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This document discusses Foucault's concept of discourse and its relevance for studying issues of indigeneity. It provides context on the emergence of poststructuralism from existentialism and structuralism. Foucault viewed discourse as having flexibility and directing meaning within contexts. His concept examines how discourses are constituted and how they function exclusionary through institutions. Foucault was seen as moving from structuralism to poststructuralism through his sensitivity to phenomena of normalization and refusal to accept Saussurian linguistic dualism.
This document discusses Foucault's concept of discourse and its relevance for studying issues of indigeneity. It provides context on the emergence of poststructuralism from existentialism and structuralism. Foucault viewed discourse as having flexibility and directing meaning within contexts. His concept examines how discourses are constituted and how they function exclusionary through institutions. Foucault was seen as moving from structuralism to poststructuralism through his sensitivity to phenomena of normalization and refusal to accept Saussurian linguistic dualism.
This document discusses Foucault's concept of discourse and its relevance for studying issues of indigeneity. It provides context on the emergence of poststructuralism from existentialism and structuralism. Foucault viewed discourse as having flexibility and directing meaning within contexts. His concept examines how discourses are constituted and how they function exclusionary through institutions. Foucault was seen as moving from structuralism to poststructuralism through his sensitivity to phenomena of normalization and refusal to accept Saussurian linguistic dualism.
Why using this concept Studying indigeneity issues unavoidably will lead to addressing the problem of competing meanings. In dominant contemporary society, indigeneity is commonly perceived as the opposite of modernity and often attached to the issue of backwardness, underdevelopment and other such derogatory labels. At the same time, it has become an increasingly popular topic among international agents advocating for indigenous peoples rights (Persoon, 1998). Thus, while being socially marginalized from the discourse of modernity and development, the existence of indigenous peoples is becoming a mainstream global issue of democracy and social justice. Meanwhile, in a multi-ethnic country such as Indonesia, the concept of indigeneity has been challenged by the concept of ethnicity that diverted the issue of human rights and marginalization into cultural poverty. Indigeneity then emerged as a floating concept with loose meanings, not only in terms of its linguistic aspect but also in how it is placed within broader issues. Indigeneity remains an unfixed concept due to on going competing notions. It is useful then to apply the notion of discourse to this concern. Indigeneity as a discourse has flexibility and can be directed to a certain meaning, within a certain context, obtaining affirmation from thoughts subject to that meaning. This is what McHoul and Grace (1993, p. 36) simply reflect on as what can be said and what can be thought, which refers to Michel Foucaults conceptualisation of discourse. This simple notion emphasises the significance of the specificity of time and place in defining something as a discourse, which is not only related linguistic aspects, but also any correlated aspects that prevent someone to think of something beyond what s/he thinks it should be and, at the same time, direct her/him to only that insight. Entering a discourse can be analogous to someone finding a direction and then at once being trapped within it, which prevents her/him from finding any other directions. Hence, what someone knows, thinks, understands, speaks, writes and does actually reflects only her/his encounter with the way s/he passed through. This analogy can be referred to the term discursive practice, that is, the practice of producing meaning (Hall, 2006, p. 165). And here, again, this study of indigeneity, which faces the issue of vague 2 meanings, will find its relevance with the Foucaults concept of discourse. What Foucault did through this concept was showing how a meaning is subjugated under knowledge produced by a discourse and simultaneously critically deconstructing this established order. According to Young (1981b), it enables us to do two kinds of analysis: a genealogical analysis that examines how discourses are constituted, through desire or id, and a critical analysis that examines how discourses run their exclusion functions, through institutions or ego. This is reflected from what Foucault (1981, pp. 51-52) described as a dialogue between desire and institution:
Desire says: I should not like to have to enter this risky order of discourse; I should not like to be involved in its peremptoriness and decisiveness; I should like it to be all around me like a calm, deep transparence, infinitely open, where others would fit in with my expectations, and from which truths would emerge one by one; I should only have to let myself be carried, within it and by it, like a happy wreck. The institution replies: You should not be afraid of beginnings; we are all here in order to show you that discourse belongs to the order of law, that we have long been looking after its appearances; that a place has been made ready for it, a place with honours it but disarms it; and that if discourse may sometimes have some power, nevertheless it is from us and us alone that it gets it.
