Review

representation? reflective, intentional constructionist process of meaning production Language composed of? Sign + conceptual framework (system of meanings) sign = signifier + signifier

Review
Signification = denotation connotation, first-order second order Signifier can be emptied and empty floating signifier A process of diffrance (What is an Author p. 104)

Review
signifier signified reference?

Truth effects

Historical fact Word Dress Food Color

signified

-- selected -- distorted or erased -- encoded as binaries or in a hierarchy -- combined

Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984)

Discourse, Power and Subjectivity

Image source

Outline
Starting Questions General Ideas Discourse
1. 2. 3.

Power
Discipline & Punish Subject and Subject Position examples

4.

Definition What is an Author? From Language to Discourse Next week: Power and Knowledge (Truth)

Starting Questions 1: Discourse, Truth & Power

What is discourse and how is an individual (such as an author or a reader) related to a discourse? (WR 44; VM 142) Do you agree with Foucaults argument that --"nothing has any meaning outside of discourse?

Starting Questions 1: Discourse, Truth & Power

What discourse, or its the regime of truth, makes the following statements valid?
Madness is a mental illness. Masturbation causes sexual impotence. sodomy = gay = homosexual = queer =

next week: What are the examples of societys carceral system? How does it function? next week: Do we question disciplinary powers such those of the teachers, judges and doctors? Or to what extent should they be

Foucault: General Ideas

Two periods: 1) Archaeology of knowledge-- rules and strategies for formation of subjectpositions, knowledge and episteme.
(e.g. Man as a product of modernity.) What is an Author 1969 transitional article

2) Genealogy of power/knowledge extends his discussions to a variety of institutions and non-discursive practices; mutual support of power and knowledge.
e.g. Discipline and Punish, History of Sexuality.

Central concerns
The "other": historical fragments, accidents & interruptions (vs. official history); madness (vs. reason), sickness (vs. health), crime (vs. law); abnormal sex (vs. normal sex).

Central concerns (2)

subjectification/objectification of individuals: -- production: of those bodies of knowledge which appear to be sciences ; (e.g. the speaking subject in linguistics; the authors in literature) -- differentiation: those practices which install a division of subjects of differing qualities; (e.g.the sane vs. the mad) -- discipline: knowledge and techniques by means of which individuals turns themselves into subjects. (e.g. sexualized subjects)

Discourse: Definition
Discourse is "a group of statements which provide a language for talking about ...a particular topic at a particular historical moment." Three major procedures:
Definition & Prohibition defining statements & Rules about the sayable and thinkable Division and rejection; subject positions; exclusion of other statements Opposition between false and true Authority/Power of knowledge (Truth)

discursive practices within institutions; discursive formation over time.

What is an Author?
I. False signs of displacing the author (104-105)
-- from interiority to exteriority, the signs; -- writing and death; 1. the author disappear 2. ecriture Still privileging the author (writing)

II. Locate the space left empty by authors disappearance authors name & author function (105-)

Authors Name
P. 107 groups together a certain number of texts, defines them and differentiates them. characterizes a certain discourse (e.g. Shavian play, Wordsworthian discourse) indicates its status (e.g. , the comic drawing with a Japanese comic writers name)

The 'author function production of a discourse

pp.1081. Discourses as objects of appropriation 2. The author function has historical differences 3. Not spontaneous development, but result of complex operation 4. Some constants in author function:
a. Value, b. Coherence, c. Stylistic unity, d. Historical figure

5. Internal references to several selves (summary on 113)

What is an Author?
III. Transdiscursive authors 113 'founders of discursivity' IV. Conclusion: why is this important?
1.

2. 3.

Introduction to historical analysis of discourse Re-examine privileges of subject Discourses can unfold in a pervasive anonymity or the murmur of indifference ask the right questions (p. 119120)

Literary Discourse: implications

No fixed boundaries between literature and other social practices; The author is not the creator of his work. He serves as a label to put on a group of works related to him. (e.g. Wordsworth discourse) Defining some subject positions (of the author, the reader, etc.)

