What is Discourse?

A discourse community can be defined as people who share similar thoughts and ideas. The fan base of the Rolling stones for example, might constitute a discourse commmunity. Within this fan base, certain attitudes would be considered unacceptable and outside of the community. For example; someone who didnot hold the song brown sugar in the same high easteem as other member of the discourse community might be summarily tossed but on his ear. Ideology defines what can be disscussed.

Discourse in this manner can exist over time of repersents the total of all written/spoken/recorded thoughts that the community claims. Thus early analysis of the rolling stones is as valid as opinions held today by modern fans. When discourse applies to a larger philosophical ideal, like marxism, discourse explining marxism, predating marxism, and applying marxism to today would all be part of the community, and some study the history of such discourse.

Discourse is flexible to the degree to which a discourse community allow such. For example, the discourse ofthe post-structuralists tends to be wide open to new interpretation and ideas, as well as vehement attack on the contribution of others. As long as some members of the community accept new discourse, then exists without a time line.

Rhetoricians and philosophers often speak of competing discourse. We can see such an example in the Christian right movement and the liberal left. Each group has a discourse that competes with other thoughts and beliefs and each has a history. Some study the times when certain competing discourse begin to emerge and become more popular. For example, a philosopher or political scienctist might look at the predominant religious right and question how this discourse influence presidential elections.

The same analysis of competing discourse might be applied to approaches to literature or art. For example, for a while, post-modernism discou8rse tended to be most influential in the study and interpretation of art. This has led to a backlash from formlist critics and their discourse community. Philosophers like Foucault see competing discourse as something akin to war. In fact, real war can be often attributed to competing discourses.

Others liken discourse and its communities to an essential need for humans to express belonging and share beliefs. The variety of discorse communities is essential because of a person's individual needs. Evaluation of discourse helps us to discover trends in all discourse communities.

Studies may also exist to determine how words within discourse can express viewpoints. The wordscouch potato has negative connotations and is primarily employed by those who view watching tv as an inferior activity. Contrasting this to the words avid tv fan shows how feelings about a subject are often expresses in words. A liberal person might employ the term bible thumper, where a person belonging to the religious right might employ the term religious right. Language choice frequently defines where our thoughts and allegiances lie.

Some effort has been made to nullify insulting language and discourse communities through

What is Postmodernism?

Postmodernism is a broad term used to describe movements in a wide range of disciplines including art, philosophy, critical theory, and music. Many view postmodernism as a response to the preceding modernist movement, but where modernism simply reacts against classical concepts, particularly in the arts and literature, postmodernism takes this reactions to its extreme conclusion. Indeed, some see postmodernism not as a separate movement, but simply as a continuation of modernist struggle.
The word"postmodern" has been used so widely as to strip it of its meaning. There is hardely a discipline of the arts or social science that has not spawned numerous movements labelled as postmodern; and the aims of many of these movements seems to be contrary to one another. Nonetheless, the majority of times postmodern is applied it indicates one small handful of meanings.
In a pejorative sense, postmodernism implies an almost nihilistic outlook, stripping whatever the targeted aphere of any innate meaning. Views seen of being very relativist are often labelled postmodernist in an effort to disparage them.
In the creative disciplines, such as painting, literature, music and sculpture, postmodernism tends to lean heavily on using forms not traditionally perceived as artistic. Heavy use of kitsch or overly simplistic styles are two examples of this mode. Many postmodern artists appropriate earlier modernist and classical works and combine or alter them to create a new, ironic piece. In literature particularly, but also in much postmodern theater, traditional barriers between audience and narrator are broken down. A self-awareness of a character's role as a character in a novel is a prime example of this mode. Many postmodernists would argue that the presense of a self-aware irony is a neccesary cornerstone of any work claiming to be postmodernist.
In critical theory and philosophy, postmodernism serve as a striking counterpoint to classical foundations of philosophy. While earlier philosophers and theorists were devoted to the ongoing exploration of a universal system, postmodernists focus on the role of that search in creating what is known as truth itself. To most postmodernist theorist, it is the discourse itself that gives rise to any sort of perceived universality.
Postmodern archetecture- examplified by the school known as deconstructivist archetecture-tends to invert traditional element, such as placing interior elements on the exterior, and vise-versa. It might also place symbolic elements in highly visible and thouht-provoking locations, and emphasize jarring and discordant aesthetics.
Fundamentally, postmodernism may best be viewed as any form of thought and action which places an emphasis on a strongly ironic self-conciousness, intentional discontinuity with other elements of a work, or knee-jerk responses without self-consoring. This, based on preconceived notions of what is proper, but done with a spirit of liveliness and joyousness, verses modernism's rather dismal view of this subjectivity.

