Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was either the ultimate phenomenologist or a neo-structuralist. He searched for the struggle within systems in hopes of gaining insight from the struggle itself.

Foucault studied "history" as history shapes culture through power and knowledge. Discourse- the transmission of knowledge. Discursive Formation - power gained and hidden through discourse.

• langage -logic
• langue - grammar (tongue)
• parole - formal rules
• connaissaince - knowledge that comes from speaking the body of facts of discourse
• savoir - combination of the above which leads to:

Tropological Space- the particular moment when the signifier loses its connection to the signified and becomes abstract (Capta).

Archaeology of Knowledge:

Syntagmatic or horizontal combination of symbols.

A syntagm is a chain, for instance a series of events or the series of symbols that make up this sentence. Were they if rearranged meaningless they would be.

Genealogy of Knowledge

Paradigmatic (desire) or vertical categories of symbols.

Searching for the hidden patterns of oppositions in order to establish how the relationship between opposites create the emotional (desire) meaning. Identity by Negation.

Rupture (Chiasmus)

The break in a system (syntagmatically) caused by a competing/challenging system which causes both systems to be laid bare.

Social identity is shaped by the relationship between the image of the "normal" and "non-normal."

Power is achieved, through discourse, by defining non-normal (what is not)

Reality composed of two separate value systems (nature v. culture)..

Semiotics:

Semiotics

"The science of signs" studies how signs (symbols) are used to create meaning. See Arthur Asa Berger, Media Analysis Techniques (Sage, 1985).

Sign(Sn)

The combination of a concept and a sound/image.

Signifier(SR)

The sound-image.

Signified(SD)

Concept.

• Nature = SR and SD
• Culture = SD as object

In culture, discourse is patterned to determine:

• what we can and cannot speak of
• who can talk
• how we can talk
• where we can talk

Persona (who we are) is composed of two acts of discourse/text:

• 1. prosopopia (poesis / the voiceless voice) which asks who-me?
• 2. Chaismus (double valences w/ reverse on itself).

  So, we stand outside discourse We choose the possible valences And pattern our discourse to display the persona we choose Within the bonds of discourse

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  Questions? email me at Sophist@Bigfoot.Com