Week 5 Discourse

Burr, Vivien. “What Is A Discourse?” Social Constructionism. 2 nd ed. London: Routledge,

I. What is a discourse? II. Discourse, knowledge and power III. Disciplinary power IV. The invisibility of disciplinary power V. Discourse, social structure and social practices

I. What is a discourse?

Discursive Psychology Macro Social Constructionism (Foucauldian) Definition of “Discourse” An instance of situated language use ◆ “Practices which form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 1972). ◆ A set of meanings, metaphors, representations, images, stories, statements and so on that in some way together produce a particular version of events. ◆ A particular picture that is painted of an event, person or class of persons, a particular way of representing it in a certain light. Subject vs Discourse The speaker freely draws upon language as a cultural resource for his/her own ends. The forms of language available to us set limits upon... not only what we can think and say, but also what we can do or what can be done to us. (Burr, 63-64)

Macro Social Constructionism (Foucauldian) Definition of “Discourse” ◆ “Practices which form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 1972). ◆ A set of meanings, metaphors, representations, images, stories, statements and so on that in some way together produce a particular version of events. ◆ A particular picture that is painted of an event, person or class of persons, a particular way of representing it in a certain light. Subject vs Discourse The forms of language available to us set limits upon... not only what we can think and say, but also what we can do or what can be done to us. (Burr, 63-64)

ObjectFoxhunting Discourse #1 Foxhunting as pest control. -- Sentimentality over vermin is misplaced. Discourse #2 Foxhunting as the contravention of basic morality. Discourse #3 Foxhunting as healthy outdoor sport. Discourse #4 Foxhunting as pastime of the idle rich. (Burr, 64)

Discourses, through what is said, written or otherwise represented, serve to construct reality for us. Each discourse claims to say what the object really is, this is, claims to be the truth. (Burr 64)

Text Discourse manifest itself in texts. Definitions: --anything that can be “read” for meaning --a manifestation of one or more discourses (Burr 66)

There is nothing outside the text. (Derrida, 1976)

Discourse World Text Subject Construction Representation Mediation

II. Discourse, knowledge and power

Versions of Natural Events Which one is given more credibility? □ science □ religion □ literature

Knowledge The particular construction or version of a phenomenon that has received the stamp of truth in our society The particular common-sense view of the world prevailing in a culture at any one time (Burr 68)

Power Power is an effect of discourse. When we define or represent something in a particular way we are producing a particular form of knowledge, which brings power with it. Any version of an event brings with it the potential for social practices, for acting in one way rather than another, and for marginalising alternative ways of acting. (Burr 68)

Where there is knowledge, there is power. (Burr 79)

An Example A discourse on madness → produces one particular knowledge → the knowledge brings with it a power inequality between those who are said to be mad and those who are sane. (Burr 68)

Resistance For Foucault, power and resistance are two sides of the same coin. (Burr 69) Prevailing discourses are always under implicit threat from alternatives, which can dislodge them from their position as truth. (Burr 80)

Resistance Truth/knowledge/power is fluid and unstable. (Burr 80) Change is made possible by resistance.

Resistance (Sawicki observes) Repression and the need to resort to force is evidence of a lack of power; repression is used when the limits of power have been reached. (Burr 69)

III. Disciplinary Power

Power is at its most effective when it is productive, when it produces knowledge. (Burr 69)

Foucault’s Example

18th Century --The concept of “population” arose due to concerns of public health. --“Population” could be classified, divided into different categories. --“Population” could be managed and controlled (Burr 70)

A radical shift took place from “sovereign power” to “disciplinary power.” (Burr 72)

Disciplinary Power People are disciplined and controlled by freely subjecting themselves to the scrutiny of others, esp. experts [such as the medical profession and psychiatrists], and to their own self-scrutiny. (Burr 72)

19th Century --the repressive hypothesis: a time of pervasive silence on the subject of sex --Foucault argued that the repressive hypothesis is a myth (Burr 71)

19th Century --Foucault observed that there was an explosion in discourses of sexuality. Never before was sex so much scrutinised, classified, theorised and controlled. --Example: the practice of covering the legs of furniture (Burr 71)

Move toward Surveillance and Normalisation With the power to say what practices were permissible and which not inevitably came the idea of normality. Sexuality: the ideas of “sexual perversion”, “unnatural practices” and “sexual immorality” became a possibility. (Burr 70)

Move toward Surveillance and Normalisation Psychology: the category of sane/insane, abnormality (psychosis, neurosis, manic depression, schizophrenia etc.) Criminology: Bentham’s Panopticon (Burr 71)

Surveillance became internalized. (Burr 72)

Food for Thought 1. Why does Burr say that practice of psychology can be seen “not as a liberatory project in which knowledge discovered about human beings is used to improve their lives, but one more cog in the machine of social control?” (72) 2. Can we say the same thing about education? 3. When and where did you ever perform self-surveillance?

