Foucault: Discourse Theory

Foucault: Discourse Theory

Foucault and Coriolanus

• Foucault's power = exercised through social body
• Plebians are social body
• Social classes of Coriolanus categorized (positive/negative)

Coriolanus and the Plebians

• Those in positive categories seen as normal
• Those in negative categories seen as insane

Foucault and Discipline/punishment

Eden, Finleigh, Constantine, and Seth

• Foucault looked at how people's "bodies" were regulated
• Torture vs. execution = discipline vs punishment
• Disciplinary power punishes and rewards
• Goal: normalality!

foucault and LPDL

• "Beast" gains power from those with knowledge about it
• Discourse created from this knowledge and beliefs about God

Knowledge and Power

• Now know: knowledge is product of discourse
• Knowledge arises when discourse has established credibility
• KNOWLEDGE then becomes POWER

• Result: fear and total power to the "beast"

No power/control to king

Conclusion and test

• Foucault interested in the discursive formation that holds discourse together and establishes truth
• Main difference between Eagleton and Foucault

Discourse

• A panoptical state - world under constant surveillance of "abnormality" - is accepted because it provides sense of belonging
• Hence power is obeyed because it allows us to "feel what we are"

Main Ideas to Remember:

Panopticism = constant surveillance

Abnormal vs. normal

Discourse comes from knowledge, and knowledge from discourse

This results in power

The "beast" from LPDL is powerful because of discourse and knowledge

• Power is derived from knowledge and works through discourse and discursive formations
• Discourse - assumptions that make knowledge possible.
• Discursive formations - large groups of statements of a discourse
• Knowledge is a way to define and categorize people (which results in discourse)

Discourse produces knowledge & vice versa

Foucault and Sexuality

• Taboo about sex in Victorian era
• Became scientific study subject = form of power
• Speaking about sex challenges discourse
• Evident with approach to homosexuality

vs

Foucault's Theory and Human Sciences

Sexual revolution1!

• In 17th/18th centuries - God was central
• Human knowledge limited, God's infinite
• In 18th/19th centuries, God lost importance - predicted by Foucault

• Examined in his book The Order of Things
• Three major areas of human sciences: linguistics, biology and economics
• Developed from: general grammar, natural history, analysis of wealth (17th & 18th centuries)

God is dead.

Meaning is constructed by men

Human Sciences have created normal/abnormal discourse

Activity

questions?

Panopticism

Psychiatry and Crime

• World is constantly monitored (panopticism)
• Power distributed over large number of individuals

• Before psychiatry, "a murder was simply a murder"
• Caused focus to shift from the law to the character of criminal - people constantly looking for "criminal personalities"
• Hence, psychiatry has led to suspicion and surveillance

• Society insists there be "normality," which causes there to be "abnormality"
• People who are criminals are "abnormal" and need treatment
• Therefore there is an accepted discourse about normality

• The "abnormal" individual put under constant surveillance
• Binary opposites responsible for this
• Major effect of panopticon: power is assumed and we are the bearers of our own imprisonment.