LiteraryCriticismClass#7MichelFoucault.ppt

Literary Criticism Class #7 Discourse (1) Briefly, “language as it is used by and within various constituencies (the law, medicine, the church, for example) for purposes to do with power relationships between people.” (Wolfreys 65) Discourse = ideology in action (Dobie 170) Discourse (2) “Human subjectivity and identity itself is produced out of various discursive formations as a result of the subject’s entry into language.” Language is “always already shot through and informed by figurations and encryptions of power . . . relationships and networks.” (Wolfreys 66) Discourse (3) Through discourse, knowledge = power. “Discourse disposes: it puts everything in its place. Modern power penetrates everywhere, giving a specific name to every possible variant of human action so as to master the world and leave nothing unexamined, unknown, uncatalogued.” (Norton 1619) Discursive Formation The “principle of dispersion and redistribution” of discourse “A structurally interactive flow serving, inescapably, a political or ideological function” (Wolfreys 69) Episteme Deep-rooted, unconscious structures for organizing knowledge. (Norton 1616) The rules and constraints outside which individuals cannot think or speak without running the risk of being excluded or silenced. (Dobie 170) Genealogy (1) Describing the present through an analysis of the forces that created it. (Norton 1616) ?Genealogy does not claim to be more true than institutionalized knowledge, but merely to be the missing part of the puzzle.? /~rathbone/foucau10.htm Genealogy (2) It works by isolating the central components of some current day political mechanism and then traces it back to its historical roots.?These historical roots are visible to us only through two separate bodies of