From Language to Discourse

Saussure Barthes Derrida Foucault
History + Social practices + texts = discourse Knowledge & power; Subject Language SemioticsMeaning wider fields of undecidable and fluid Or Langue/ languages Parole Textual Play, Open text, Meaning and Signification Signification Scientific (text, but not traces subject)

From Language to Discourse

Structuralism: Focuses on language and fixed structure Marxism: Foucault Language (statements) as well as social practices Foucault: p. 48 --not limited to class; --every knowledge is contingent.

Materialist view of history and society -- scientific

Power and Knowledge/Truth

power both repressive, controlling and productive -- not just top-down; it circulates, working in multiple direction like capillary movement. e.g. the operation of power in a hospital exertion of power through spatial arrangement, the doctors examination, the posters, pamphlets, the different examination room, registration system, pharmacy, insurance co., etc. -- producing Truth with a discursive formation sustaining a regime of truth.

Discipline and Punish

Main purpose -- not so much the birth of the prison as disciplinary technology Three major images: A. The carceral forms of discipline which exercise over individual a perpetual series of observation and modes of control of conduct;

Discipline and Punish (2) B. Penopticon

A circular building with the central control tower control internalized.

Discipline and Punish (3) C. Disciplinary Society

C. Carceral power opens up the entire fabric of society to a normalizing regulation. (Miller 200-01)

Discipline and Punish

4 Parts: 1. Torture -- soul born out of methods of

punishment, supervision and constraint; the prison of the body (29-30) -- torture -- part of truth-production mechanism (35-37)

Discipline and Punish

4 Parts: 2. Punishment -- gentler forms: public works and incarceration 3. Discipline 1. Docile Bodies (135-69) -- The aim of disciplinary technology is to forge a docile body that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved (136)

Discipline and Punish

3. Discipline 2. The Means of Correct Training (170-194) --Discipline makes individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instrument of its exercise (170) 3. Panopticism (195-228)

Part Four: Prison

3. The Carceral [293-308] XLI.Mettray: discplinary model at the extreme [1637/292-96] A.all the coercive technologies of behavior [292-93] B.technicians of behavior [294-95] C.specificity of Mettray training [295]

The Carceral(2)
XLII."carceral archipelago" [1640/297-] A.discipline inside and outside the prison B.results of this spread 1.continuity of offense/deviation from norm[1640] 2.recruitment of disciplinary "careers[1641] there is no outside 1642 3.making the power natural and legitimate, lowering threshold of penality [301-03]

The Carceral(3): Power & knowledge

XLII."carceral archipelago" [1640/297-] B.results of this spread 4.the norm [1644/304]: a mixture of legality and nature, the prescription and constitution. p. 256 power + sciences of man -- The delinquent makes it possible to join [moral and political monsters and juridical subjects] and to constitute under the authority of medicine, psychology or criminology, an individual in whom the offender of the law and the object of scientific technique are superimposed.

The Carceral(3): Power & knowledge How does it function? P. 272 . . . Not to eliminate offenses, but to distinguish them, to distribute them, to use them: that it is not so much that they render docile those who are liable to transgress, but that they they tend to assimilate the transgression of the laws in a general tactic of subjection.

Carceral system of society

5.The carceral texture of society capture of the body and its perpetual observation [1645/304-5] 6."extreme solidity" of the prison [305-06]

Subject and Subject Position:

Representation p. 55 56 Two ideas of subject: 1. Conscious & autonomous subject; 2. Subject to someone elses control. Foucault 1. Constituted by a discourse to represent it (hysteric woman); 2. Subject positions.

Subject and Subject Position: Victorian Women--Hysteria

Subject and Subject Position: Victorian Women--Hysteria

portrait of Augustine: Amorous supplication

Showalter in Representation 73-74

Elizabeth Siddal
Beata Beatrix

Las Meninas

by Velaquez:

More Examples
Jan Van Eyck Arnolfini Wedding Portrait
http://artchronicler.wordpress.com/2010/02/15

/jan-van-eyck-and-the-arnolfini-weddingportrait-3/

Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Women in Victorian Britain

Neads study of prostitutes in the Victorian Age

III. Jane Morris

III. Jane Morris cast as Pandora, Prosperine and the poor Pia.

References
Miller, Peter. Domination & Power. Routledge: 12/01/1987. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Ed. Stuart Hall. London: Sage, 1997 Nead, L. (1988) Myths of Sexuality:

Representations of Women in Victorian Britain. Oxford: Basil ...