"There is nothing outside discourse"

From Geography

Latest revision as of 14:32, 25 October 2012

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). Discourses can be seen as sets of images, ideas and other subjective meanings. Foucault's concern is mostly directed to the production of knowledge thought discourse. Discourse in the project of Michel Foucault is about 'how human beings understand themselves in our culture and how our knowledge about the socioal, the embodied individual and shared meanings comes to be produced in different periods(Foucault, 1972 in Hall, 1997, p. 43).

For Michel 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).

Michel 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).

Michel Foucault wanted to state that everything consists of discourses and that nothing is fully objective. He argues that outside of discourses nothing has any meaning. Discourse is in the work of Michel Foucault not about whether things exist but about where meaning comes from (Hall, 1997). A fact is also built up around ideas, images and subjective thoughts.

validity claim

speech act

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--JikkeVanTHof 21:25, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Page edited by Renate van Haaren, --RenateVanHaaren 10:29, 17 October 2012 (CEST)

edited by Jan-Peter Hoste October 24 2012

edited by Stefan Ramaker --StefanRamaker 14:36, 24 October 2012 (CEST)

Edited by Marjolein Kouwenhoven, october 25th 2012