Katherine HeenanEnglish 472Spring 2007April 12, 2007Herrick, James. A History and Theory of Rhetoric: An Introduction. 3rd edition. New York: Allyn and Bacon,2005Chapter ElevenContemporary Rhetoric III:Discourse, Power, and Social CriticismFoucault is interested in language and discourse and discourse’s relationship to knowledge and power - Foucault’s interest in language was in large measure a reflection of his interest in “the central problem of power.” - Power was not, for Foucault, a fixed and predictable element in social structures.- Nor was it principally something imposed from above through social structures and hierarchies.- Rather, power was a fluid concept closely connected to the strategies of discourse—with the ways we talk, and the systems of talk in which we participate. - Foucault was particularly concerned with the systems of talk within the limits of various disciplines such as medicine or law or business. - Such discourse systems, he maintained, control how we think and how we know. - Power, for Foucault, is a matter of how discourse constrains what we can know. "episteme" in Foucault's theory- Foucault believed that discursive texts, understanding the term very broadly, could be treated as archaeological artifacts, and that what they revealed was what he termed an archaeology of knowledge. - Foucault's archaeological study was pursued in the search for the episteme of an age, that is, the totality of discursive practices of a society at a particular point in time. - As Foucault moved through the various historical strata, he sought to reveal the conditions that allowed people at a particular time to manage the relationship between knowledge and discourse. - Foucault sought the history of rational possibilities; he wished to understand the underlying potentialities that made certain thoughts possible at a given time in human history. - An episteme is a way of organizing knowledge by regulating discourse, but it is more. - It is an underlying and probably largely subconscious set of assumptions and operating hypothesis that make thought and social life possible. - Foucault was interested in the discursive practices within a culture which provided the framework for knowledge, meaning, and power. “archaeology of knowledge”- Foucault described his work as exploring archives, which he defined as the rules which, at a particular time and in a given society “define the limits and forms of the sayable.” - He understood this work as similar to that of the archaeologist digging through the strata revealing the physical or material life of earlier societies. - Foucault sought the symbolic or linguistic lives of earlier societies.Derrida's goal in "deconstruction"- Jacques Derrida advanced a wide-ranging and novel analysis of the hidden operations of language and discourse. - Derrida held that language could not escape the built-in biases of the cultural history that produced it.Herrick NotesCh 11- He sought to reveal the underlying assumptions and irrationalities of the language of political discourse. - One goal of his writing is to enlighten his readers to the mechanisms by which language entraps and coerces us, to the concealed power within symbols to dictate thought. - Derrida's work of destabilizing discourse by dissecting its underlying structures of meaning and implication has been called deconstruction. - In many ways, Derrida's thinking represents a counterpoint to that of Jurgen Habermas and, on a larger scale, a counterpoint to the western, rational tradition in philosophy generally.- Habermas is pursuing the modernist project of establishing the supremacy of rationality, while Derrida is sometimes called post-modern in his tendency to undermine the foundations of western rationalism. - While Habermas looks to stabilize discourse by outlining conditions under which it can proceed rationally and with relative freedom from ideological coercion, Derrida looks to destabilize or "deconstruct" discourse by challenging traditional assumptions concerning language and meaning. Terminology 1. archaeology of knowledge---Foucault's term for "the set of rules which at a given period and for a given society define" the limits of discourse, knowledge and power2. deconstruction---In Derrida, the work of destabilizing discourse by dissecting its underlying structures of meaning and assumption3. episteme---In Foucault, the totality of discursive practices of a society at a particular point in time.4. excluded discourse---In Foucault, discourse that is controlled by being prohibited.5. invitational rhetoric---In Foss and Griffin, a rhetoric that does not require or assume intent to persuade on the part of a source.