Understanding International Relations Theory by M. Griffiths

Author:M. Griffiths [Griffiths, M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415259927
Google: UsjtDAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 15300276
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2007-09-30T00:29:17+00:00

Language and discourse

An acknowledgment of the significance of language, discourse and interpretation is the second feature that approaches labeled as ‘poststructuralist’ share. As well as pointing out the importance of language in constituting the world, De Saussure (1966) noted that meaning in language depends not on positive value but on differences. Words mean what they do not because of any link in sound with the object they represent but because of the difference between one word and the next. What is said is meaningful because of the associations with what is not said. This notion is taken further in the study of discourse that takes place in Michel Foucault’s work. Whereas De Saussure was interested in what could be said in any particular language, Foucault was interested in what is said in any specific epoch. He explored the connection between the various things that were said, and the other social practices in which these ‘things said’ were embedded in any particular era or episteme (Foucault 1970). He argued that different epistemes could be characterized by different ways of looking at the world, and in particular by distinct ideas of what might constitute an ordering principle, or a way of making sense of the world. Whereas ‘a history of ideas’ traces the gradual evolution of a particular concept over time, Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge, which he also designated a history of the present, aimed to demonstrate the discontinuity between different ways of ordering the world in different epochs.

A Foucauldian approach is also concerned to demonstrate the continuity between discursive practices and other social practices. Discourse is not confined to written forms or to language in the narrow sense, but extends to all symbolic systems and to any form of social practice that by definition involves such systems. One of Foucault’s key contributions to contemporary thought and political analysis is his demonstration of the way in which knowledge is tied up with the forms of subjectivity or subject-hood to which it gives rise. He showed this in the case of the penal or prison system (Foucault 1991). He examined the way in which the prison as a form of punishment displaced earlier forms that had involved public executions and the demonstration of the sovereign’s power over the subject’s body by practices such as hanging, drawing and quartering. The penal system in contrast involved a form of punishment that entailed disciplinary practices: confinement to an institution, continuous surveillance, the collection and storage of information about prisoners, their involvement in compulsory work programs and so forth.

The image of the panopticon is exemplary of this disciplinary practice: prisoners were held in cells structured in such a way that each prisoner could be seen by the prison guards at any time, but no prisoner could see another prisoner or the source of surveillance. As a result, prisoners behaved as if they were continuously observed: they disciplined themselves. Foucault also crucially observed that although prisons always failed in their declared aim of rehabilitation – levels of reoffending by released prisoners were always high – they nevertheless continued as institutions.

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