Chapters 7 / 8

discourse analysis I

text, intertextuality and context

 

Discourse and visual culture: an introduction

> p135

Foucault too considered that human subjects are produced and not simply born (p135)

In all of these he paid close attention to the ways in which various practices and institutions defined what it was to be human (and therefore also what it was to be sub-human, abnormal or deviant) (p135)

> p136

Discourse

Although many of Foucault’s ideas are now broadly disseminated, it is still useful to begin a discussion of the methodological implications of his work by examining some of his theoretical terms. The notion of discourse is central to both Foucault’s theoretical arguments and to his methodology. Discourse has a quite specifc meaning. It refers to groups of statements which structure the way a thing is thought, and the way we act on the basis of that thinking. In other words, discourse is a particular knowledge about the world which shapes how the world is understood and how things are done in it. Lynda Nead (1988: 4) defines discourse as `a particular form of language with its own rules and conventions and the institutions within which the discourse is produced and circulated’, and she gives medical discourse as an example: `in this way, it is possible to speak of a medical discourse . . .(p136)

On this understanding, `art’ becomes not certain kinds of visual images but the knowledges, institutions, subjects and practices which work to define certain images as art and others as not art. (p136)

Intertextuality

Intertextuality refers to the way that the meanings of any one discursive image or text depend not only on that one text or image, but also on the meanings carried by other images and texts. (p136)

> p137

Discursive Formation

A discursive formation is the way meanings are connected together in a particular discourse. (p137)

Power

• Discourse disciplines subjects into certain ways of thinking and acting
• Our sense of our self is made through the operation of discourse.
• Power is everywhere, since discourse too is everywhere.
• where there is power, there is resistance . .

(p137)

Foucault was particularly concerned in his own work with the emergence of institutions and technologies that were structured through specific, even if complex and contested, discourses. He suggested that the dominance of certain discourses occurred not only because they were located in socially powerful institutions  those given coercive powers by the state, for example, such as the police, prisons and workhouses but also because their discourses claimed absolute truth (p138)

 

> p138

Power / Knowledge

The construction of claims to truth lies at the heart of the intersection of power/knowledge:

We should admit . . . that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations. (Foucault, 1977: 27)

Foucault insisted that knowledge and power are imbricated one in the other, not only because all knowledge is discursive and all discourse is saturated with power, but because the most powerful discourses, in terms of the productiveness of their social effects, depend on assumptions and claims that their knowledge is true. (p138)

 

Regime of Truth

but by the use of photographs in a specific regime of truth, so that photographs were seen as evidence of `what was really there’. (p138)

Content analysis seeks out latent meanings that it claims become evident only from systematic quantitative study; semiology searches for the dominant codes or myths or referent systems that underlie the surface appearance of signs;  and psychoanalysis looks for signs of the unconscious as they disrupt the conscious making of meaning. (p138/139)

 

> p139

He explicitly rejected the Marxist claim that meaning was determined by the system of production, for example; he was always vague about how discourses connected to other, non-discursive processes such as economic change; and while he acknowledged that power has aims and effects, he never explained these by turning to notions of human or institutional agency. (p139)

Focault rejected approaches that look behind or underneath things and practices for other processes that would explain them. (p139)

It is these detailed descriptions that produce his most startling accounts of how subjects and objects were and are discursively produced. (p139)

 

Discourse analysis I and discourse analysis II

> p140

I have suggested that Foucault’s work has produced two somewhat different methodological emphases, which I am calling discourse analysis I and discourse analysis II. I distinguish between them thus:

• discourse analysis I. This form of discourse analysis tends to pay rather more attention to the notion of discourse as articulated through various kinds of visual images and verbal texts
• discourse analysis II. This form of discourse analysis tends to pay more attention to the practices of institutions

First type of discourse analysis is centrally concerned with language:

the discourse analyst is interested in how people use language to construct their accounts of the social world. (Tonkiss, 1998: 247-8)

(p140)

To paraphrase Tonkiss, visuality is viewed as the topic of research, and the discourse analyst is interested in how images construct accounts of the social world. (p140)

social modality of the image site. In particular, discourse analysis explores how those specific views or accounts are constructed as real or truthful or natural through particular regimes of truth. As Gill (1996: 143) says, `all discourse is organized to make itself persuasive’, and discourse analysis focuses on those strategies of persuasion. (p140)

 

> p141

Discourse analysis is thus concerned too with the social production and effects of discourses. (p141)

bourgeois commentators produced an apparently truthful account of this working-class area, (p141)

strategies which aimed to alter the morality of the poor rather than their standard of living. (p141)

Discourse analysis thus addresses questions of power/knowledge. (p141)

However, discourse analytic methods are not much concerned with questions of reflexivity. (p141)

 

> p142

Finding your sources

Doing a discourse analysis assumes that you are concerned with the discursive production of some kind of authoritative account and perhaps too about how that account was or is contested (p142)