What is Maxism?

Maxism is a political and economical philosophy emphasizing the importance of class struggle in society. It is based on the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels from the middle of the 19th century, and is often described as a form of socialism. Marxism calls for society's intervitable progression from capitalist oppressed to a socialist, classless society through a worker's strike.
Marism was the foundation for many political ideologies, Nazism, Stalinism and Maoism. Many political leaders of the 20th century, including Joseph stalin and Adolf hitler, were followers of the teaching of marx and engels. The teachings of the maxism would ultimately help to mold many important global events of the 20th century, including both world wars. Marxism was first attempted to be instilled into a national consciousness by the October Revolution of Validimir Lenin in1917.
Marx and Engels were both devoted to the historical force which they believed were bringing about the end of capitalism. They thought Marx and Engels were both deveted to the historical forces which they believe were bringing about the end of capitalism. They thought that economic processes and class struggles laid the ground for every important era and movement in history, and would lend to downfall of the upper class and the rise of an egalitarian communist society. They called their doctrine hot Marxism, but "scientific socialism".
The concepts and ideas of Marxism were formented by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, both Germans, in the 1840's and put intodoctrine in 1848 with the communist manifesto. The communist was a political manuscript that outlined the steps for the working class, called the proletarians, to revolt and overthrow the upper class, called the bourgeoisie.
The communist Manifesto is today looked at as one of the most important political texts in history. Its main theme are, as mentioned, the idea that, classes drive historical changes and the idea that people's view of the condition of their lives is instilled by the "dominant ideology" of the upper class. The other important text is that the capitalism, that Marxism aims to destroy thrives on the exploitation of proletarian by those who own the means of running the economy.
Another important Maxist idea emphasied historical materialism. This was the idea that history was driven by the materialism of the people living it. People lives and actions were driven by acquiring what they needed to survive- to feed, to cloth, and to house themselves.
Marx and Engel were heavily shaped by the generations of thinkers preceding them, including philosophers. Jean-Jacques Rosseau and immanual Kant, and the expounded on the ideas of these philosophers and would produce their own theory of history and "political economy" and ruling classes. Marx would grow weary near his death of the misrepresentation of his work and mistranslations of many Marxist ideas.
Maxism, however Marx left the theory and practice when he died, influnced countries throughout the 20th century, and had a part in the ruling of countries from Albania and North Korea, to Afghanistan and Nicaragua, and at least two dozen ohters. Marxism,however, has led to the emergence of many dictatorial governments, instead of the egalitarian it preached. However, its study and importance throughout the 20th century and beyound have confirmed it as an important political philosophy in world politics, history and thinking.

What is post structuralism?

Post structuralism is a modern philosophical school of thought. It grew out of, and in response to, the philosophy of structuralism, which many of the pivotal thinkers of post structuralism were extremely critical of. Post structuralism is one of the major driving forces in philosophy today, and is intricately connected with postmodern thought.

Structuralism as a school of thought hit it's stride during the radical movemens of the 1950s and 1960s particularly in France, although it had its roots back at the beginning of teh 20th century. Structuralist look at the foundational structures implicit in all productions of a culture, and undertaken an analysis of teh many parts that creats something, to get a better understanding of the creation. Linguistics was one of the first fields to use structuralism to its advantage, and its application quickly spread to other fields. The basic premise of structuralism is that all things have a structure below the level of meaning, and that this structure constitute s the reality of that thing.

Post-structuralism grew as a response to structuralism's perceived assumptions that its own system of analysis was somehow essential. Post structuralists hold that in fact even in an examination of underlying structures, a slow of biases introduce themselvels, based on the conditioning of the examiner. At the root of post-structuralism is the rejection of the idea that there is any truly essential form to a cultural product, as all cultutal products are by their very naturl formed, and therefore artificial.

This concept of non-essential was famously expanded upon by Foucault in his history of sexuality,in which he argues that even gender and sexuality orientation are contrived formation, and that our concept of essentialist notions of gender or sexuality is flawed. For example, he argues that the entire class of homosexuality is in fact quite recent, built up by cultural norms and an interplay betwwen different groups in society, but with no more essential a quality than, for example, the idea of beauty.

One of the pivotal moments in the history of post-structuralism occured in 1966, when Derrida delivered a talk at John Hopkins University. Derrida was respected as one of the great thinkers of structuralism, and so was invited to speak on the subjectr at length, as it was just beginning to receive a great deal of attention in the American intellectual community. Derrida lecture, "struture, sign, and play in the Human science, " was a sharp critique of structuralism, pointing out its inherent limitations, and laying out some basic principles for new language of discourse.

