Description
Book SynopsisThis is the first critical introduction to the theories of discourse advanced by Foucault, Althusser, PUcheux and Hindess and Hirst. Discourse theory proposes that in our daily activities the way we speak and write is shaped by the structures of power in our society, and that because our society is defined by struggle and conflict our discourses reflect and create conflicts. The words, expressions and forms of knowledge in institutions (schools and universities, the church and the media) become political as they are traversed and rearranged by the pressure of forces. Diane Macdonell reveals the various lines of thought in recent work on discourse, showing how the central conception of discourse as a political and social tool could diversify into several different critical theories and ideologies.
This book is of particular interest as it calls for a reappraisal of Althusser whose work, Macdonell argues, has been wrongly debunked. This is the first overview and introduction to a not
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
What is 'discourse'? 1
Discourse and literary studies 4
1 The end of the 1960s 8
Structuralism's demise 8
May 1968 and questions of practice 12
2 From ideology to discourse: the Althusserian stand 24
The prevailing practices 28
Ideologies in struggle 33
Against humanism: problems of the subject 36
3 Meaningful antagonisms: Pecheux on discourse 43
Discourse and position 45
Scientific discourse 56
4 Discourse and the critique of epistemology 60
Hindess and Hirst 64
Everything is discourse? 68
The politics of philosophy 75
5 Foucault's archaeologies of knowledge 82
Dismantling the history of ideas 84
Conditions of knowledge 89
Problems and advances 94
6 Subjection, discourse, power 101
Subjection and the body 102
Discourse and subjection 110
Of power and resistance, or, What's wrong with pragmatism? 118
Conclusion 125
Notes 131
Bibliography 133
Index 140
