Discourse
on Language (L’Ordre du discours)
Prepared
by: Prof. B. H. McLean,
Knox College
Bibliography:
“L’Ordre du discours,” Inaugural
lecture at Collège de France on 2 December 1970. Printed: L’
Ordre du discours. Paris : Gallimard, 1971; ET: “Discourse on
Language,” trans. Rupert Swyer in Social Science Information
10/2 (April 1971) 7-30; see list of corrections to this translation by
Meaghan Morris in included in M. Morris and P. Patton, eds., Michel
Foucault: Power, Truth, Strategy. Sydney, Australia: Feral Publications,
1979, 102-5; Swyer's translation was reprinted as “The discourse
on language,” In The Archæology of knowledge. New York:
Pantheon, 1972, 215-37; a more accurate translation of this text was published
in 1981: “The Order of Discourse,” trans. Ian McLeod in R.
Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A Poststructuralist Reader (Boston:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981) 48-78.
Outline
I.
Foucault is anxious about beginning a discourse, but there is not need
for anxiety; the institution prepares a place for discourse which both
honours and disarms it (215.1-216.3)
- quote
from Malloy (215.2) › ironic reply
- if discourse
has power, it is the power given to it by the institution (216.1)
- where
is the danger in people speaking, and their speech proliferating? (216.3)
II. Hypothesis: logophobia (216.4)
“In
every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected,
organized and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures,
whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance
events, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality.” (216.4)
A.
External systems which exercize
control over the production of discourse (216.5)
1. First
External System of Exclusion: Prohibitions to what is spoken; speech as
object of desire and conflict (216.5)
Corrected translation: “We know perfectly well that we do not have
the right to say everything, that we cannot speak of anything at all in
any circumstance whatsoever; not just anyone, finally, may speak of just
anything. In the taboo on the object, the ritual of the circumstance [cf.
sect. C, 2], and the privileged or exclusive right of the speaking subject,
we have the play of three types of prohibition which interrelate, reinforce
and complement each other, forming a complex web, continually subject
to modification.” (216.5) [trans. Meaghan Morris]
- this
web is most tightly woven in the “danger spots”, politics
and sexuality
- speech
is linked with both power and desire; it is both an object of desire
and conflict
2. Second External System of Exclusion: opposition of the speech of reason
to the speech of madness (216.6-217.2)
3. Third
External System of Exclusion: Will to truth: opposition between true and
false (217.3-220.1)
“Certainly,
if we place ourselves on the level of a proposition, inside a discourse,
the division between true and false is neither arbitrary, nor modifiable,
nor institutional, nor violent. Puting the question in different terms,
however—asking what has been, what still is, throughout our discourse,
this will to truth which has survived throughout so many centuries of
our history; or if we ask what is, in its very general form, the kind
of division governing our will to knowledge—then we may well discern
something like a system of exclusion (historical, modifiable,
institutionally constraining) in the process of development.”
(218.2)
a. Historically
constituted: defeat of Hesiod and Sophists in favour of Plato, separating
true discourse from false; the true discourse of the Sophists was routed
because it was not linked to the exercize of power (218.3)
b. Historically
constituted: modern form of will to knowledge/truth (science) (218.4)
i) will
to knowledge, in 16th-17th C (esp. England), sketched out possible
observable, measurable, and classifiable objects (218.4)
ii) will to knowledge imposed upon the knowing subject a
certain viewpoint: observe rather than read, verify
rather than comment (218.4)
iii) will to knowledge prescribed the technological level
at which knowledge could be employed as verifiable and useful (218.4)
iv) will to knowlege relies on institutional support and distribution:
e.g., pedagogy, publishing, libraries, learned societies, laboratories
(219.2)
v) exercizes a power of constraint on other forms of discourse in
society: e.g., morality, literature, economic practices, justifies
penal code (219.3)
c. Will
to truth is masked by truth itself and its necessary unfolding: Nietzsche,
Artaud, Bataille are signposts demonstrating the impossibility of opposing
this will to truth (power) in favour of truth itself (219.4-220.1).
“We are unaware of the prodigious machinery of the will to truth,
with its vocation of exclusion.” (220.1)
Corrected
translation: “There are of course many other procedures (not ‘systems’)
for the control and delimination of discourse. . . they concern that
part of discourse which brings power and desire into play.” [trans.
