discourse

<h2>DISCOURSE -in progress – notes from the SNDO session</h2>
keywords_speech act and performativity; legitimation; knowledge and power; episteme; pseudo-discursivity; the semiotic (that which signifies, symbolizes or takes on meaning, can be outside CONVENTION); the linguistic (language, logic, syntax, GIVEN method and register of human communcation):
session outline:
intro; Foucault (quote him from discourse essay, and disc shld not be und as) and Austin (quote how to do things with words); people to intervene 
*inside/outside of discourse?; what might it mean to dis-identify with a discourse? 
if discourse shapes our sense of reality (the terms on which we understand it) as well as sense of self (our identifications), then how might we find places in relation to certain discourses 
**discourses related to the arts, cultural production, or theory that people are currently concerned with
semiocapitalism, immaterial labour, semiological production, language as tokens, signs in their signal functions >>FIND SOME TEXTUAL EXAMPLES, maybe nina power? 
*discuss — how do people feel about this, do they agree?
guattari – asignifying semiotic chains, not as dialectically opposed to discourse, but as strategic response to certain hegemonic discourses, trying to break with their logic (deligny, brroughs, schwitters, monk) 
*guattaris proposal of pseudo-discursivity and the pathic 
**people to get together in more or less small groups and devise experiments with/ examples of what a discourse that is not based on a conventional logic, could be
——-
1. what is discourse?
oxford american dictionary
noun 
written or spoken communication or debate : the language of political discourse | an imagined discourse between two people traveling in France. 
• a formal discussion of a topic in speech or writing : a discourse on critical theory. 
• Linguistics a connected series of utterances; a text or conversation.
verb 
speak or write authoritatively about a topic : she could discourse at great length on the history of Europe. 
• engage in conversation : he spent an hour discoursing with his supporters in the courtroom.
noun I synonyms, examples 
1 they prolonged their discourse outside the door 
discussion, conversation, talk, dialogue, conference, debate, consultation; parley, powwow, chat, confab; formal confabulation, colloquy. 
2 a discourse on critical theory 
essay, treatise, dissertation, paper, study, critique, monograph, disquisition, tract; lecture, address, speech, oration; sermon, homily. 
verb 
1 he discoursed at length on his favorite topic 
hold forth, expatiate, pontificate; talk, give a talk, give a speech, lecture, sermonize, preach; informal spout, sound off; formal perorate. 
2 Edward was discoursing with his friends 
converse, talk, speak, debate, confer, consult, parley, chat.
etymology 
 c.1374, alteration of classic Latin: discursus "a running about," 
in Late Latin "conversation," from stem of discurrere "run about," 
from dis- "apart" + currere "to run." 
Sense of "formal speech or writing" is first recorded 1581.
> what do people in the group understand by discourse? is it a notion that they´ve come across many times, does it seem important, relevant? 
general discussion for 10mins
I would propose the following way to understand discourse, for the purposes of this session:

 <ul>
 <li>discourse is not limited to the linguistic, to language, speech, writing, syntax.</li>
 </ul>**it consists in a way of performing a relation to knowledge, and also to power.
**discourse is the movement of knowledge between agents – a mode of relation that is established between two or more subjects/entities.
**discourse is always situated, in social, political and historical contexts. it can occur in a dialogical setup as much as in groups, networks, and institutional contexts.
**what distinguishes a way of relating to knowledge, ie. a discourse, is a logic, a systematicity, rules, premises, and a specifically configured relation to power.
FOUCAULT 
was… (WIKIPEDIA FEB19th 08) 
(October 15, 1926–June 25, 1984) was a French philosopher, historian, critic and sociologist. He held a chair at the Collège de France, giving it the title "History of Systems of Thought," and taught at the University of California, Berkeley.
Michel Foucault is best known for his critical studies of various social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, as well as for his work on the history of human sexuality. Foucault’s work on power, and the relationships among power, knowledge, and discourse, has been widely discussed and applied.
in his early work notably, which centers around power and its relation to knowledge and its institutions, particularly science, whereas his later work focuses more on subjectivity and its relation to power 
*develops a methodology for the analysis of various discourses. (Foucault effect quote comes later) 
**an archaeological methodology; working through historical archives, which allow for the investigation into the sets of relations within which discourse and a certain regime of knowledge emerges.
——
from stuart hall (uk cultural theorist) book on representation <a href="http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/crit.97/Foucault/Foucault.htm">http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/crit.97/Foucault/Fouc…</a>
Discourse 
 * 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:
1. statements about ‘madness’ …
2. the rules which prescribe certain ways of talking about these topics and exclude others (rules of inclusion and exclusion)
3. ‘subject’ who in some ways personify the discourse—the madman, the hysterical woman, the Romantic hero, etc.
