FEMINIST RETHINKING OF THE CONCEPT OF DISCOURSE
2 credits
Winter term, 2004/2005
Barát Erzsébet
zsazsa@lit.u-szeged.hu
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Participants in the course will address the main shifts in the conceptualisation of how meanings are constructed in
and through the social use of language as of the late 1960s. The central category, the linguistic/semiotic unit of these
models is 'discourse'. What they all have in common is the definition of discourse as a form of social practice. The
course will revisit these various social theories of discourse and pose questions from a feminist perspective. The
central question that should inform this interrogation is: What can a given theory of discourse offer for feminism? In
the discussions we shall trace down the development of the corresponding key concepts, such as the institutions to
which a particular discourse is related, the positions it marks out for the speakers, the relations it constructs between
them, and the presuppositions its logic takes for granted. The aim of this critical thinking and assessment will be to
understand the potentially radical changes such an approach to discourse may have for the understanding of what
comes to count as 'knowledge'.in a particular community of language users.
ASSESSMENT:
Participation in discussions: 30%
Critical reading of a set reading: 30%
In class paper (2 hour long): 40%
Course outline in terms of weekly readings:
1. Foucault, M. 1972 The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock, pp. 3-76.
Foucault, M. 1991 "What is an Author?" In The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault’s Thought.
P. Rabinow (ed), London: Penguin, pp. 101-120.
2. Laclau, E. & Mouffe, S. 1984 "Beyond the Positivity of the Social" In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy:
Towards a radical democratic politics. London: Verso, pp. 93-148.
3. Althusser, L. 1969 „On the Materialist Dialectic: The unevenness of origins." In For Marx. London:
Verso. Pp. 163-218.
Althusser, L. 1984 "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" In Essays on Ideology
London: Verso, pp. 1-60.
4. Habermas, J. 1984 "Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification" In Moral
Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
5. Volosinov, L. V. 1996 "Toward a Marxist Theory of Language" In Marxism and the Philosophy of
Language. (sixth print) Trans. by L. Matejka & I. R. Titunik, Cambridge, Ma & London: Harvard
University Press. pp. 45-106.
Austin, J. L. 1973 How to do things with words?, Oxford: OUP, Chs 1,2,3, 11, 12
6. Chouliaraki, L. & Fairclough, N. (1999) "Discourse", "The Critical Analysis of Discourse" In Discourse
in Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 37-73.
7. Haraway, D. 1988 "Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial
perspective" In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature London: Free Association
Books. 1991 pp. 183-202.
8. Fraser, N. "What's Critical about Critical Theory?" In J. Meehan (ed) Feminists Read Habermas:
Gendering the Subject of Discourse, London: Routledge, pp. 21-56.
Warnke, G. "Discourse Ethics and Feminist Dilemmas of Difference" In ibid, pp. 247-262
9. Hennessy, R. 1993 "Materialist Feminism in the Postmodern Academy" & "The materiality of
Discourse" In Materialist Feminism: The Politics of Discourse. London & New York: Routledge, pp. 1-36,
37-66.
10. Butler, J. 1997 "Introduction" & " Burning Acts, Injurious Speech" In Excitable Speech: A Politics of
the Performative. London & New York: Routledge, pp. 1-41, 43-69.
11. Butler, J. 1998 "Merely Cultural" In New Left Review, No. 227, January-February, pp. 33-44.
Fraser, N. 1998 "Heterosexism, Misrecognition and Capitalism: A response to Judith Butler" In New Left
Review. No. 228, March-April. pp. 140-149.
12. Cameron, D. 1995 "Rethinking language and gender studies: Some issues for the 1990s" In S. Mills
(ed) Language and Gender: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. London and New York: Longman. pp. 31-44.