Meaghan Morris]
B. Internal
systems whereby discourse exercizes control over its own production (220.3)
1. Commentary:
limits the hazards of discourse through an action of identity taking
the form of repetition, recovery, reiteration and sameness (220.4)
a. Gradation
of discourse different types of discourse within society : principles
of classification and ordering (220.4)
b. Unstable
boundary between categories of discourse (220.5); but principle of
hierarchy is always at work. "Janet"
(i)
permits us to create new discourses ad infinitum (221.3)
(ii) on account of multiple or hidden meanings the final saying
of what has been articulated in a primary text is not possible (221.3)
Corrected
transation: “...commentary’s only role is to say finally
that which was silently articulated deep down. It must—according
to a paradox which it always displaces but from which it never escapes—say,
for the first time, what has already been said, and repeat tirelessly
what was, nevertheless, never said.” (221.3) [trans. Meaghan
Morris]
2. Author-principle
of rarefaction
Not the
(historical) person who wrote the text in question but thec unifying
principle which unifies a particular group of writings into an œuvre;
limits the chance element of discourse through the action of an identity
whose form is that of individuality and the I. (221.4-222.4)
“Of
Course, it would be ridiculous to deny the existence of individuals
who write and invent. But I think that, for some time at least, the
individual who sits down to write a text, at the edge of which lurks
a possible œuvre, resumes the functions of the author.
What he writes and does not write, what he sketches out, even preliminary
sketches for the work, and what he drops as simple mundane remarks,
all this interplay of differences is prescribed by the author-function.
It is from his new position, as an author, that he will fashion—from
all he might have said, from all he says daily, at any time—the
still shaky profile of his œuvre.” [trans. Meaghan
Morris] (222.3)
The ‘author’
and ‘oeuvre’ are both ways of organizing texts
around a function, or system of control.
3.
Disciplines: (not sum total of truths) (222.6): systems which control
the production of discourse and fix its limits; forms of constraint.
a. opposed
to author-principle (as unifying system) because disciplines
are defined by an anonymous system of methods, propositions, definitions,
technical tools, whose validity is not tied to an author who invented
them (222.7)
b. opposed to commentary (as unifying system) because the
point is not the recovery or reiteration of old meaning but the possibility
of constructing new statements and fresh propositions (223.1)
c. disciplines consist of errors as well as truths; these errors have
their own valid history and roles (223.2)
d. for a prosposition to belong to a discipline it must fulfill certain
conditions and fit into a certain theoretical field (223.2); there
are conditions for statements to be “caught within the true
[dans le vrai]” (Canguilhem), i.e., within what are recognized
as the limits of the area of knowledge (223.2-224.5)
C. Systems
controlling when discourse can be employed (224.6)
1. Verbal
‘Rituals’ (224.6-227.2)
a. Defines
qualifications required of a speaker; who is qualified to enter into
the discourse? (224.6-225.3)
b. Lays down accompanying gestures, behaviour, etc. that must accompany
discourse (225.3)
c. Lays down the supposed significance of the words used, their effect
upon those to whom they are addressed, limits their validity (225.3)
2. ‘Fellowships
of discourse’ whose function to preserve or reproduce discourse,
ensuring that it circulates in a closed community according to rules
of formation (225.4-226.2)
a. Archaic
models: Rhapsodists
b. Personality of the writer occurs within a constraining fellowship
of discourse
c. Other examples
3. Doctrine and doctrinal groups (religious, political, philosophical)
(226.3)
a. Rules
of exclusion and rejection come into play when a speaker formulates
a rare utterance.
b. Doctrine limits individuals to certain kinds of utterances and
bars them from others.
c. Dual subjection: speaking subject is subjected to discourse; discourse
is subjected to a group.
4. ‘Social
appropriation of discourse’: the educational system is the political
means of maintaining or modifying the appropriation of discourse, with
the knowlege and powers that it carries (226.4-227.1)
Verbal
rituals, fellowships of discourse, doctrinal groups and social appropriation
(educational system) are linked together "constituting great edifices".
(227.2)
III.
Conspiracy of philosophy with genealogy (i.e., activity of limitation
and exclusion) (227.3-228.3)
A. Philosophical
themes conform to this activity of limitation by: (227.3-4)
Western
thought has tried to make discourse appear as the interjection of thinking,
speaking and producing meaning = theme of the founding subject.
1. Proposing
an ideal truth as law of discourse
2. Proposing immanent rationality as principle of their behavior
3. Accompany an ethic of knowledge which promises truth only to the
desire for truth itself and the power to think it
B.
Deny the specific reality of discourse: discourse permits no room between
speaking and thinking (227.5-228.3)
1. Muzzling
of sophistry (227.7)
2. Modern themes
a. discourse
as activity of writing: theme of the founding subject (author) permits
us to elide the reality of discourse; the subject is thought to originate
meaning (227.8-228.1) [transcendentalism]; contrast disqualified phenomenological
subject
b. discourse as activity of reading: opposes theme of originating
experience prior to being shaped by the cogito; i.e., there
is meaning in the world we can be found (228.2) [metaphysics]
c. discourse as activity of exchange: theme of universal mediation
of the logos to humanity via discourse, between discourse and
things/events . Discourse (signifier) also becomes the signified,
and disappears (228.3). [ennunciative function]
IV.