Foucault and the emergence of poststructuralism Before going any further, nevertheless, it is important to firstly expose the historical context of how this kind of thought emerged. Seidman (1998) puts Foucault among the prominent figures of French poststructuralist such as Jaques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard. Seidman even tended to implicitly claim that poststructuralism culminated in the thoughts of Foucault, considering that he provided more detailed discussion on his thoughts, compared to other poststructuralists, in his chapter on French poststructuralists. It might be better if in the beginning of the chapter Seidman briefly outlines its structure and explains why giving much thought on Foucault. However, Seidman himself actually acknowledged that Derrida is 3 the pioneer of poststructuralism. And this is supported by Howarths (2013) claim when explaining about Derridas critiques on structuralists concept of language system. Above all else, positioning Foucaults thoughts among other poststructuralists and other school of thoughts is important as to better understand his concept of discourse. Seidman traced back the chronology of poststructuralism emergence from the rise of existentialism, whose proponents were straightforwardly against the social forces concept of Durkhemian sociology for ignoring individual roles in constituting social realities. This tracing is quite effective to help us grasping a proper notion of poststructuralism. Existentialism grew by the end of the Second World War and replaced the domination of Durkheim sociology by emphasizing humanistic philosophy; individuals as independent agents are responsible for the construction of social history. Unfortunately, Seidman did not provide enough explanation of foundational assumption on which existentialism stood, which is useful to obtain clearer picture of how poststructuralism can be positioned from this school of thoughts. Tuan (1972) points out that it is on the concept of nothingness that Sartrean existentialism centred the view of individual freedom. This nothingness appears in someones consciousness of her/himself that enables someone to see the world as separated thing. In other words, s/he can see the gap between her/himself and the surrounding world. Then, within this gap someone can make her/his own decision about what action to take. The eclipse of Durkhemian sociology, however, did not mean the extinction of its root of thought. Around 1950s, the vision that it is on the social structure that individuals minds, knowledge and behaviour were constructed revived as a new school of thoughts, structuralism. It came to the surface as an alternative to humanistic existentialism around 1950s to 1960s. It is Ferdinand de Saussure mostly referred as the prominent figure of structuralism that came up with idea of linguistic formulation (Seidman, 1998; Young, 1981a). Saussure, according to Young (1981a), centred his method of analysis on the material of linguistic object, that is, sign. It is composed of two entities, signifier and signified. These two entities simply represent how a word links to a thing and together form a sign, which originally has no meaning. It is through the brains associative bond that the sign obtains its 4 meaning. Saussure, as cited by Young (1981a, p. 2), said, since I mean by the sign the whole that results from the associating of the signifier with the signified, I can simply say: the linguistic sign is arbitrary. Based on this Saussurian linguistic, structuralism developed its methodology to draw a universal social theory from any kind of signifying practices. It is the structuralisms view of language significance that actually contributed to the birth of poststructuralism in France. Despite sharing the same basic view on this, poststructuralism refused to accept what the structuralists believed as a universal social theory. A Poststructuralist such as Jaques Derrida, according to Seidman (1998, p. 222), even though has the same view that signs (words and sounds) got their meanings from what so called the relation of difference, is distinct in that he saw that meanings are unstatic and always in flux since they are attached to social and political contestation. It is from this basic view that the deconstructive characteristc of poststructuralism came to the surface. This decostructive characteristic of poststructuralism that also designated Foucaults thoughts. Seidman presents this figure as an impulsive deconstructionist by showing how Foucault was able to move from structuralism to poststructuralism. Foucault is described as very sensitive to any phenomenon of what he called as normalization. Even with his homosexuality, as stated by Seidman, Foucault was suspicious with the emergence of lesbian and gay movements in America, questioning whether such kind of movements would function as social behaviour control among its members. And as a postructuralist, he also refused to totally accept the Saussurian linguistic dualism that ignored the third element, discourse (Young, 1981a). He revealed it as bellow: Words and Things is the entirely serious title of a problem; it is the ironic title of a work that modifies its own form, displaces its own data, and reveals, at the end of the day, a quite different task. A task that consist of not of no longer- treating discourses as groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Of course, discourses are composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things. It is this more that renders 5 them irreducible to language (langue) and to speech (parole). It is this more that we must reveal and describe (Foucault, 1972, p. 49).
Foucault and the power of discourse The concept of discourse certainly is not the only important thought of Foucault. Nonetheless, it is very critical to grasp this concept for its strong correlation with other two primary components of his thought: power and the subject (McHoul & Grace, 1993). And again, those three components are not the only essential aspects of his enterprise that covered multidisciplinary domains from anthropology, psychology, medicine, philosophy and history. He seemed reluctant, however, to be definitely attached to one of them. He said, I am no doubt not the only one who write to have no face. Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order (Foucault, 1972, p. 17). Concerning this, Sheridan (1980) affirmed that Foucault grappled with those disciplines from his early career but cannot be rigidly attributed to one of them. Foucault studied history of ideas intensively during his life but what he did actually was rupturing its established preconception and named this effort as archaeology of knowledge. Sheridan points out that it was in 1970, when he was elected as chairs of philosophy at the College de France, that he finally made his own term, Professor of the History of System of Thought, to define himself. Instead of grappling with the broad domain of Foucaults thought, this study will be focused on how the concept of discourse can be used to examine the relation of knowledge and power within it and its function in producing meanings. Also, this study will be based on Foucaults concept of discourse that moves away from linguistic context towards what so-called discipline. According to McHoul and Grace (1993), this concept of discipline is used in two senses: academic discipline and disciplinary social institutions. Whilst the former took forms of formal fields of study such as science, psychology, sociology and etc. that are based on certain bodies of knowledge, the later manifested as disciplinary practices such as prison, school, hospital and other kind of such institutions that embrace social control functions. This conception is elaborated in Foucault (1971) documented inaugural lecture 6 titled The Orders of Discourse (translated from Lordre du discours). Hook (2001, p. 522), referring to Young (1981a), stated that what Foucault elucidated in this paper is all about the systems, rules and procedures that constitute, and are constituted by, our will to knowledge. Interestingly, when looking at this Foucaults lecture paper, some writers (Escobar, 1984; Hook, 2001; McHoul & Grace, 1993; Young, 1981b) cited or paid attention to the same part of his statement that In every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed according to certain number of procedures (Foucault, 1971, p. 8). Seemingly, this statement played pivotal role in the development of the notion of Foucaults concept of discourse. Nevertheless, none of them drew firm and clear definition of what discourse is. They were more interested in revealing a concept of discourse as a combination of power and knowledge and how it constructs and is constructed by society through what they called discursive practices. Hook (2001, p. 522), referring to Young (1981a), said that, the effect of discursive practices is to make it virtually impossible to think outside of them; to be outside of them is, by definition, to be mad, to be beyond comprehension and therefore reason.
Contestation of discourses
Foucault on Power and Knowledge
Foucault on Governmentality
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