Post-structuralism is importantly different from post-modernism, although the two are often considered one and the same by the general subject. Although there are certain areas of overlap, thinkers from one school almost never identify themselves with the other school of thought. Postmodernism importantly seeks to identify a contemporary state of the world, the period that is following the modernist period. Postmodernism seeks to identify a certain juncture, and to work within the new period. Post-structuralism, on the other hand, can be seen as a more explicitly critical view, aiming to deconstruct ideas of essential in various disciplines to allow for a more accurate discourse.

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Discourse

Discourse is one of the most frequently used terms from Foucault's work and at the same time, it is one of the most contradictory. Foucault himself defines it in a number of different ways throughout his work and, in this chapter, writer will express the way he uses the term in The Archeology of Knowledge (1972) and in 'The order of Discourse'(1981). He says in 'The Archeology of Knowledge' that he has used 'discourse' to refer to 'The general domain of all statements' sometimes as a regulated practice that accounts for a number of statements, sometimes as an indivizual group of statements'.

Power/Knowledge.

Many of Foucault's writtings are concerned with how it is that we know sometning, and the processes whereby something becomes established as a fact. As we saw in the last chapter on discourse, Foucault is interested in the process of exclusion which lead to the production of certain discourse rather than others. He is interested in the same processes of exclusion in relation to knowledge and, in the collection of essays entitled power/knowledge (1980), Foucault explores the way that, in order for something to be established as a fact or as true, other equally valid statements have to be discredited and denied. Thus, rather than focusing on the individual thinkers who developed certain ideas or theories, in works such as The order of Things (1970) and The Archeology of Knowledge(1972),Foucault wants to focus on the more abstract institutional processes at work which establish somehting as a fact or as knowledge.
The conventional view of knowledge, and particularly scientific knowledge, is tha it is created by a series of isolated creative geniuses, for example, Einstein and Pasteur. They are characterised as exceptional people and who were able to transcend the conventional ideas of their period and who were able to formulate completely new ideas and theoretical perspectives. In a similar way, the Historyof ideas within the philosophical tradition is largely characterised by this concern with individual thinkers, such as Hegel and Wittgenstein, who, it is claimed, changed the course of intellectual endeavour. Foucault would like to produce a much more anonymous, institutionalised and rule-governed model of knowledge-production. As Ian Hunter states:-
Foucault's reformulation of the concept of discourse derives from his attempts to provide histories of knowledge of what men and women have thought. Foucault's histories are not histories of ideas, opinions or influences nor are they histories of the way in which economic, political and social contexts have shaped ideas or opinions. Rather they are reconstructions of the material conditions of thought or 'knowledges'. They represent an attempt to produce what Foucault calls an archeology of the material conditions of thought/knowledge, conditions which are not reducible to the idea of 'consciousness' or the idea of 'mind'.
(Hunter, cited in Kendall and Wickham 1999:35)

Thus, he is not interested so much in what is known at any one period but ratrher in ' the material conditions of thought' that is the processes which led to certain facts being known rather than others.
Foucault is very aware of how much easier it would be to approach the history of knowledge and ideas by tracing the ideas of 'great thinkers' of Western culture, but instead he has decided to 'determine, in its diverse dimentions, what the mode of existence of discourses (their rules of formation, with their conditions, their dependencies, their transformetions) must have been in Europe since the 17th century, in order that the knowledge which is ours today could come to exist, and more particularly, that knowledge which has taken as its domain this curious object which is man' (Foucault 1991a:70). Thus, he is focusing on the mechanism by which knowledge comes into being and is produced, and that includes the human sciences in which Foucault, of course, situates his own work. In The order of things (1970), he is particularly interested in the epistemic shift in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which science turned its attention from the examination of the physical processes within the natural world to the study of 'man'. He argues that:
classical thought and all the forms of thought that preceded it, were able to speak of the mind and the body, of the human being, of how restricted a place s/h occupies in the universe, of all the limitations by which her/his knowledge or her/his freedom must be measured, but not one of them was able to know man as s/he is posited in modern knowledg. Renaissance 'humanism' and classical 'rationalism' were indeed able to allot human beings a priviledge position in the order of the world, but they were not able to conceive of man.
(Foucault 1970:318)
so, Foucault wants us to question the self-evident nature of disciplines such as sociology and phychology, consider the way that people thought about humankind before these disciplines developed and anslyse the processes whereby it becomes possible to study 'man' as an object.
In Power/Knowledge, Foucault describes knowledge as beinga conjuction of power relations ans information-0seeking which he terms 'power/knowlege' (Foucault 1980). He states, in an essay entitled 'Prison talk', that 'it is not possible for power to be excercised