Foucault and Discourse
Heteroglossia in Moby-Dick
Melville's Moby-Dick serves as an example of a heteroglossic novel, incorporating diverse socio-ideological languages. These languages include:
Whaling industry jargon
Calvinist religious terminology
Domestic/sentimental novel language
Shakespearean dramatic language
Platonic philosophical language
Democratic language
Melville's use of varied languages aims to broaden the novel's appeal by including language familiar to a wider range of readers.
Michel Foucault: Discourse, Power/Knowledge, and the Author Function
Foucault, Althusser, and Bakhtin examine ideology and literature to understand why individuals comply with authority, laws, and centralized power.
Foucault's Theoretical Position
Unlike Althusser or Bakhtin, Foucault resists categorization within established schools of thought (Marxist, structuralist, etc.). He is a poststructuralist who developed his unique approach focusing on how discourse shapes the framework of human thought and action.
Discourse and Ideology
For Foucault, ideology is expressed through discourse, which encompasses texts produced as knowledge about a specific area. These discourses define the possible ways of thinking about a topic and methods for addressing it.
Definition of Discourse
A discourse is a collection of writings, talks, thoughts, and actions related to a particular topic.
Example: Discourse on Blindness
The discourse on blindness includes texts from doctors, psychologists, teachers, legal experts, poets, and novelists. These texts define blindness, discuss its causes and cures, address related problems, and offer personal or fictional accounts.
The discourse on blindness comprises all texts about blindness in a culture, shaping our knowledge, thoughts, and actions regarding blindness. Social practices, according to Foucault, originate from discourse.
Historical Example: Blindness and Musicality
Historically, writings suggested that blind individuals possess heightened hearing, making them more musically inclined. This idea led to educational practices prioritizing musical abilities for blind people, offering job opportunities in music-related fields.
This discursive construction influenced the social relationships and opportunities available to blind individuals.
Power/Knowledge
Foucault examines how discourse influences the relationship between power and knowledge, viewing them as inseparable but not binary opposites.
Power
Power involves getting an entity to act in a certain way, based on discursive forms of knowledge.
Example: "Studies Have Shown That…"
Knowledge produced by experts forms the basis for action in legislation, policy decisions, and institutional practices.
Power as Productive, Not Repressive
Foucault sees power as productive, creating situations, relationships, and subjects, similar to Althusser's ISAs and ideology. The goal is to create subjects who follow rules due to internalized beliefs.
Discourse and Subject Positions
Discourse, like ideology and literary texts, produces subject positions that govern an individual's choices, understanding, actions, and beliefs.
Power/Knowledge and the Human Body
Foucault focuses on how discourse creates power/knowledge relations concerning human bodies, regulating their function and understanding. He emphasizes health, illness, sanity, madness, law-abiding behavior, criminal actions, and sexuality.
Example: Discourse on Blindness and Physicality
Knowledge producers argued that blindness led to lack of physical motion and weak bodies, defined as pale, thin, twisted, and immobile, unfit for physical labor.
Schools designed curricula to correct these weaknesses, emphasizing musical education due to its reduced physical demands.
Discourse and the Creation of "Good" Subjects
Foucault questions how discourses create subjects, particularly bodies, that behave well and follow rules. The fear of being caught and punished contributes to this behavior.
Panopticism and Surveillance
Foucault discusses a society based on surveillance, typified by the Panopticon, where the design of prisons allowed continuous observation of prisoners from a central tower.
The prisoner's behavior is regulated by the awareness of being watched, rather than physical restraint.
Contemporary Panoptical Mechanisms
Modern culture features panoptical mechanisms like surveillance devices and photoradar, where punishments become automated and impersonal.
Circulation of Power/Knowledge
Foucault notes that power/knowledge exchange is not unidirectional; resistance always opposes power. Discourse and practice are in dialectical interplay at institutional and individual levels. Power originates from the exchange of goods, people, and ideas.