post-structuralism

[John E Richardson]

hi Cícero,

such big questions!..
My first response is that Fairclough & Foucault are incoherent, but not
really because of the structuralist/post-structuralist issue that you
suggest (again, I think Fairclough is better characterised as a kind of
soft-Marxist rather than a structuralist). 
The problem as I see it relates to their conflicting conceptualisations
of 'reality' and the relation of material reality to discourse. Thinking
off the top of my head, Foucault (particularly the later Foucault) not
only abandons the notions of reality and truth but explicitly denies
them: the only reality is 'the discourse' itself, and truth is simply
another discourse. This is an extreme idealist philosophical view in
which there is thought to be a movement from ideas to material reality;
in other words, ideas determine social reality via shaping social
consciousness. Fairclough would never go this far, adopting a version of
a materialist view of society in which the determining relationship is
predominantly the other way around, from material reality to ideas. 
Of course, CDA tends to assume a two-way relationship: the discursive
event is shaped by situations, institutions and social structures, but
it also shapes them. CDA therefore appears to adopt elements of both
Materialist and Idealist perspectives on social structure: language use
is shaped by society and goes on to (re)produce it. Again, as I see it,
this is a position compatable with Marxism (and adopted by Fairclough)
but broadly incompatible with Foucault.

I'll write more on this once I've thought a little about it.

best

John


> Dear colleagues, 
> 
> Like my former message could show, I am deeply interested in learning
> more about poststructuralism. There is now one thing I would like to
> discuss with you. Here goes a thought of mine, over which I have been
> in a struggle in order to find some answers:
> 
> I consider Fairclough's theory structuralist. And he offers a method
> of discourse analysis. How, then, could I  (as I've read in many
> academic research in linguistics) use a method of Fairclough's and, as
> an underpinning theory, a poststructuralist theory like Foucault's
> view of discourse and a poststructuralist theory of subjectivity? I
> hope you can understand what I mean. Can Fairclough's method go along
> with poststructuralist theories? Wouldn't it be a kind of incoherence?
> 
> I do hope I could get some answers. Thank you all so much,
> 
> Cícero
> 
> 

John E Richardson
Dept of Journalism Studies
Sheffield University