Finding your sources in general

some key sources will be immediately obvious, either from your own knowledge or from the work of other researchers. (p142)

 

> p144

Finding your sources: iconography

One method that does offer some clearer guidelines about what sorts of sources are relevant to understanding some kinds of visual images is iconography. Iconography is a method developed by the art historian Erwin Panofsky. Chapter 2 suggested that many art historians rely on having a `good eye’ which focuses almost entirely on how an image looks. Panofsky (1957: 26) distanced himself from this kind of eye by insisting that `iconography is that branch of the history of art which concerns itself with the subject matter or meaning of works of art, as opposed to their form’. The subject matter or meaning was, for Panofsky, to be established by referring to the understandings of the symbols and signs in a painting that its contemporary audiences would have had. Interpreting those understandings requires a grasp of the historically specific intertextuality on which meaning depends.

Panofsky took care to spell out just how he thought this comparison between different visual images and verbal texts should work. Panofsky (1957) divides visual interpretation into three kinds, which he gives various names to:

1 primary natural pre-iconographic

2 secondary conventional iconographic

3 intrinsic symbolic iconological

The example he uses to explain the differences between these three kinds of images is `when an acquaintance greets me on the street by lifting his hat’

(p144)

 

> p145

The iconological or intrinsic meaning of an image `is apprehended by ascertaining those underlying principles which reveal the basic attitude of a nation, a period, a class, a religious or philosophical persuasion qualified by one personality and condensed into one work’ (p145)

The fruit on the window ledge and chest symbolize the purity of humankind before the Fall (p145)

Both Panofsky and Gage rely on the notion of intertextuality in order to interpret the meanings this image would have had for its contemporary audiences, although they relate the portrait to different texts: Gage refers to alchemy books while Panofsky compares the portrait to other marriage portraits. (p145)

 

> p147

Panofsky argued that actually, in order to understand the possible secondary and intrinsic meanings of an image, two things were necessary. One was that deep familiarity with the texts, both visual and written, with which the artist producing a particular piece of work would have been familiar, and this might need to extend beyond those published guides to symbolism just mentioned. The second thing was `synthetic intuition’ (Panofsky, 1957: 38), or what other commentators on this method have called common sense. This second quality was important because, while various texts could provide important information and clues about iconographic and iconological meaning, Panofsky (1957) argued that they could never provide full explanations for a particular image, and their relevance thus had to be judged by the critic on the basis of his or her intuition. There are some aids available for developing this requisite sense of historical context. Roelof van Straten (1994) provides a guide to the compendia of symbols that were used by artists and patrons. Another very helpful publication is the Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography (Roberts, 1998). This two-volume work consists of a number of long, illustrated essays on themes such as Crucifixion, Death, Arms Raised, Money, Whiteness, Pregnancy and Hair/Haircutting (to list some almost at random). Each entry explores the iconography of its theme and lists relevant works of art from various periods. It also suggests other useful reading which can direct you to original sources.

 

As defined by Panofsky, iconography is not a Foucauldian method. Panofsky (1957: 41) suggested that iconological analysis could show how the `essential tendencies of the human mind’ were translated into visual themes and concepts, and this reference to the `essential tendencies of the human mind’ is decidedly non-Foucauldian. As we have seen, Foucault insisted that there could be no `essential tendencies’ because human subjectivity is entirely constructed. Iconography has also been seen as close to more structural kinds of semiology, with Panofsky’s primary level of interpretation echoed in the notion of denotive signs, and his secondary level in connotive signs. However, in their shared concern with intertextuality, there are some parallels between iconography and the sort of discourse analysis under discussion here, and the term `iconography’ is now often used in a loose sense to refer to the kind of approach to images that I am calling discourse analysis I.

(p147)

 

 

Discourse analysis I: the production and rhetorical organization of discourse **

> p149

Iconography, then, like discourse analysis, depends on intertextuality for its interpretive power. It also depends, though, on what Panofsky called `common sense’, and many discourse analysts also suggest that successful discourse analysis depends less on rigorous procedures and more on other qualities: craft skill (p149)

First, there is the analysis of the structure of the discursive statements. Second, there is a concern for the social context of those statements: who is saying them, in what circumstances. circumstances. One theme of discourse analysis is the organization of discourse itself. How, precisely, is a particular discourse structured, and how then does it produce a particular kind of knowledge?  (149/150)

 

> p150

try to forget all preconceptions you might have about the materials you are working with. Read them and look at them with fresh eyes. (p150)

Try to immerse yourself in the materials you are dealing with. Read and re-read the texts; look and look again at the images (p150)

Familiarity with the sources will allow you to identify key themes, which may be key words, or recurring visual images. (Remember, though, that the most important words and images may not be those that occur most often.) Make a list of these words or images and then go through all your sources, coding the material every time that word or image occurs. Then start to think about connections between and among key words and key images. (p150)

 

> p153

[Images of drowned lady]

Consider each one in relation to the key themes identified by Nead: dress, bodily condition, location, looks (p153)

 

> p154

While the Foucauldian framework of discourse analysis is giving you a certain approach to your materials, it is also crucial that you let the details of your materials guide your investigations (p154)

How does it produce its effects of truth? (p154)

 

Interpretative repertoire

> p156

The multiplicity of different arguments that can be produced in its terms. Potter (1996) uses the term interpretative repertoire to address one aspect of this complexity.

