Session 3

Question 1

Who was Michel Foucault?

Answer 1

1. He lived from 1926-1984
2. He was a Historian and a philosopher
3. From 1970-1984 he hold the Chair for the History of Systems of Thought at the College de France.
4. He is one of the most influential intellectuals of 20th century.
5. He gave many impulses for Literary and Cultural Studies.

Question 2

What is Discourse Analysis?

Answer 2

1. It is an approach to explain why people share certain views of the world.
2. The term was introduced by Michel Foucault.

Question 3

What are the three basic concepts of Discourse Analysis?

Answer 3

1. Discourse
2. Discoursive Practice
3. Dispositive

Question 4

What does Discourse refer to?

Answer 4

Discourse: “Das in der Sprache aufscheinende Verständnis von Wirklichkeit einer jeweiligen Epoche“

The in language apparent understanding of reality refers to why we choose certain words. What are we trying to communicate through this choice and what does the choice tell us abouth the worldview of the speaker.

Question 5

What are discursive practices?

Answer 5

Discourse is always “just” the language part of discursive practices. They contain Institutions, Authoritative speakers, Rules of writing, speaking and media as well as processes of knowledge production, collection and consumption.
Everything that takes part in the process that is our choice of words. It is so to say the norms and values of communication.

Question 6

Aus was besteht die Diskursive Praxis?

Answer 6

1. Institutionen
2. Verfahren der Wissenssammlung
3. Verfahren der Wissensverarbeitung
4. Autoritative Sprecher bzw. Autoren (e.g. Who is allowed to produce what kind of knowledge?)
5. Regelungen der Versprachlichung
6. Regelungen der Verschriftlichung
7. Regelungen der Medialisierung

Question 7

What is Discourse analysis according to Foucault?

Answer 7

“Jede Gesellschaft hat ihre eigene Ordnung der Wahrheit, ihre allgemeine Politik der Wahrheit: d. h. sie akzeptiert bestimmte Diskurse, die sie als wahre Diskurse funktionieren lässt; es gibt Mechanismen und Instanzen, die eine Unterscheidung von wahren und falschen Aussagen ermöglichen …; es gibt bevorzugte Techniken und Verfahren zur Wahrheitsfindung; es gibt einen Status für jene, die darüber zu befinden haben, was wahr ist und was nicht.“ (Durch unsere Wortwahl versuchen wir dieser zu entsprechen)

Every society has its own politics of truth. viz. Certain discourses are considered as truthful and there are Institutions and Mechanisms which judge the content of What is said by whom. (Discourse analysis is then the search for those politics of truth and understanding how they impact the choice of words and the other way around)

Question 8

What is the Dispositive?

Answer 8

1. „Ein heterogenes Ensemble, das Diskurse, Institutionen, architekturale Einrichtungen, reglementierende Entscheidungen, Gesetze, administrative Maßnahmen, wissenschaftliche Aussagen umfasst. Soweit die Elemente des Dispositivs. Das Dispositiv selbst ist das Netz, das zwischen diesen Elementen geknüpft werden kann.(!)“
2. Dispositives influence the discourses and discoursive practices and the other way around.
3. “Das Dispositiv ist immer in ein Spiel der Macht eingeschrieben, immer aber auch an Grenzen des Wissens gebunden, die daraus hervorgehen, es gleichwohl aber auch bedingen. Eben das ist das Dispositiv: Strategien von Kräfteverhältnissen, die Typen von Wissen stützen und von diesen gestützt werden.“
4. The dispositive coordinates different discourses but in coordinating them it influences them and thus the knowledge created from those is always reinforcing the dispositive. (People want to hear what they want to hear)

Question 9

What is the central question to be answered by the discourse theory? (And how does Foucault answer it)

Answer 9

How and why do dispositives and discourses change? (Through themselves according to Foucault)

Question 10

What is the relationship between language and discourse?

Answer 10

Language is not itself the discourse but it is the material thing through which you get access to the discourse.

Question 11

Explain Foucaults Model of Discourse analysis

Answer 11

Question 12

According to Baßler, what does a new historicist do?

Answer 12

“Der New Historicist wundert sich. Er stellt die […] Frage, warum überhaupt etwas in einem Text steht […] oder in einem Bild überliefert wird und nicht vielmehr nicht oder anders.” (Essentially asking What are we really trying to express?)

Question 13

What is New Historicisms criticism of Foucault?

Answer 13

That Dispositives are Overgeneralizations.

Question 14

What is New Historicisms explanation for culturally shared worldviews?

Answer 14

Between discourses social energy is floating which links them. Certain verbal, aural and visual traces produce, shape and organize collective physical and mental experiences. THUS: Always be aware of context. (Context centered approach)

Question 15

How do New Historicits operate?

Answer 15

They are looking for textual and artistic patterns which create the social energy leading to artistic choices. They create a corpus of interest in which they look for patterns.

Question 16

What is social energy?

Answer 16

“We identify energia only indirectly by its effects: it is manifested in the capacity of certain verbal, aural, and visual traces to produce, shape, and organize collective physical and mental experiences.”

Question 17

What are the advantages of New Historicism?

Answer 17

1. The Refusal to generalise all too quickly
2. The Minute analysis of cultural texts (Very holistic approach)
3. Good understanding of context dependence of all texts
4. It can produce many interesting interpretations
5. It is more subtle than much of earlier left-wing and Marxist approaches to culture.

Question 18

What are the disadvantages of New Historicism?

Answer 18

1. The Mode of circulation of social energy remains unclear.
2. The arbitrary choice of supposed contexts (Highly interpretive)
3. Lack of systematicity
4. This Theory can lead to very bad scholarship if used incompetently because the method is lacking a theoretic base.

Question 19

According to Liu what are the Disadvantages of New Historicism?

Answer 19

„Ein Paradigma im New Historicism hält auf der einen Seite einen
historischen Kontext, auf der anderen Seite einen literarischen Text
und dazwischen eine Verbindung des reinen Nichts zur Betrachtung
in die Höhe.“

Question 20

What essentially are discursive practices?

Answer 20

“Normen und Werte der Kommunikation” (It is essentially a set of social rules we adhere to)

Question 21

Which methodology derives from the discourse theory?

Answer 21

Reconstruction of discourses and their interaction to establish the dynamics of dispositives holistically.

Question 22

What is a criticism of discourse theory?

Answer 22

Where does one discourse begin and another end. There are only very vague boundaries between discourses.

Question 23

What are similarities between New Historicism and Discourse theory?

Answer 23

1. They have a similar goal.
2. New Historicism also assumes that the contemporary dispositivie influences discourse (but they try to stay away from generalisations of dispositives focusing on the individual text[only text-text connections without an overarching dispositive analysis]).

Question 24

Which defintion of the method of New Historicism was kept in the lecture?

Answer 24

„Es ist der Stolz der Methode, den historischen oder kulturellen
Hintergrund in gleicher Partikularität und Konkretion zu
repräsentieren wie die Texte selbst – und gerade nicht, wie üblich, in
Form von Abstraktionen und Generalisierungen.”