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.