Hi, Michel…
Oh, hi!
I have a somewhat embarrassing question.
I told you I read a lot of your books.
But to be honest I never understood, what you mean by "discourse."
Could you help?
I’d be happy to, but I’m almost sure I won’t be able.
The notion of “discourse” was enormously
important to me.
That’s true.
However, all my attempts to define this notion
failed eventually.
I always was explicit on this point. In the
"Archaeology of Knowledge", I talked about my
“indiscriminate use” of the terms statement,
event and discourse (p.31);
I also spoke about “the rather fluctuating
meaning of the word ‘discourse’“(p.80);
and I admitted that
“I have used and abused [this word] in many
different senses” (p.107).
But perhaps you could try.
You just start with the basics, and then proceed
to more complex stuff.
I promise you, it won’t work, but I am ready
to give it a shot. – To start with,
a discourse is not a discussion.
So, if somewhere, like in class or at a party,
on TV or in the Internet, a multiplicity of
opinions is confronted with one another,
this is far from constituting a discourse.
Certainly, informal conversations do carry
along with them bits and pieces of discursive
practices,
but they aren’t right away proper discourses.
So, “discourse” is not something like
the public opinion?
Exactly.
It is a much more narrow and at the same time
a much more basic practice, in speech and
in writing,
exploring specific objects and topics, for
example the question concerning madness, the
problem of illness or sexuality.
You could also say that discourses are tied
to specific disciplines that deal with these
topics, say, psychiatry or medicine.
At least this is what I thought in the beginning,
when I did my first book on the history of
madness.
Don’t forget that I started out as a historian
of science.
Very quickly, it turned out that
disciplines such as psychiatry are not standing
alone,
but have multiple connections to other disciplines
and areas, for example biology on the one
side and law on the other.
In addition, they are tied to the social structure
of a society, its economy, and so on and so
forth. Which makes all of this rather complicated…
That’s what I expected…
Yes, but it’s not my fault.
In a sense, the term “discourse” answers
or reacts to these complexities,
to the various layers of psychiatric or medical
statements and their connections and correspondences
as well as their reference to specific objects,
styles, concepts, and topics.
So you see, this has little to do with a discussion
on TV or in a news portal…
Perhaps it would further clarify things, if
you contrast this with Habermas’s notion
of discourse?
Well, our perspectives are rather different.
Habermas’s notion of discourse as a kind
of reasonable dialogue strikes me as normative.
Habermas has a philosophical ideal in mind,
whereas I struggle with describing historical
developments, with reconstructing what I call
the actuality of the past.
We could also say that, when Habermas is speaking
of “discourse,”
he largely neglects my crucial interest, namely
the inner commonalities between discourse
and power.
I am convinced that it is extremely hard to
freely talk about the problems of madness
and/or sexuality.
In my eyes, it is an illusion if you believe
that you can say directly,
without any distance or gap, what you think,
assume, or imagine.
But here we are, talking!
On this point, I also had a disagreement with
Chomsky.
It is much too simple to assume that there
are only two things:
grammar on the one side, and free speech on
the other.
In between there is a third entity, precisely
what I call discourse, that is an established
practice of speaking and writing,
and that, without us taking notice, is characteristic
of a specific time and a specific culture
or society, determining the ways according
to which we can address specific issues.
This is why, in "Archaeology of Knowledge,"
I often refer to the regularities or the implicit
rules of discursive practices.
OK, thanks, I think I got it.
I have to confess, however, that I recall
rather different things.
This might be due to the fact that I mostly
read "Discipline and Punish". But as early as
‘71, you said the following and I quote:
“Discursive practices are not purely and
simply ways of producing discourse.
They are embodied in technical processes,
in institutions, in patterns for general behavior,
in forms for transmission and diffusion, and
in pedagogical forms which, at once, impose
and maintain them.“ - End of quote.
Yes, yes, I know. There, “the rather fluctuating
meaning of the word ‘discourse’” is
quite obvious.
I guess this has to do with Mai 68, the student
occupation protests,
the opening-up of new perspectives for societal
life, and so on and so forth. Until the "Archaeology
of Knowledge", I very much had a self-contained
understanding of discourse.
After Mai 68, or rather starting with "Discipline and Punish," my focus shifted and I was mostly
interested in the relation between discursive and non-discursive practices,
and thus, eventually, in the relation between discourse and power.
Against this background I introduced another concept that was meant to clarify things,
but in fact only blurred them.
I mean the term “dispositif.”
It wasn’t even properly translated into
English.
Sometimes it is 'apparatus', sometimes 'device' or 'construction'.
Dispositif was also meant to express my interest in yet another aspect of discursive practices,
namely the relation between what is and can be said in a given society and that which
cannot be said
– but that’s a different story.
Ok, Ok, I see… I don’t want to insist
on this…
But what you just pointed out amounts to saying that,
if I have difficulties in understanding the
meaning of the word “discourse”, it is
because you yourself had difficulties?
In a sense, yes…
Got it. You see, this isn’t a problem for
me, but out there a lot of people are upset for this reason…
Yeah, I heard about it…
And I admit I wasn’t clear.
But how about other concepts that are crucial for the humanities.
Take “labour," for example or “culture,” “action,” or “language”?
Are there clear definitions for these terms?
Or, let’s take another example, closer to
home.
Almost everybody knows and uses Thomas Kuhn’s
concept of “paradigm.”
Now, there was somebody who counted the various
senses of Kuhn’s use of the term.
How much would you guess he found?
Perhaps 3 or 4?
21.
That’s funny, but it doesn’t really help…
That’s true. So, how about the following?
Perhaps the important, the central, and foundational
concepts of a theory are the ones that cannot be defined once and for all.
They must remain in the vague…
Mhm. – This, then, would entail the question as to why one insists on getting a precise
definition of “discourse,” before one uses the concept or even thinks
about it.
Or, if it wouldn’t be better just to work
with the concept and try it out to see what
it can do or what it can’t,
similar to a tool where the details are also
unknown…
Yeah, this would be one option.
Another possibility would be to conceive of
the use of “discourse” as a discourse
in itself, that is as an ongoing exploration
of certain objects, styles, concepts, and
topics, an exploration that is not quickly
coming to an end.
It even continues when I long turned into
a puppet.
In this sense, you could read again the concluding
statements from "Archaeology of Knowledge" where I say and I quote:
“Discourse is not life; its time is not your time,” and so on.
Which would also mean we could continue on this at our next meeting. Thank you, Michel.
You’re welcome.
