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 (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 is: written or spoken communication or debate. But Foucault use of the term discourse is different from this general definition.
Foucault's discourse
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. 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.
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