Discourse nullifies itself by placing itself at the disposal of the
signifier: logophobia (i.e., fear of the mass of spoken, uncontrolled,
disordered things) hides behind our apparent logophilia (228.4-231.2)
A.
Three decisions necessary in order to analyze the conditions, activities
and effects of this logophobia (229.2)
1. We
must question will to truth
2. Restore the event-character of discourse (cf. IV, B, 2)
3. Abolish sovereignty of signifier
B.
Methodological demands of exploring these themes (229.3)
1. Four
negative principles for analysis of discourse
a. Principle
of reversal: where we recognize the source
of discourse, the principles behind its flourishing and continuity,
we traditionally think of the positive role of author, disciplines,
and will to truth; instead, we must recognize the negative activity
of cutting-out and of rarefaction of discourse (229.4)
b. Principle of discontinuity: there are no great continuous
repressed discourses, no unsaid or unthought thing floating about
in the world, which interlaces all discontinuous discourses. Discourse
must be treated as a discontinuous activity (229.5-6)
c. Principle of specificity: a particular discourse cannot
be resolved by a prior system of significations; “discourse
does not work hand in glove with what we already know. . . . We must
conceive of discourse as a violence that we do to things, or, at all
events, as a practice we impose upon them” (229.7)
d. Principle of exteriority: we are not to burrow to some
hidden core of discourse to discover its true meaning, but rather
look for the external conditions of its existence (229.8)
2. Positive
principles for analysis of discourse (230.1)
Corrected
translation: “Four notions must therefore serve as regulatory
principle for analysis: event, series, regularity
and condition of possibility. Term, for term, as you see, these
notions oppose event to creation, series to unity, regularity to originality,
and condition of possibility to signification”. (230.1) [trans.
Meaghan Morris]
event
vs. creation
series vs.
unity
regularity vs. originality
condition of possibility vs. signification
event
of discourse: its exteriority, discourse does not presuppose ‘new
ideas’, invention or creativity, rather ‘misprision’
(re-inscription as deliberate mistaking or parody), transformations
in practice and in their common articulation; contrast creation;
(transcendental) ‘author’ does not have the exclusive
and instantaneous right
series:
contrast notion of the unity of a book, work, oeuvre
regularity:
the regular formation of objects in discourse/displines on the
basis of concensus based paradigms; contrast originality in
the romantic sense of the word
condition
of possibility: not external to discourse, but rather the rules
that determine what can be counted as knowledge in any epoch; contrast
signification, i.e., the privileging of (metaphysical) meaning.
C. “Two
(additional) remarks” (230.2ff)
1. Contemporary
history which has removed the individual discursive event (e.g., official
price lists, title deeds, parish registers, harbour archives) from its
previously privileged position and revealed the more enduring structures
of history (230.2):
a. Do
not consider a discursive event without defining the series to which
it belongs, without specifying the method of analysis used, without
seeking the probable limits of the occurence, without enquiring about
variations, without desiring to know the conditions on which it depends;
but these conditions are not understood “in terms of cause and
effect in the formless unity of some great evolutionary process, .
. . It did not do this in order to seek out structures anterior to,
alien or hostile to the [discursive] event. It was rather in order
to establish those diverse converging, and sometimes divergent, but
never autonomous series that enable us to circumscribe the ‘locus’
on an event, the limits of its fluidity and the conditions of its
emergence.” (230.2)
b. Fundamental notions are not consciousness (related to author/liberty)
nor (historical) continuity (related to causality), nor sign and structure
(230.3)
“They
are, rather, the notions of [discursive] event and of series, with
the play of notions which are linked to these; it is around such an
ensemble that this analysis of discourse I am thinking of is artiuclated,
certainly not upon those traditional themes which the philosophers
of the past took for 'living' history, but on the effective work of
historians. (230.2)
[trans. Meaghan Morris]
2. Philosophical
or theoretical problems posed by this analysis of discourses (=ensembles
of discursive events) (230.4-231.1)
a. F
introduces notions of chance, discontinuity and materiality. Discourses
are to be treated as ensembles of discursive events; an event
is neither substance, accident, quality nor process. Yet it is not
immaterial. It takes effect on the level of materiality (“incorporeal
materialism”). (231.1)
b. We must elaborate a theory of discontinuous systematization. Not
a matter of a succession of instants of time, nor a plurality of thinking
subjects. The ‘philosophy of event’ should advance in
the direction of caesurae which break the instant and disperse
the subject in “a multiplicity of possible positions and functions”
(cf. Deleuze, Logic of Sense).
c. If these discursive, discontinuous series have their regularity,
within certain limits, it is no longer possible to mechanically establish
causal links. We must accept chance as a category in production
of events (=lack of necessity). (231.1)
V.
