LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:10 October 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Foucault, Discourse, Society and Power

Prashant Kumar Gaurav, Ph.D.

Abstract

The paper will largely focus on Foucault’s discussion on his notion of ‘discourse’ which has such an enormous influence on cultural analysis. His denunciation of ‘fons et origo’ of discourse and call for treating it as and when it occurs will also be discussed. He says that forms of continuity and unity are just the result of a construction following the rules with its own justification. What will also be discussed is his theorizing of relationship between knowledge, truth, and power. He shows that truth is produced through multiple forms of constrain and induces effects of power. His definition of the regime of power-knowledge-pleasure that sustains the will to knowledge will also be examined. His anti-essentialist claim that man is a new wrinkle in our knowledge, his genealogical approach, and his denial that power is something which is merely coercive in a traditional Marxism or Weberian perspective associate him to both poststructuralist and postmodernism.

Keywords: Foucault, Discourse, Society and Power

The Rise of Practices and Discourse

Foucault highlights the existence of a ‘middle region’ or a domain which lies between the fundamental codes of a culture and the scientific theories. This middle region reveals the modes of being of order and makes them lose their original transparency and invisible powers and shows that these orders are not the only possible or unique ones. Thus, the linkage of empirical orders to space and its composition is revealed. What we then have is the pure experience of order and its modes of being. This middle region, which is the most fundamental in nature and existing prior to words and perceptions and is archaic, shows how practices forms the object of which they. This middle domain brings to light the actual use of the ordering codes and the philosophical interpretations which try to explain why order exists. The linguistic and practical grids are nothing, but the product of practices systemically pursued.

Different practices in both the Classical age and the modern age formed the different modes of being of the order or the grid which served as the basis for our thinking or the way we actually perceive the world. Foucault’s archaeological inquiry shatters the continuity created on the level of ideas and themes which is just a surface appearance. The system of positivity was transformed in a great way. The reason was that the mode of being of things, and of the order was changed greatly. Language loses its status as the spontaneous tabula, the primary grid of things, as a vital link between representation and things. The theory of representation is no longer the universal foundation of all possible orders. From the nineteenth century onward the configuration of coherence between the theory of representation and the theories of the natural order, and language changed entirely. Language is no more the viral link between representation and things.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Prashant Kumar Gaurav, Ph.D.
Centre for Linguistics
School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110067, India
pkgaurav.123@gmail.com
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