Discourse
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It is important to distinguish Foucault's use of the category, a discourse, from contemporary uses of the term 'discourse'. | It is important to distinguish Foucault's use of the category, a discourse, from contemporary uses of the term 'discourse'. | ||
Foucault's concern is not to produce a general theory of discourse (whatever that might mean). His use of the term discourse may be taken to be tactical. It may be thought of as an attempt to avoid treating knowledge in terms of 'ideas'. The reason for avoiding the term 'ideas' is that it brings in its train a series of presuppositions which Foucault hopes to abandon. | Foucault's concern is not to produce a general theory of discourse (whatever that might mean). His use of the term discourse may be taken to be tactical. It may be thought of as an attempt to avoid treating knowledge in terms of 'ideas'. The reason for avoiding the term 'ideas' is that it brings in its train a series of presuppositions which Foucault hopes to abandon. | ||
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| + | Concerning to foucault a discourse is a combination of reasoning whereby a subject is put in a certain perspective. A discourse is formed by the written and spoken text abour a subject. A discourse has a lot of power in marking what is normal and what isn't. The 'powers' that hold discourses on their place are called exclusion mechanisms . | ||
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| + | http://www.fss.uu.nl/wetfil/96-97/foucault.htm | ||
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| + | Foucault, M. Folie et déraison. Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique. Paris, Gallimard, 1961 | ||
Revision as of 13:18, 18 October 2010
The term discourse has become one of the key terms in the vocabulary of the humanities and the social sciences. For within the human sciences this term is becoming embarrassingly overloaded and more likely to induce confusion than any clarity it might originally have been set to produce (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/txt/discours.htm). The most common explaination of the term discourse is that it is a temporal perpective or an important subject of debate and talks for a while. The definition of the word discourse concerning the oxford dictionary: written or spoken communication or debate.
Foucault definition It is important to distinguish Foucault's use of the category, a discourse, from contemporary uses of the term 'discourse'. Foucault's concern is not to produce a general theory of discourse (whatever that might mean). His use of the term discourse may be taken to be tactical. It may be thought of as an attempt to avoid treating knowledge in terms of 'ideas'. The reason for avoiding the term 'ideas' is that it brings in its train a series of presuppositions which Foucault hopes to abandon.
Concerning to foucault a discourse is a combination of reasoning whereby a subject is put in a certain perspective. A discourse is formed by the written and spoken text abour a subject. A discourse has a lot of power in marking what is normal and what isn't. The 'powers' that hold discourses on their place are called exclusion mechanisms .
http://www.fss.uu.nl/wetfil/96-97/foucault.htm
Foucault, M. Folie et déraison. Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique. Paris, Gallimard, 1961
