Discourse

From Geography

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 (Cousins and Hussian, 2010). 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 is: written or spoken communication or debate.

Foucault's discourse

Michel Foucault, as a so-called anti-foundationalist (anti-foundationalism), does not believe that there is some fundamental belief or principle which is the basic ground or foundation of inquiry and knowledge (Rorty, 1979). Thus, knowledge is an inherent social construct, which implies that we as human beings actually create discourses regarding e.g. societal issues. 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 about a subject and 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. (Foucault, 1961)

References:

Cousins, M. & A. Hussian (2010) Foucault and Discourse. found on 17-10-2010 at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/txt/discours.htm

Foucault, M. (1961) Folie et déraison. Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique. Found on 16-10-2010 at http://www.fss.uu.nl/wetfil/96-97/foucault.htm

Oxford dictionaries. Found on 16-10-2010 at www.oxforddictionaries.com

Rorty, R. (1979) Philosophy and the mirrow of nature. Priceton, NJ: Princeton University Press

Published by Lorenzo Goudsmits (08279910) & Lisanne Dols (0822701)