Discourse

There are various definitions of the term discourse: Discourse can refer to verbal expression between speakers, to a form of democratic dialogue in which all participants present their views in a forum free from political domination, or to a system of ideas or knowledge that make meaning in a particular context. The most prominent form of discourse theory today is perhaps that of the structuralists and poststructuralists. In this view, discourse is the way meaning is produced and organized in a particular social field: Discourse encompasses the language, meanings, and beliefs through which the world is constructed and becomes understandable. Such discourse theory builds on the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure to claim that language is constitutive of all human experience. In this structuralist model, reality is understood as an effect of the formal language systems used to explain the world. Discourse creates reality through processes of inclusion—delimiting what can be made intelligible in a social context—and exclusion—determining what cannot be said or cannot be understood in this context. Discourse is thus both a productive and a repressive form of meaning making. In the structuralist system, discourse creates society and stands analytically before its formation.

As discourse theory has become less structural and more sociological, so it has become more relevant to the study of governance. In particular, Michel Foucault moved away from a structuralist theory to a poststructuralist one in which discourse came to include language as well as the institutions, economic relations, and political events that help to create meaning in any social context. Poststructuralist concepts of discourse retain many structuralist echoes. Language is still the primary way to understand society, and the units of language are still defined in relational terms. But language does not stand outside of society. Rather, language is developed from the specific historical, cultural, and political formations of the social field it organizes. Therefore, poststructuralist discourse theory includes more objects of study than did its structuralist predecessor. It also makes less totalizing claims about discursive power. Multiple discourses can interact in any given society. And discourses are always in a process of change. Furthermore, discursive formations cannot exist alone. They rely on a society's technological and material practices for their operation. For poststructuralists, discourse does not create the social field or stand analytically before it. Rather, discourse is embedded in and arises out of the practices and events that define society.

Several approaches to governance draw on ideas about discourse and discursive practices. Typically, these approaches suggest that administrative networks and even whole patterns of rule operate partly through the meanings, languages, and traditions that are at [Page 232]play within them. They challenge attempts to examine politics on the assumption that humans are autonomous actors who make decisions based on calculated self-interest. Yet, discursive theories differ among themselves over the nature of human action. Governmentality theorists often suggest, following structuralism and poststructuralism, that subjects are merely the effect of discourse: Subjects are no longer accorded any agency, but rather viewed as being produced by the discursive regimes that position them within the social field. Other interpretive approaches to governance, such as decentered theory, allow for agency while seeking to pluralize its forms. In this view, although subjects are formed within the context of traditions and discursive practices, they retain the capacity to shape and transform their social context.

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