IV. The invisibility of disciplinary power

Power is tolerable only on condition that it masks a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms. (Foucault 1976; qtd. in Burr 73)

An Example

The discourse of romantic love Assumptions : –If we really love someone, we care about them and their welfare, and to some extent bear responsibility for that welfare. –Love is the foundation for marriage and family life, and marriage is seen as the appropriate and natural culmination of a romantic alliance. (Burr 73)

The Marxist discourse Marriage and the family play a crucial role in the maintenance of capitalist economy. Men: efficient workers Women: provide free service at home produce future workers (Burr 74)

In Foucault’s terms, the power exercised through these discourses in persuading [men and women to willingly participate in capitalist economy] is so successful because of the extent to which it has been possible to obscure its operation by the discourses of love, marriage and family life. (Burr 74-75)

V. Discourse, social structure and social practices

Discourses have implications for what we can do and what we should do. –Prevailing discourses of femininity –Prevailing discourses of the individual Discourses are intimately connected to institutional and social practices. –Capitalist economy –Institutions: the law, education, marriage, family, the church (Burr 76)

However: –Power is not a one-way street. Prevailing discourses are always under implicit threat from alternatives. –An example: the “male sexual drive” discourse counter-discourse: an attractive women might threaten a man’s sense of self-control. (Burr 76-77)

Another Example

“There is no question that the appearance in nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature of a whole series of discourses on the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and ‘psychic hermaphrodism’ made possible a strong advance of social controls into this area of ‘perversity’; but it also made possible the formation of a ‘reverse’ discourse; homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or ‘naturality’ be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified.” (Foucault 1990; qtd in Hall 93)

Archaeology of Knowledge Assumptions: –Once a discourse becomes available culturally, it is then possible for it to be appropriated in the interests of the relatively powerful. –Historically then, we can trace back the emergence of a discourse into a culture and try to uncover the social, physical and economic changes that provided the breeding ground for it. (Burr 78)

Archaeology of Knowledge Purposes –If we can understand the origins of our current ways of understanding ourselves, we can begin to question their legitimacy and resist them. –We can bring to the fore previously marginalized discourses, which will serve as an important source of resistance for us all. (Burr 78-79)

Foucault, Michel. “Domain.” Identity. Eds. Paul du Gay, Jessica Evans, and Peter Redman. London: Sage,

In an encyclopedia entry Foucault wrote about himself under a pseudonym, he summaries his philosophical project: to study... the formation of the procedures by which the subject is led to observe himself, analyze himself, interpret himself, recognize himself as a domain of possible knowledge... (Foucault 1998; qtd in Hall 92) *Hall, Donald E. Subjectivity. London: Routledge, 2004.

Sexuality → not a biological drive → a historical construct, a dense transfer point for relations of power

Since the 18th Century, sex has increasingly become an object of knowledge. Knowledge/power is productive as well as repressive.

Four privileged objects of knowledge: 1. the hysterical woman 2. the masturbating child 3. the Malthusian couple 4. the perverse adult These “strategies” lead to the production of sexuality. (Foucault 163)

Relations of sex: –Deployment of alliance A system of marriage, of kinship ties, of transmission of names and possessions. Built around a system of rules defining the permitted and the forbidden, the licit and the illicit Aims to produce the interplay of relations and maintain the law that governs them

Relations of sex: –Deployment of sexuality Concerned with the sensations of the body, the quality of pleasures, and the nature of impressions Operating according to mobile, polymorphous, and contingent techniques of power Engenders a continual extension of areas and forms of control

The deployment of sexuality was constructed on the basis of a deployment of alliance.

The family is the interchange of sexuality and alliance: it conveys the law and the juridical dimension in the deployment of sexuality, and it conveys the economics of pleasure and the intensity of sensations in the regime of alliance. The family became a major factor of sexualization.

Examples of an alliance gone bad and an abnormal sexuality: the nervous woman, the frigid wife, the indifferent mother—or worse, the mother beset by murderous obsessions—the impotent, sadistic, perverse husband, the hysterical or neurasthenic girl, the precocious and already exhausted child, and the young homosexual who rejects marriage or neglects his wife.

Foucault and Althusser Discourse → ideology in action Power → interpellation?

The End