to expand understandings of “knowledge”. I find these interventions a useful corrective to a tendency to produce “self”-problematisation as an “academic” analytic practice. In other words, there is a need to acknowledge the extent to which the concept “‘self’-problematisation” may remain captured within conventional views of rationality. 

Are we facing “infinite regress”? 

I suggest that the kind of questioning introduced in this entry is useful, if uncomfortable (Foucault 2000). I am well aware of the view that the practice of “self”-problematisation is a self-defeating form of analysis, that it initiates a circular argument with researchers endlessly seeking out lacunae in their analyses. A common critique is that “reflexivity” induces a kind of paralysis (Davies et al. 2004, p. 374) – we become so concerned to ensure that we are not imposing our assumptions and views on others that we become afraid to do anything. 

Contra this view I believe that there is a need for a critical device such as WPR to examine the complex relations of power through which we are governed. We should not be surprised to find that inadvertently we adopt rationalities that we believed we put in question. As Brown (1998 p. 40) describes, the goal becomes: 

“to make visible why particular positions and visions of the future occur to us, and especially to reveal when and where those positions work in the same register of ‘political rationality’ as that which they purport to criticize’.” 

Unsurprisingly, in this project, there is always more work to do. With Foucault (1994, p. 612), the task involves a practice of continuous critique, engaging in “a work of problematisation and of perpetual reproblematisation” (“un travail de problématisation et de perpétuelle reproblématisation”). 

Conclusion

This entry takes on the unusual task of subjecting part of the WPR template (Process 7) to critical scrutiny. Subjecting “‘self’-problematisation” to a WPR analysis in this way allows us to see that every research enterprise is an exercise in power relations. No such exercise is innocent. Working on “oneself” in this way – critically engaging with one’s assumptions and presuppositions – proves to be analytically and politically useful. 

References

Bacchi, C. 2009. Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to be?Frenchs Forest: Pearson Education. 

Bacchi, C. 2026. What’s the Problem Recommended to be? A new thinking paradigm. NY: Routledge.

Bacchi, C. and Eveline, J. 2010. Gender mainstreaming or diversity mainstreaming? The politics of “doing”. In C. Bacchi and J. Eveline (eds) Mainstreaming Politics: Gendering practices and feminist theory. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press. pp. 311-334.

Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. 2016. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. NY: Palgrave Macmillan. See also second edition 2025.

Bonham, J & Bacchi, C 2017, Cycling “subjects” in ongoing-formation: the politics of interviews and interview analysis. Journal of Sociology, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 687–703. DOI: 10.1177/1440783317715805. 

Brown, W 1998, ‘Genealogical politics’, in J Moss (ed), The later Foucault: politics and philosophy, Sage, London, pp. 33–49.

Dahl, H. M. 2026. Enabling self-problematising? Strategically choosing re-analysis and co-authorship with an attention to difference. In M. Rönnblom and R. Edwards (eds) Innovations in Critical Policy Analysis: What’s the Problem Represented to Be? Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 149-160.

Davies, B, Browne, J, Gannon, S, Honan, E, Laws, C, Mueller-Rockstroh, B & Petersen, EB 2004, The ambivalent practices of reflexivity. Qualitative Inquiry, vol. 10, 

no. 3, pp. 360–389. DOI: 10.1177/1077800403257638.

Dixit, A 2023, Caste(d) knowledges: (self)-problematising epistemic impunity and caste-privilege in academia.  Organization, advance online publication, DOI: 

10.1177/13505084231204102.

Dixit, A 2024, Anti-sexual harassment laws in India: Problematising caste(d), postcolonial and neoliberal policies, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Eveline, J. and Bacchi, C. 2010. Power, resistance and reflexive practice. In C. Bacchi and J. Eveline (eds) Mainstreaming Politics: Gendering practices and feminist theory. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press. pp. 139-161.

Foucault, M 1994, À propos de la généalogie de l’éthique: Un aperçu du travail en cours, in D Defert & F Ewald (eds), Michel Foucault: dits et écrits 1954–1988, tome IV: 1980–1988, Gallimard, Paris, pp. 609–631. Foucault M. 2000. For an ethics of discomfort. In J. D. Faubion (ed.) Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954– 1984, Volume III. New York, NY: The New Press. pp. 443–448.