have found Foucault’s work on power gener-
ally unremittingly bleak, the critique of indi-
vidual agency and the analysis of the process
by whichsubjectsare formed – a process that
Foucault callsassujettissement, meaning both
subject-formation and subjectification – have
been extremely influential. se
Suggested reading
Crampton and Elden (2007); Driver (1992a).
discourse A specific series of representa-
tions and practices through which meanings
are produced, identities constituted, social
relations established, and political and ethical
outcomes made more or less possible.
Although different fields in thehumanities
and social sciences have worked with varying
accounts of discourse, all grow out of the dec-
ades of debates aboutlanguage, interpret-
ation and understanding in the natural and
social sciences (Howarth, 2000). As such, dis-
course is a concept that departs from the trad-
itionalphilosophyof language’s relationship
to the world. Instead of seeing the world as
independent of ideas about it, with language
transparently reflecting a pre-existing reality,
theories of discourse understand reality as pro-
duced via practices of interpretation deploying
different modes of representation.
Although philosophically well established,
especially inpost-structuralism, discourse
remains controversial in the social sciences.
Those employing the concept are often said to
be claiming that ‘everything is language’, that
‘there is no reality’ and that, consequentially,
a general inability to take a political position
and defend an ethical stance abounds. These
objections demonstrate how understandings
of discourse are bedevilled by the view that
interpretation involves only language, in con-
trast to the external, the real and the material.
These dichotomies ofidealism/materialism
andrealism/idealism remain powerful con-
ceptions of understanding the world. In prac-
tice, however, a concern with discourse does
not involve a denial of the world’s existence or
the significance of materiality. This is well
articulated by Laclau and Mouffe (1985,
p. 108): ‘the fact that every object is consti-
tuted as an object of discourse hasnothing to
dowith whether there is a world external to
thought, or with the realism/idealism oppos-
ition. .. What is denied is not that. .. objects
exist externally to thought, but the rather dif-
ferent assertion that they could constitute
themselves as objects outside of any discursive
condition of emergence.’ This means that
while nothing exists outside of discourse, there
are important distinctions between linguistic
and non-linguistic phenomena. There are also
modes ofrepresentationthat are ideational
though strictly non-linguistic, such as the
aesthetic and pictorial. It is just that there is
no way of comprehending non-linguistic and
extra-discursive phenomena except through
discursive practices.
These philosophical debates are implied
by different uses of discourse even when they
are not overtly discussed. They lead to an
appreciation of the fact thatdiscourses are per-
formative. This means that although discourses
have variable meaning, force and effect, they
constitute the ‘objects’ of which they speak
and produce notions of ‘the social’ and ‘the
self’ (see performativity). The meanings,
identities, social relations and political assem-
blages that are enacted in these performances
combine the ideal and the material. As a con-
sequence, appreciating that discourses are
performative moves us away from a reliance
on the idea of (social)constructiontowards
materialization, whereby discourse ‘stabilizes
over time to produce the effect ofboundary,
fixity and surface’ (Butler, 1993a, pp. 9, 12).
The performativity of discourse calls atten-
tion to the discursive formations that are
produced over time by the stabilization of some
interpretations at the expense of others.
Discursive formations – such asneo-liberal
notions of ‘competitiveness’ (Schoenberger,
1998),gentrificationand the racialization
of Puerto Rican youth in Chicago (Wilson and
Grammenos, 2005) orcold war-derivedgeo-
politicaldiscourses of ‘danger’ in Central
Asia (Megoran, 2005) – are the culmination
of discursive economies at work. In a discursive
economy, investments have historically been
made in certain interpretations; dividends can
be drawn by those interests that have made the
investments; representations are taxed when
they confront new and ambiguous circumstan-
ces; and participation in the discursive econ-
omy is through social relations that embody an
unequal distribution of power.
Withinhuman geography,theuseofthecon-
ceptofdiscourse canbecharacterizedbya num-
berofdimensions,thoughbynomeanswouldall
scholars would accept every one of them:. Discourses are heterogeneous:discoursesare
not the product of a single author or insti-
tution, and neither are they confined to
literary texts, archives, scientific statements
or political speeches. They come to have a
dominant form over time, but they never
Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_D Final Proof page 166 1.4.2009 3:15pmDISCOURSE