Lecture
GEOG 335
Fall 2007
October 23, 2007
Joe Hannah
Discourse Theory
A Quick Introduction
I. Knowledge
• Situated.
• Contested.
• Contingent.
ME
Who am I?
Symbolizing
Culture: What is important?
What is meaningful?
How do we represent
information to ourselves and
others?
“Situatedness”
Text? Images? Language!
Paradigms
Knowledge
How we understand
our environment and
our place in it.
Data
What data do we need to
gather?
In what form?
Inquiry
Using what methodology?
Data can never be unbiased!!
What do we understand and what
do we need to understand?
What do we focus on?
What questions do we ask?
II. Representation
• A set of practices by which meanings are
constituted and communicated.
• Such representational practices produce and
circulate meanings among members of
social groups and these meanings can be
defined as culture. Such shared meanings
are based on representations of the world.
Representation (continued)
• Representations not only reflect reality, but
they help to constitute reality. People make
sense of their worlds and are positioned
within social worlds through representations.
• Some representations are imposed on them
from the outside, but these are also contested
by representations generated from within the
culture. Thus imagined geographies are
contested by “rival” geographies.
Duncan, Jim. (2000) “Representation.” Dictionary of Human Geography. R.J. Johnston, et. al. eds.
III. What is “Discourse”
• “…groups of statements which structure the
way a thing is thought, and the way we act
on the basis of that thinking.
• “In other words, discourse is a particular
knowledge about the world that shapes how
the world is understood and how things are
done in it.” (Rose, p. 136)
Another way to look at discourse
• Discourse is a set of rules that
– allow us to think, talk and act in particular ways,
– and simultaneously prevent us from thinking,
talking, and acting in others.
e.g., “POVERTY”
Another way to look at discourse (cont.)
• No one dictates these rules. They are formed
and reinforced through social practices.
• “…discourse is seen as being socially produced,
not produced by individuals.” (Rose, p. 138)
• These rules are (for the most part) invisible to
us; that is, they are “taken-for-granted.”
Intertextuality
• “… the meanings of any one discursive
image or text depend not only on that one
image or text, but also on meanings carried
by other images and texts.”
• e.g., pictures of prostitutes in Rose.
Create
Recreate
• Discourses are created through social
mechanisms – through images, texts,
actions, etc.;
• In turn, these images, texts, actions, etc.,
reinforce, re-validate, and recreate the
discourse, itself.
Many, many discourses
• We are subjected to many interlocking and
overlapping discourses. For instance, as students
we are implicated in and must make sense
discourses on:
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Academia/scholarship
Governmentality (since this is a state school)
Activism/idealism
Adolescence/young adulthood
Drinking/drugs
Careerism
Capitalism
MORE… (Can you list some to do with Development?)
Knowledge
• Therefore, knowledge (as we’ve discussed
before) is socially constructed.
• But is is constructed in specific ways, along the
lines of discursive formations (or, “the ways
meanings are connected together in a particular
discourse”).
• Not ALL forms of knowledge are accepted or
acceptable in a discourse.
“Regimes of Truth”
• Only certain claims to truth will be considered
legitimate. (Astrology? Or astronomy?)
• “The particular grounds on which truth is claimed
– and these shift historically – constitute what
Foucault called a regime of truth.” (Rose, p. 137)
Discourse as Discipline
• Discourse is a form of Discipline
– It governs what can and cannot legitimately be
said about a subject
– It constrains representation, while
simultaneously being reconstructed through
representation
– It allows particular forms of knowledge while
erasing others
Power & Knowledge
• So power is essential in creating knowledge.
• “…all knowledge is discursive and all
discourse is saturated with power.” (Rose, p. 138)
• In this sense, power is not conceived of as
something held by one person or institution.
Power is diffuse – it permeates all discourse.
Discourse Analysis
• Concerned with identifying an authoritative
account (of something);
• Because discourses are often contested, discourse
analysis often contrasts different discursive
formations to highlight social conflict and power
relations;
• “Discourses are articulated through a huge range
of images, texts and practices… and any and all of
these are legitimate sources for discourse
analysis.”
Some Key Terms
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Power/knowledge
Truth claims
Authority
Legitimacy
Absences/Erasures
Surveillance/Discipline/Self-discipline