Discourse, Knowledge and Location of Subjects
Several different thinkers รป Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, C.L.R. James, Audre Lorde, and Edward Said all undertook an analysis of the nature and value of discourse and the relationship between forms of discourse and such variables as knowledge and the location of the knowing or the speaking subject. This essay, drawing upon the works by these philosophers, will examine these relationships arguing that not only is discourse shaped by knowledge on the part of the speaker and the listener, but discourse is also influenced by the location (psychically as well as otherwise) of the knowing or speaking subject.
In "Power as Knowledge," Foucault (465-466) took up questions of gender in the context of power relations, referring to the fact that power and location understood as the status of speaker or knower, directly influences the ways in which discourse is shaped and received. Foucault (466) contends that power relations are both intentional and nonsubjective. In other words, knowledge can be itself rooted in power and the privilege of power or sovereignty within discourse impacts upon the ways in which the discourse is shaped and attended to by its participants.
Elsewhere, Foucault (409), in "Discourse on the West," uses the example of contact between the Shogun of Japan and Europe to identify the ways in which any discourse draws upon knowledge and the relationships between knower/speaker and listener. Foucault (410) makes reference to the so-called "fellowships of discourse" whose function is to preserve or reproduce discourse primarily to allow it to circulate within a closed community according to strict regulations. In this essay, Foucault (410-411) emphasizes the fact that there are culturally, socially, and politically specific modes or forms of discourse in which what may very well be extremely parochial and somewhat narrow knowledge is positioned.
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