Discourse (Representation p. 44-)
- as a system of representation--
"What interested him were the rules and practices that produced
meaningful statements and regulated discourse in different historical
periods."
- about language and practice--Discourse
is "a group of statements which provide a language for
talking about ...a particular topic at a particular historical moment."
"Discourse, Foucault argues, constructs the topic.
It defines and produces the objects of our knowledge. It governs
the way that a topic can be meaningfully talked about and reasoned
about.
[e.g. hysteria, sexuality, homosexuality, Romantic
love in late 19th century.]
- nothing which is meaningful exists outside
discourse--"nothing has any meaning outside of discourse"
the study of the discourses [of madness,
punishment, sexuality, or Romantic love, etc.] must include
the following elements:
- statements about 'madness' ...
- the rules which prescribe certain ways
of talking about these topics and exclude others (rules of inclusion
and exclusion)
- 'subject' who in some ways personify
the discourse--the madman, the hysterical woman, the Romantic hero,
etc.
- how this knowledge about the topic acquires
authority, a sense of embodying the 'truth' about it...
- practices within institution for
dealing with the subjects--medical treatments for the insane, punishment
regimes for the guilty, ways of reading Romantic poetry, night walk
for Romantic poets, admiration of Romantic hero, etc.
- discursive formation--the emergence of
a new discourse, decline of the old one
--history as discontinuous, with ruptures, radical
breaks
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Discourse--knowledge--power (e.g. knowledge about sex)
--knowledge linked to power, not only assumes the authority
of 'the truth' but has the power to make itself true.
--not the 'Truth" of knowledge in the absolute
sense--...but of a discursive formation sustaining a regime of truth.
--power circulates: It is never monopolized
by one centre. It 'is deployed and exercised through a net-like
organization.'
--power is not only negative; it is also
productive. "it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure,
forms of knowledge, produces discourses." (Representation 49-50)
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Power and Subjectivity
Discourses themselves [are] the bearers of various
subject-positions: that is, soecific positions of agency and identity
in relation to particular forms of knowledge and practice.
subject--produced within discourse, subjected
to discourse.
subject position--[for us to become the subject
of a particular discourse, and thus the bearers of its power/knowledge]
we must locate ourselves in the position from which the discourse
makes most sense, and thus become its 'subjects' by subjecting' ourselves
to its meanings, power and regulation.
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Example
1--hysteria, disease or performance?
|
Andre Brouillet, A clinical lesson
at La Salpetriere (given by Charcot), 1887 |
(Representation 52-53)
This painting represents a regular feature of Charcot's treatment
regime, where hysterical female patients displayed before an audience
of medical staff and students the symptoms of their malady, ending
often with a full hysterical seizure.
This painting could be said to capture
and represent, visually, a discursive 'event'--the emergence of
a new regime of knowledge. |
|
portrait of Augustine:
Amorous supplication
"Among
the most frequently photographed was a fifteen-year-old girl named
Augustine, who had entered the hospital in 1875. Her hysterical
attacks had begun at the age of thirteen when, according to her
testimony, she had been raped by her employer, a man who was also
her mother's lover. Intelligent, coquetish, and eager to please,
Augustine was an apt pupil of the atelier. All of her poses
suggest the exaggerated gestures of the French classical acting
style, or stills from silent movies. ...also seem to imitate
poses in 19th-century paintings [e.g. Ophelia, or
Beata
Beatrice] (Showalter in Representation 73-74) |
portrait of Augustine: Ecstasy
|
- Example 2--subject
positions in Las
Meninas (pp. 58-61)
- "Foucault reads the painting in terms
of representation and the subject" (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982,
p. 20). . . . the painting tells us something about
how representation and the subject work.
- The meaning of the picture is produced,
Foucault argues, through this complex inter-play between presence
(what you see, the visible) and absence (what you can't see, what
has displaced it within the frame).
- Two centers -- the Infanta and
Royal Couple. Far from being finally resolved into some
absolute
truth which is the meaning of the picture, the discourse of the
painting quite deliberately keeps us in this state of suspended
attention.
- Our look -- our identification
with one subject position For the painting to work,
the spectator. . . must subject him/herself to the painting's
discourse and, in this way, become the painting's ideal viewer.
- Three subject positions.
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From another book:
- Example 3--study
of images
- Foucault's arguments about discursive
formations--we should not focus on one or two privileged images, but
grasp the regularities which linked the different manifestations
of a certain imagery together across different sites of representation.
- Foucault's arguments about discursive
specificity--we need to attentive to the specific discursive codes
and conventions through which ...is signified ...
- Foucault's insistence on the operation
of power through discursive regimes-- opens up the possibility of
analyzing the power relations which function in the construction
of these images.
- Foucault's emphasis on the institutional
dimension of discourses -- how the images were rooted within specific
institutional practices ...
- Foucault's contention about the discursive
production of subjectivity-- a set of images as a new subject position
opened up ...
(external)
Literary
Criticism Databank: Postmodernism and Urban Space ;
Postmodern Theories and Texts;
Cultural
Studies;
Foucault
|
Unless otherwise noted, the following information is excerpted from
"The Work of Representation."