A foucault primer

From Driscollwiki

McHoul, A. & Grace, W. (1997) A foucault primer: Discourse, power and the subject. New York: New York University Press.

2. Discourse

To understand Foucault's use of "discourse"

Turn to his historical "discourse analysese" (26)
Esp. The order of things (1970)

"Foucault thinks of discourse (or discourses) in terms of bodies of knowledge." (26)

Discipline
- Scholarly bodies of knowledge
- Institutions of social control
Historically specific relations between the two types of discipline (26)

Non-Foucauldian conceptions of discourse

Formal

Concerns discourse in terms of text (27)
Lead by linguists
- Harris (1952), formal linguistic methods of analysis
- Mitchell (1957), social functions of language
  - Using (so-called) 'naturally occuring' samples of linguistic usage as data
- Similar to
  - Socio-linguistics, Giglioli (1982)
  - Ethnography of communication, Bauman & Sherzer (1974), Gumperz & Hymes (1972)
Formal discourse analysis AKA "text linguistics" or "text grammars" (27)
- Russian Formalist school, Lemon & Reis (1965)
- Connects to French structuralism, Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, (early) Barthes
  - "To which Foucault runs counter" (27)

Critical formalist

Systemic functionalist school of linguishts, Halliday (1973)
- Rethought by Hodge & Kress (1988) to create "social semiotics", "critical linguistics" (28)
- Reads 'naturally occurring' texts as socially-classed, gendered, historically located
Halliday also re-thought w/r/t feminist theory + practice
- Threadgold, 1988
- Challenges "simplistic arguments" against, e.g., gendering of pronounces (Spender 1980)
- Rather looks at how access to various bodies of language is limited, regulated according to gender

Mechanistic formalism

Seeking "general underlying rules of linguistic and communicative function"
Narrow understanding of discourse
Speech act theory
- Seeking "underpinning" discursive systems through "paroles" (performed utterances)

Empirical approaches

Associated with sociology
Discourse taken to mean human conversation (29)
Concerned with "commonsense knowledges" (29)
- Technical knowledge, "know-how" (29)
Conversation analysis (CA), developed by Sacks
- Based on Garfinkel's ethnomethodological approach to sociology (1967)
- Garfinkel rejected phenomenological idea that social facts are consciously constructed
  - Seeking "overtly material techniques" (30)
- Members of a society rely on "general methods" to "accomplish social facts" (29)
- Sacks looked at "turn-taking" (1974) and "on correction" (1977)
- How are conversations (social objects) accomplished? (30)
- Sacks looked at what was said, Foucault (in contrast) looks at "what can/could be said" (31)

Foucault's rethinking of discourse

Discourse is neither language nor social interactions but
- "Relatively well-bounded areas of social knowledge" (31)
- Anomalous among previous work (esp in Anglo-American traditions)
In a given historical period, only certain ways are available to speak about a given social object (31)
- "A 'discourse' is whatever constrains but also enables ... within specific historical limits" (31)
Discourses are many, interpenetrating, simultaneous, and historically discontinuous (31)
- Considered as a group, we might see "world view" such as "the Western episteme" (32)

Examples of historical specificity

At different historical periods, forms of thought we now take for granted were unavailable (32)
- e.g. "humanity"
- 1800s, Enlightenment (esp Kant's analysis on limits of knowledge) enables conception of "Man" (31-32)
  - And thus human sciences/ humanities: psychology, sociology, literature
- 1900s, Structuralism announces than "Man" is a fiction (33)
  - Truth becomes what can be said (33)

Foucault's published work on discourse

First, The order of things and then
The archaeology of knowledge, a theoretical reflection on the former (34)

Pre-Foucauldian critical discourse theory

Roots in continental (esp French) philosophy
Structuralism shows that social objects exist only as "products, not sources of ... signification" (34)
- Intended to be critiques of "individualism" and "idealism"
- Imagination is limited by the discursive possibilities at our disposal (34)
But discourse is not just represenatation
- It is a "material condition (or conditions)" which enables + constrains the socially productive 'imagination' (34)
- Consider competition among various paradigms in an academic field
Real objects are not available outside of discourse, they are produced, in part, by it (35)
- This leads to "interventional" critical discourse analysis among anthropologists
  - Michaels (1987), Benterral, Muecke, and Roe (1984)
  - Working also with contemporary literary theory (35)

Enunciation, énonciation

Formal and empirical approaches tended to work on the side of énonciation (35)
- Structures, techniques, forms of "know-how" producing/recognizing utterance

Enounced, énoncé, "statement"

Foucault turned attention instead to the énoncé, or "statements" (36)
Discourse is not only a technical accomplishment but
- What can be said, thought? (36)

Three criteria for "statements"

Statement is a "function" that "cuts across a domain of structures and possible unities and which reveals them, with concrete contents, in time and space" (38)

