post-structuralism

[Cícero Barbosa]

WEll, thank you so much for your answer and explanation, John. I hope
more of the colleagues get interested in writing something as well,
for the more we talk about it the more we understand.

Cícero

2005/8/15, John E Richardson <johnerichardson at cds-web.net>:
> 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
>