— Lakshmi Yazhini
What comes to our minds when we hear the word discourse? Perchance, do you think of long discussions in classrooms about how it highlighted so many sociological aspects of our country? More importantly, would you have thought of it before coming across the term in our course?
Linguistically speaking, a discourse refers to representation of a discussion in the form of a detailed writing or speech. Any serious interaction that involves an exchange of valid and well-constructed ideas, can be claimed to be a discourse in the academic sense. I believe that such a definition of the term, plays a huge role in how easily we use it while taking up a particular subject and describing the vast amount of content and research behind it.
In the academia of social sciences however, the word discourse has a much more deeper and sophisticated meaning. It has been used by many scholars as a mode of analysis of social/historical facts, where rather than the consideration of information presented, the generalizing/categorical way in which it is presented is analysed. Discourse as an analysis was propounded by Michel Foucault, who believed that it was a system of knowledge and information about the world with particular categorical structuring that shapes the perception of those consuming it. He claimed that the representation and production of such knowledge was heavily influenced by socio-political power of the knowledge producer, and that once its essence is incorporated, it becomes very hard to dissociate with the same.
Using the method of discourse to analyse any concept can be explained better by taking up an example. For instance, gender as social identity and duty no doubt has a body of knowledge of its own (both in the form of verbally reinforced ideas and practices, and in scriptural literature). If we were to use the method of discourse analysis to study aspects of gender, the questions that arise would be: who were the stakeholders involved in constructing this body of knowledge? Why was their influence more prevalent in such knowledge production? Gender has been very binary for too long, and has been categorised as such simply because the majority exercised gender in a similar way, making it a norm that those who “deviate” from will be disadvantaged in society. At this juncture, the knowledge produced is heavily influenced by the norms and beliefs of the “majority”, pointing toward the power and influence mentioned by Foucault.
My favourite example of discourse analysis however, is one by the sociological scholar Lata Mani in her article: Production of an Official Discourse on “Sati” in Early Nineteenth Century Bengal. Analysing discourse on particular religious practices via colonial archives, she presents a commendable conclusion of how Indian religion was viewed by the British. Their generalizing and categorical nature of organizing and producing knowledge blinded the British colonialists to how different religious practices in India were. Lata Mani took the example of Sati and studied it, not just as a socially evil practice, but as how the phenomenon has been represented. She touches upon how its validity was reaffirmed (through verbal verifications with Brahmins, who showed supposed proofs of scriptures), the stakes involved in abolishing it for the British and its actual prevalence (how widespread it actually was) in India. Her article reveals how the colonists’ perceptions of Sati (any Hindu religious practice for that matter) were highly based on their own categorisations of Christianity (for example, the fact that they believed religious practices gained sanction only with scriptural validity). Once such knowledge about India’s own practices was established, their decisions on how to address it was also heavily influenced by their own political positions and feasibility checks of colonial governance.
Many still struggle to correctly identify the prevalence and impact of discourse at particular points. But that is exactly where the challenges of truly understanding what discourse means begins. The consequences or predominance of discourse is not something you can pinpoint or attribute to a particular phenomenon (not even to Orientalism as a whole with which it is commonly associated with). What can actually be discerned is its effect on how knowledge is viewed and produced. It would probably suffice to say that discourse is not about providing answers to questions, rather it is about deconstructing those very questions themselves to seek new ones and change perspectives.
Edited by Devika Dinesh
Design by Shatabdi Deori
Article 19 