4. how this knowledge about the topic acquires authority, a sense of embodying the ‘truth’ about it…
5. 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.
6. discursive formation—the emergence of a new discourse, decline of the old one
—history as discontinuous, with ruptures, radical breaks
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)
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 hte discourse makes most sense, and thus become its ‘subjects’ by subjecting’ ourselves to its meanings, power and regulation.
——
Foucault in a short text from 1976, called “discourse should not be understood as…”, in a film script “the voice of ones master” by g.mordillat and n.philibert:
…discourse should not be understood as the totality of things one says, or the way in which one says them. it is just as much in what one says as in what one doesn´t say, or what is marked with gestures, attitudes, ways of being, schemas of behaviour or spatial arrangements.
FOUCAULT CHOMSKY DEBATE from XXXX 
watch: with sound > without sound > sound only ? 
discuss 15mins
- In an interview about his analyses of the formations of different discourses, Foucault refers to transformations of discourses as defined by:
intradiscursive dependencies (between objects, operations and concepts of a single formation); interdiscursive dependencies (between different discursive formations); and extradiscursive dependencies (between discursive transformations and transformations outside of discourse).
He is interested in breaking with the idea that it is a transcendent or all-knowing subject that comes into discourse from a supposed outside, or that it is a according to ideals that discourse forms. The formation of discourses always depends on contexts and the forces at play in them.
according to Foucault, there are 4 different frameworks within which our relations to the world are configured: 
configurations of production; configurations of sign systems; configurations of power; configurations of the self 
these are all interrelated 
*technologies of sign systems constitute the discursive field, which is a diverse and complex field consisting most visibly in what gets said and written, however discourse is not limited to the linguistic.
the way in which a concept (or notion) functions within a specific context has been referred to as the episteme of a period (by Michel Foucault).
Wikipedia (shortened, from feb 12th 2008; in fact wikipedia is a good example of epistemes and the changes they undergo) describes the episteme in the following way: 
 
 episteme means the historical a priori that grounds knowledge and its discourses and thus represents the condition of their possibility within a particular epoch. In subsequent writings, he made it clear that several epistemes may co-exist and interact at the same time, being parts of various power-knowledge systems:
I would define the episteme retrospectively as the strategic apparatus which permits of separating out from among all the statements which are possible those that will be acceptable within, I won’t say a scientific theory, but a field of scientificity, and which it is possible to say are true or false. The episteme is the ‘apparatus’ which makes possible the separation, not of the true from the false, but of what may from what may not be characterised as scientific.
Foucault in “the order of things”
Austin and Butler, briefly: 
the performativity of discourse and what constitutes a successful speech act
John Louis Austin says (in how to do things with words) 
A1. there has to be a usual conventional procedure with a usual conventional result; part of this procedure consists in certain persons pronouncing/uttering certain words 
A2. the persons and circumstances concerned need to fit the specific procedure, which one calls upon 
B1. all those present need to correcty and 
B2. completely perform the procedure. 
… 
eg. rituals, ceremonies such as maggiages, burials, initiation into sth, graduation, courting, etc
speech acts, if the dont fulfill the conventions or criteria under which they are usually performed, can be unsuccessful and flawed. they depend on linguistic as well as other ritual convention.
speech acts are acts, they serve to set up actions, they lead to a change of status and/or situation.
they refer to discourse, and as acts can bring about a different relation to power (now you are married; now you are a BA)
speech acts are ways of legitimating yourself as subject in a conventional speech situation (that doesn’t have to mean its institutionalized; a gang of kids in a café may have conventional and usual discursive proceedings – i.e. ritual attitudes, phrases, gestures, movements etc)
judith butler is interested in the ways in which we can intervene in a ritual discursive setup and upset its power configuration; 
for example, by diverting an injurious interpellation, making it positive, subverting its terms, etc (the example of the old blind woman with the pigeon)
legitimation linguistic convention performativity
what might it mean to call something a discourse?
**to call something a discourse means to delimit a field within which a certain relation to knowledge is enacted. 
for example: a scientist speaks of cloning, genetic engeneering, bioethics, etc etc – her discourse presupposes a certain vocabulary and a way of putting that vocabulary to use – making sense of it and putting it into practice.
if discourse mean a way of relating to knowledge, then this knowledge can be of a subject matter, a person, an institution, etc. discourse does not have to be scientific or philosophical, it can also be personal, institutional, etc. 
*the way the limits of this field are chosen is random, there is no inside or outside of discourse, rather it is a question of what criteria you are using to distinguish sth as a specific discourse 
discourses are embedded in a system of other discourses, as well as functioning as systems in themselves. 
*discourses constantly transform, along with the rest of the world; they are co-dependent on social, political, economic, etc events, in the micro and macro.
a discourse is not something one can have naturally, it is subject to processes of learning and appropriation of concepts and ways of speaking (strategically or not). 
