Michel Foucault on Discourse

Discourse: based on ideas of Michel Foucault, discourse theory refers to the idea that the terms in which we speak, write and think about the world are a reflection of wider relations of power, and since they are also linked to practise, are themselves important in maintaining that power structure

In the Order of Things (1970) Foucault focuses on fields of knowledge, such as economics, or natural history and the conventions according to which they were classified and represented in particular periods

While they were represented as objective and politically neutral, he shows how areas of knowledge are socially, historically, and politically constructed

Discourses of power while represented as objective and natural actually construct their subjects in particular ways and exercise power over them

Following on from Foucault since late 70 and 80s there has been an increasing awareness of the relationship between discourse (fields of knowledge, statements and practice such as development) and power

So all categories which lump peoples or experience together become politically suspect.

Power and knowledge

For Foucault, a discourse is a group of statements made up of ‘laws of possibility, rules of existence for the objects that are named, designated or described within it, and for the relations that are affirmed or denied in it’

Discourse includes not only language, but also what is represented through language

What we get in this later period is the emergence of government and a fantastic increase in the ability ig the state to control its people

Through discipline

Technologies: The emergence of new social institutions and practices, involving confinement
Confinement refers to the construction of places where people were locked away, secluded, and subject to disciplinary regimes Lunatic asylums, other hospitals, work houses, prisons, even schools

The development of new kinds of knowledge, medicine, psychiatry, criminology,