Responsive to "functioning" (Pêcheux, 1975) - beyond mere representation, they do things (37)
Parts of knowledge, act to constrain and enable what we can know
- Groups of statements may incl non-verbal expressions
Part of a technique or techniques for the production of human subjects and institutions (38)

Rules of statements

Rules govern the functioning of statements
Not a general theory of language
Dependent on historically variable bodies of knowledge (38)

Power relations

Discourses always function in relation to power relations
Power is not "had" at all (39)
It comes from everywhere, not simply top-down domination (a la Nietzsche)
Eco connects power and language via linguistic notion of "given language"
- e.g., "I are him" is impossible to speak without falling into incomprehensibility
- Constrictive apparatus that originates through general assent (40)
- Language system (langue) is an "instance" or "model" of power

Discourse and politics

What is relationship between disciplines (bodies of knowledge) and the rest of the world? (42)

Does Foucault's discourse foreclose possibility of "progressive" political intervention?

There is not one "system" but rather many "systems" (43)

Two ways to misunderstand discourse change

"Historical-transcendental" (43)
- Discourse assumed to have an original foundation
- Mistakenly assumes a totality to an acretion of local, specific changes
"Empirical or psychological" (43)
- Discourse is assumed to have been founded by a specific individual person
- Over-emphasis on "intent" of this founder

Components of a discourse

Objects

Things they study or produce

Operations

Methods, techniques

Concepts

Terms, ideas
Unique language

Theoretical options

Available theories, assumptions, hypotheses

Formation

Conditions which make possible in the first place the objects and concepts

Transformation

Limits of its capacities to modify itself
Threshold from which it can bring new rules "into play" (44)

Correlation

The "ensemble of relations" which a discourse has with other discourses at a given time
Nondiscursive context (44)

Episteme

Formed by the various discourses of a period
- "A non-unified multiple" (45)
(This term was later dropped from the analysis) (45)

Discontinuity

Notion of a single discontinuity must be pluralised into discontinuities (45)
Transformations are not incidental to historical change but "constitute it" (45)
Three places to seek discursive change:

Derivations

Found within the discourse
Extending the operations normally applied to one object to another object (45)

Mutation

Boundaries of a discourse may alter (46)
- What the discourse does, whom it acts upon, how it is distributed, forms of resistance it meets

Redistribution

Broader transformations that occur between two or more discourses
Disciplines may fragment into different "schools" of thought (46-47)

Four characteristics of what discontinuity is not

No overall theory of change (47)
Not a psychological diagnosis of scientific innovators
No all-powerful subject "behind" the discursive transformation (48)
Dependencies exist within discourses, between discourses, and between discourses and broader forms of socio-political change (48)

History of mind has to be replaced by history of discourse

There is no conscious subject "behind" all transformation of discourse (49)

Three recommendations for working with discourse =

Past discourse is a "monument to be described in its character disposition" (49)
Seek in discourse not its laws of construction (a la structuralism) but its "conditions of existence"
Refer the discourse not to thought/mind/subject which might have given rise to it, but to the practical field in which it is deployed (49)

Critical operations

Establishment of limits

Traditional critique appeared "limitless" (50)

Discourses are "limited practical domains"
No metadiscourse
De-center the subject (though don't "delete")
Look for processes of "birthing" and "disappearing" discourse fragments (51)

Elimination of binary oppositions

Some historical traditions rely on a reductionist distinction
- Stasis (periods) versus revolution (transition, transformation) (51)

Critique of discourse as a restricted historical domain

Discourse should have fundamental role in processes of history (52)

Establishment of a more certain status for the history of ideas

History of ideas has no boundaries, beginnings/ends
Discourse as an "object" for history of ideas
- "Transformable unit of history" (53)

Locus of political practice

Institutionalization of scientific discourse (53)
- Esp. positivistic: medicine, economics, human/social sciences
Positivity: "practices linked to certain conditions, obedient to certain rules, and susceptible to certain transformations" (54)
Political practice does not "transgress" or "overthrow" disciplinary formation (54)
- But transforms the "conditions" of its emergence, insertion, functioning

"Fivefold characterisation of what a progressive politics is" (55)

Recognizes the historical conditions and specified rules of a practice
- Other politics recognize only ideal necessities, univocal determinations, free play of individual initiative (55)
Defines in practice the possibilities of transformation and the play of dependences between these transformations
- Other politics rely on "change" abstractly, or "thaumaturgical" genius (56)
Defines different levels, functions which subjects can occupy in a domain with its own rules of formation
- Does not make man/unconscious/subject into universal operator of all transformations
Discourses form a practice which is articulated upon other practices
- Not the reuslt of mute processes or expression of a silent consciousness
Must know the manner in which diverse scientific discourses, in their positivity ... are part of a system of correlations without practices
- Not in a position of "perpetual demand" or "soverign criticism" wrt scientific discourses

Discourses and politics

Connected by whole field of "power" and the positions it generates for "subjects" (56)