*it always has to be performed. (butler, later) 
**it can at best be documented/recorded, but its conditions of emergence can never be reproduced or guaranteed.
2. is there an outside of discourse? how can we strategically position ourselves within discourse?
is there an outside of discourse, then? 
a way of relating that is not embedded in historical, social, political etc contexts, and analyzable as such? 
while there is a search for a fundamental experience outside of history, an absolute form of Otherness, a fundamental experience of unreason, in the earlier writing of Foucault (madness and civilization for example, where he analyzed the history of psychiatric institutions and the role of madness throughout the centuries), Foucault in his later works realizes that he must search for another way of thinking about the problem of the limits of humans knowledge of their own being. he recognizes that this idea of a recourse to an ontological boundary which defines us while at the same time being necessarily inaccessible to us, is based upon the mythic mode of construction of modern thought. this idea of an outside plays an important role in our contemporary form of knowledge and power, and hence Foucault tries to avoid reproducing it – by grounding his further analyses more in the body and subjectivity. 
discourse is understood as existing beyond the linguistic, and it operates not only within large contexts of power and governance, but also and particularly in the micropolitical – in the subjective, that is, the way in which the individual relates to knowledge and power.
but so: there is no outside OR other to discourse? 
if we follow Foucault, then no. however this doesn’t mean that there can not be strategies for operating self-reflexively within the discursive field: we can work on our modes of relating to concepts and knowledge through various technologies of the self, and we can undertake analyses of our situatedness within a field of knowledge and power.
examples of working upon ones way of relating to power through writing:
SELF-WRITING 
-text of 1983, in a journal called corps ecrit, feb 83 
-hupomnemata (notebooks) and correspondence (letters) 
-hupomnemata: writing about readings (notebook) , meditations (personal journal), themes for future meditations, dreams, daily routines (diary): 
relation of self to knowledge and way of life; history of ones own thought 
-correspondence as extending that to an other, adding a dimension of responsibility, developing the ability to take care of (respond to) self and another at the same time
-both hupomnemata and correspondence as somewhat public forms of writing; as a document of and resource for the care of the self, it was geared towards exposure of an ethical or spiritual genealogy, to the self as well as to potential others: offering what one has said, done or thought to a possible gaze; particularly in correspondence, but also in hupomnemata as documentation of genealogy of thought, documentation of the art work that a life is (rf. art as documentation, groys text on art+biopolitics)
Guattari 
felix guattari, a psychoanalyst, theorist, and the collaborator of deleuze, is equally interested in the production of subjectivity and the role of discourse within it. 
notion of “pseudo-discursivity”
pseudo- 
1 supposed or purporting to be but not really so; false; not genuine : pseudonym | pseudoscience. 
2 resembling or imitating : pseudohallucination | pseudo-French. 
ORIGIN from Greek pseudēs ‘false,’ pseudos ‘falsehood.’
…which I understand to mean a certain subversion or rendering-dysfunctional of discursive chains and relations; an intervention in the discursive (not from the outside, but from within it – so this means an intervention that also concerns the self).
the production of a-signyfing semiological instances, of signs that cannot be reduced to a signifier (a definite value), easily translated or defined. 
this is a key part to Guattaris approach to discursivity or, rather, pseudo-discursivity: a pathic and de-centralized discursivity, allowing for “intensive and multiplicitous becomings”. 
The pathic, as coming from pathos, carries the double meaning of the passion of the soul and the illness of the body – that which works through the body, through experience and sensitivity, beyond the linguistic. 
perhaps we can consider pathic discursivity a kind of embodied and somatic discursivity, which can not be reduced to a linear or binary logic, but which rather is (perhaps infinitely) complex.
Following the idea of an embodied discourse, Guattari places himself right inside his writing, creating an interdisciplinary (references to various fields of knowledge), intersubjective (through collaboration) and very idiosyncratic (and poetic) discourse, and proposes to others to do the same, by finding new ways of enunciation, of being sensitive to the pathic in discourse, and to the relation of discourse to power. he specifically criticizes the hegemony of scientistic discourse and knowledge.
The specific frame in which Guattari positions himself and sets his writing in response to is late capitalism. Guattari invents himself a technology of writing that does justice to his aesthetic, ethical and political sensitivities and ideas. What may initially appear as merely stylistic is in fact indispensable methodologically, enacting or embodying the very processes Guattari speaks of. Discourse is constitutive to subjectivity, as the relationship of the self to the semiological, to language and thought.
So, discourse and writing need to be understood as practice and technology that exist beyond the analytical, scientific and binary: self-writing must work with the pathic dimension.
