Discourse, by its archaic definition, comes from the Latin words dis-(apart) and currere(to run), running about a conversation, reasoning, and communicate thoughts or ideas.[1] In the late 1960s and 1970s, our understanding of the discourse altered by discussing the social and dialogical condition of the notion. Discourse is a social phenomenon that changes according to who develops it, where the statement made, and against which series of thoughts it is constructed.[2] The statement made by an immigrant who suffers from the war differs from that of the president who controls the conflict.
When Foucault quoted the Chinese encyclopedia from Borges and mentioned the taxonomy it proposes, he opened a new world of analyzing things by emphasizing them separately and questioning the links, systems we created among them. If we analyze things, we are able to see the unusual link that bounds them in our imagination. According to him, only the non-place of language achieves the impossibility of meeting these absurd animals. Language, as an underlying grid of things, in a way, represents our thoughts to operate upon the entities of our world, to designate, group, and divide them into classes.[3] In this particular point, he gives an example of utopia, which enables fable and discourse together, whereas heterotopias damage the language and the definition of the common locus beneath all.
Source: Josef Koudelka, Magnum Photos[4]
To explain my interpretation of Foucault’s discursive theory, the photograph created by Josef Koudelka during the 1960s gives a hint of what constitutes knowledge. Only the knowing the fact that it was taken just before Russian tanks rolled in Prague and statements behind that action gives meaning to that specific image, constructed through discourse.[5] Likewise, a series of statements are inadequate autonomously with the absence of that reality. If we trace the early works of Foucault, Civilizations of Madness, Birth of the Clinic, Birth of the Prison, we see the critical analysis of existing institutions that govern our social life. Besides, instead of accepting chronological order as a given entity, he examines ruptures, discontinuities in the history of institutions.
In the light of all of these, discourse is the juxtaposition of different representations of reality with the non-place of language, a combination of powerful statements, an operating table which conceals absurdity in a meaningful order. However, opening up that kind of a critical view requires the questioning, including how we accept the existence of knowledge in the first place, what are the limitations of discourse, and according to which ground we are defining a statement.
Short Essay is written for the "Architecture and Discourse" course in Metu Architecture Department by the author.
[1] “Discourse (n.).” Index. Accessed February 10, 2020. https://www.etymonline.com/word/discourse.
[2] Macdonell, Diane. Theories of Discourse: an Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986, 130.
[3] Foucault, Michel. “Preface” In The Order of Things: an Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge, 2010.
[4] Warsaw Pact troops invasion. Prague, Czechoslovakia. August 1968, Magnum Photos
[5] O’Hagan, Sean. “Sean O'Hagan Meets Photographer Josef Koudelka Who Captured the 1968 Soviet Invasion of Prague.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, August 23, 2008.