Forecast of future work (231.3)
Following
the above principles Foucault's future analyses will fall into 2 groups:
A. “Critical
studies” based on functions of exclusion (232.2): Processes of
rarefaction, consolidation (ordering), and unification in discourse
1.
Sets reversal-principle to work:
distinguishes forms of exclusion, limitation and appropriation (see
II, III above)
2. Three systems of exclusion (232.2)
a. Disjunction of reason and madness in Enlightenment (see MC)
(232.2)
b. Taboo systems in language concerning sexuality from 16th-19th
C (see HS I-III) (232.2)
c. Will to truth (232.3)
(i)
study the way truth has been selected, repeated, extended, displaced:
beginning with Sophists and Platonic philosophy, leading to distinction
between true and false discourse; 16th/17th C England: observational
science as a will to knowledge; 19th C: modern science, modern
industrial society, and accompanying positivist ideology (232)
(ii) the practices and prescriptive discourses which make up the
penal code: including medical, psychiatric and sociological discourses
(232.4) (see DP)
How has commentary (II, B 1), author principle (II, B 2), and
discipline (II, B #), worked in practice: 16th to 19th C history
of medicine (233.1); 18th and 19th century literary criticism
and history have constituted the character of the author (233.2)
How
did the principles of author, commentary and practice work themselves
out? Look at supporting institutions, transmission and reinforcement.
How did the great author principle become a principle of limitation
in a given discourse? How was the practice of commentary replaced
by practices of observation and verification? How did 18th and
19th literary criticism and history constitute the character of
the author and the form of the work by utilizing and modifying
religious exegesis, biblical criticism, and the ‘lives’
of legendary figures? (233.1)
B.
Genealogical studies (233.3): Processes of discontinuity, discontinuity,
materiality
Concerns
the effective formation of discourse, whether within the limits
of control, or outside them, or both. While criticism looks at the
processes of rarefaction, consolidation and unification of discourse,
genealogy studies their formation (at once scattered, discontinuous
and regular); it does not look for forms of rejection, exclusion,
consolidation or attribution. The difference between the critical
and genealogical is one of point of attack, perspective and delimination.
Brings
3 other principles into play:
- how
series of discourse are formed, through, in spite of, or with the
aid of these systems of contraint?
- what
were the specific norms of each?
- what
were their conditions of appearance, growth and variation?
1. Studies
effective formation of discourse: scattered, discontinuous, and regular,
as opposed to rarefaction, consolidation and limitation (233.3)
2. Examples of series of discourse dealing with:
a.
Sexuality: tangle of discursive ensembles (literary, religious,
ethical, biological, medical, juridical) constituting a unitary
discourse on sexuality (233.4-234.1)
b. Wealth, poverty, money, production, trade (234.2)
c. Heredity (234.3)
C.
Critical and genealogical studies must support and complete each other
(234.4)
1.
Criticial studies deal with the systems that envelop discourse;
they try to mark out and distinguish the principle of ordering discourse,
exclusion and rarity in discourse, and its practices. (234.4)
2.
Genealogical studies by contrast deal with series of formation of
discourse; try to grasp its power of affirmation, i.e., its ability
to constitute domains of objects in relation to which one can affirm
or deny propositions. (234.4)
3.
Analysis of discourse brings to light the action of imposed rarity,
and its power of affirmation; not discourse as continuous outpouring
of meaning (234.5) (i.e., ‘structuralism’ 234.6).
VI.
Acknowledgments
A. Dumézil:
Taught Foucault how to analyze the eternal economy of discourse by means
of comparison in relation to institutions (235.1)
B. Canguilhem (235.1)
C. Hyppolite (235.2-237)
1.
Responsible for French 20th C presence of Hegel (235.1)
2. Confrontation with Hegel: Modernity as test of Hegelianism and
philosophy (235.2-236.3)
3. Inversion of Hegelian themes: Marx, Fichte, Bergson, Kierkegaard,
Husserl (237)
4. Anxiety of Discourse: Hommage to Hyppolite (237.5)
Prepared
by Bradley H. McLean (2003)
Judy Malloy, author
of its name was Penelope. Cambridge, Mass., Eastgate Systems,
1993.
Janet Murray, author of Hamlet
on the Holodeck.
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