GUATTARI/ROLNIK QUOTE, definition of ASIGNIFYING SEMIOTICS, from micropolitics/ molecular revolution in brasil book
Guattari interview – liberation of desire…
two examples for thinking about pathic discursivity:
deligny 
discuss
the question of systematicity in the boys actions, and the question of intentionality: is a pseudo-discourse a necessarily intended, strategic mode of relating to knowledge? we cannot verify what kind of logic is behind the discourse of the boy: it resembles both play and labour, and seems to be imitating it (or, if you ascribe a strategical place to this discourse, even mocking it)
pseudo-discourse as imitation of elements of syntax of a specific discourse, yet rendering them dysfunctional? does it matter what the conditions for the production of a pseudo-discourse are?
Meredith monk 
discuss
there is systematicity and strategy to monks (pseudo-)discourse, yet again it can only be her and/or her collaborators who can reveal for the logic behind their working, and the contingent factors that contribute to this.
is a pseudo-discourse a mode of relation which can clearly not be accounted for by people other than those directly engaged in it – a mode of relation that does not claim to be based upon a general law or cause, but an overtly invented, constructed, artificial discourse?
if we take the notion of running to and fro, of discursing between poles, as closely related to a kind of call and response: one pole calls, the other responds, and what emerges between them is discourse (hence neither of them owns it, but they hold it together, sustain it in its ephemerality) – monks work seems to work a lot with this form of call and response.
what does it mean to be calling; what does it mean to be addressed? 
what does it mean to be engaged in a discourse – when do we consider ourselves involved in discourse?
the cd recording allows us to think about spectatorship and audience in relation to discourse: a musical discourse can be addressed both to an audience and/or address its very participants, eg. the members of a band – an improvisation session or jam might be a good example of this. while a cd recording might address you (in your function as audience or fan for example, not you personally) yet you can´t feed back, the cd is a one-way medium: yet we might still consider this discursive in the sense of going to and fro: with the cd it is just that you can´t directly bounce back to the same pole, but you might divert your discourse to a music journal, which then might impact on the recording of a subsequent cd, and there you would have a network of discourse: from music to person to writing to person to music, etc…
discourse is networked, it needn´t be dialogical or bipolar; call and response can involve more than two.
hence, what does it matter who is the addressee of a discourse? is the addressee always immediately involved in a discourse, whether they want it or not, and hence response-able for it? what role does the format of the address play (a cd, a concert, a question)?
3. immaterial labour and discourse production
Foucault (again) 
-in his later work, the aspect of self in relation to itself, others and world has come to seem increasingly important to F, when after ´68 social movements turned towards the self, in recognizing that “there is a policeman inside ones head” (adam curtis, century of the self) – this came after the social movements had been faced and weakened by much police repression and people felt a need to turn towards working on their own subjectivity and expressing themselves, Wilhelm Reich influence, relation to Christian morality and the enemy inside the self which has to be fought and exorcised, (also marcuse, mass media)
conversation Foucault/deleuze 1972, intellectuals and power, in: l´arc, 1972:
…what intellectuals have discovered under the pressures of recent events is that the masses don´t need them in order to understand; the masses have a perfect, clear and much better knowledge than the intellectuals; and they can very well pronounce it. but there is a system of power which blocks their speech and knowledge, censors and weakens it. a system of power that does not only consist of higher instances of censorship, but that penetrates the whole of society in a very deep and subtle way. intellectuals are themselves part of this system of power; the idea that they are agents of “consciousness” and discourse is part of this system. today intellectuals are however no longer in the position to place themselves at the top or side of everyone, in order to pronounce their muted truth. rather they have to fight power there where they are at the same time its objects and instrument: in the order of “knowledge”, of “truth”, of “consciousness”, of “discourse”.
that´s why theory is not the expression, translation or application of praxis; it is itself praxis. but a local and regional praxis, which, as we have said, is not totalizing. it is the struggle against power, struggle for making it visible and weakening it, in the places where it is most invisible and malicious. theory is not a fight for “consciousness-raising” – consciousness as knowledge since long belongs to the masses, and consciousness as subject has long appertained to the bourgeoisie. it is a struggle to undermine and take over power, next to and with everyone who fights for it. it needn´t enlighten those in strugge from a safe back room. a “theory” is the regional system of such struggle.
-the production of theory and discourse as increasingly important not only in the academic and arts field but generally in the growing field of cultural production 
-less manual and more cognitive labour means more engagement with language and more need for sophisticated/ market-compatible self-representation and advertisement (augmenting cultural capital) : proposal writing (blurbs and titles), application writing (project based work), email writing, cv writing, and also blogging and writing on wikis, and particularly in the field of the arts and academia: academic writing, art writing…
andrea fraser 2008-02-06T14:30:33Z 16 true discourse

2008-02-22T15:57:30Z