"There is nothing outside discourse"

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[[Discourse]] is an important concept in the thinking of [[Michel Foucault]]. He states that a discourse is an institutionalized way of thinking and power, [[knowledge]] and discourse operate together to produce us as a particular kinds of subjects. For example; we are all citizens (Knox & Marston, 2010). For Foucault (in Hall, 1997, p. 44) a discourse is ''‘a group of statements which provide a language for talking about a particular topic at a particular historical moment’''. In his work he tries to analyse how human beings are able to understand themselves in this world and what their knowledge is about the individual and their shared meanings, seeing from different ‘historical’ time periods (Hall, 1997). Foucault says (in Hall, 1997) in particular that ""discourse produces the objects of knowledge" and that nothing which is meaningful exists ''outside discourse'' (p. 44). This doesn't mean that there is ''nothing'' outside discourse, but Foucault means that "''nothing has any meaning outside of discourse''" (Foucault, 1972 in Hall, 1997, p. 45). Anything that does ''‘make sense’'' needs to be described in discourse, including ‘saying’ and ‘doing’ (Beverungen, 2006). So, in Foucaults idea, "the concept of discourse is not about whether things exist but about where meaning comes from" (Hall, 1997, p. 45). This is how the reality is created for human beings; we apprehend our reality through discourse and discursive structures. This leads to [[structures]], where we can’t think outside of (Mills, 2004). [[validity claim]] == A geographical example == As noted before Foucault states that discourse is an institutionalized way of thinking. Power and knowledge are two important concept within this concept, noted that nothing outside the discourse has any meaning. For example (Knox & Marston, 2010); in the army (further) soldiers get training. This training turns normal citizens into soldiers, which gives the state more power. Not just because the state become stronger (force), but also because the state becomes more knowledge. This knowledge is gained during the training, because the soldiers get insights about the training, warfare, strategically tactics et cetera. The discourse in this case is thus ‘the army’ with its power and knowledge. Outside this discourse, the army has no meaning at all. == References == Beverungen, A. (2006). Laclau, Discourse, Ideology. University of Leciester: Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy. Hall, S (e.d.) (1997). Discourse, power and the subject (pp.41-45). In: Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. Open University, Milton Keynes. Knox, P.L. & Marston, S.A. (2010). ''Human geography. Places and Regions in Global Context'' (5th edition). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education. Mills, S. (2004). ''Discourse'' (second edition). London: Routhledge. == Contributors == ''Page created by''--[[User:JikkeVanTHof|JikkeVanTHof]] 21:25, 10 September 2011 (UTC) Page edited by Renate van Haaren, --[[User:RenateVanHaaren|RenateVanHaaren]] 10:29, 17 October 2012 (CEST) [[Category: Post-structuralism]]

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