Interpretative repertoires are systematically related sets of terms that are often used with stylistic and grammatical coherence and often organized around one or more central metaphors. They develop historically and make up an important part of the `common sense’ of a culture, although some are specific to institutional domains. (Potter, 1996: 131)

(p156)

 

> p157

`the prostitute has become the subject of “art” and “art” does not provide space for woman as physically deviant or unpleasurable’ (Nead, 1988: 132). (p157)

The cockney was constructed as good-hearted, chirpy, with a resigned sense of humour and a particular style of dress, often a bit fash; they look out for their neighbour and, especially, are stoical under conditions of social hardship. (p157)

Finally, discourse analysis also involves reading for what is not seen or said (p157)

 

> p158

Thus Jones (1989) ends his essay on the construction of the `cockney’ by noting that the cockney was always imagined as white, despite the constant presence of large black communities in the East End. The `cockney’ therefore erased racialized difference by making whiteness the taken-for-granted race of the East Ender (p158)

To summarize the strategies for the intepretation of the rhetorical organization of discourse outlined in this section, then, they include:

1 looking at your sources with fresh eyes.

2 immersing yourself in your sources.

3 identifying key themes in your sources.

4 examining their effects of truth.

5 paying attention to their complexity and contradictions.

6 looking for the invisible as well as the visible.

7 paying attention to details.

(p158)

 

Refecting on doing discourse analysis **

> p160

If you are writing a discourse analysis, then, the arguments about discourse, power and truth/knowledge are just as pertinent to your work as to the materials you are analysing (p160)

 

> p161

Thus discourse analysis can end up with a rather conventional list of things to consider when writing up your work. Here are the sorts of things mentioned by Potter

1 using detailed textual or visual evidence to support your analysis.

2 using textual or visual details to support your analysis.

3 the coherence the study gives to the discourse examined.

4 the coherence of the analysis itself.

5 the coherence of the study in relation to previous related research.

6 the examination of cases that run counter to the discursive norm established by the analysis, in order to affirm the disruption caused by such deviations.

(p161)

 

 

Discourse analysis I: an assessment **

 

> p161

It pays careful attention to images themselves, and to the web of intertextuality in which any individual image is embedded. It is centrally concerned with the production of social difference through visual imagery. It addresses questions of power as they are articulated through visual images themselves. (p161)

There are also some difficulties in the method, however. One of these is knowing where to stop in making intertextual connections,(p161)

 

> p162

As this chapter has noted at several points, this kind of discourse analysis is concerned more with images and texts than with the social institutions that produced, archived, displayed or sold them, and the effects of those practices. (p162)

 

summary

• the complex theoretical legacy of Foucault has contributed to diverse methodological practices.
• discourse analysis I uses the notion of discourse to address the rhetorical organization and social production of visual, written and spoken materials.
• discourse analysis I is especially concerned to trace the production of social difference through discursive claims to truth.
• discourse analysis I tends to neglect the social practices and institutions through which discourses are articulated.

(p161-163)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

discourse analysis II

institutions and ways of seeing

 

Discourse and visual culture: a reprise

both share a concern with power/knowledge as it is articulated through discourse (p164)

In contrast, the second form of discourse analysis, which this chapter will explore, often works with similar sorts of materials, but is much more concerned with their production by, and their reiteration of, particular institutions and their practices, and their production of particular human subjects. This difference can be clarifed by looking at how two exponents of these two kinds of discourse analysis use the term `archive’. In her discussion of the first type of discourse analysis, Tonkiss (1998: 252) describes the material which that sort of analysis works with as an `archive’.

However, a different kind of discourse analyst, like Alan Sekula (1986, 1989), would spend some time examining the archive itself as an institution, and unpacking the consequences of its particular practices of classifcation for the meanings of the things placed within it. Referring to archives of photographs in particular,

he argues:

Archives are not neutral; they embody the power inherent in accumulation, collection and hoarding as well as that power inherent in the command of the lexicon and rules of a language . . . any photographic archive, no matter how small, appeals indirectly to these institutions for its authority. (Sekula, 1986: 155)

(p165-165)

 

From being an art of unbearable sensation punishment has become an economy of suspended rights . . . As a result of this new restraint, a whole army of technicians took over from the executioner, the immediate anatomist of pain: warders, doctors, chaplains, psychiatrists, psychologists, educationalists. (Foucault, 1977: 11) (p165)

 

TBC……