Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Tim Ingold's ethnographic work on hunter-gatherer societies and Michel
Foucault's studies of what he sometimes called 'epistemes' and 'discursive
formations' exemplify discursive diversity in space and time respectively. In
the topic
Redefining nature
, Ingold argued that present-day
hunter-gatherers do
not
, as a rule, approach their environment as an external
world of nature that has to be 'grasped' conceptually
...
[t]hey do not see themselves as mindful subjects having to contend with
a . . . world of physical objects; indeed, the separation of mind and nature has
no place in their thought and practice.
...
[Unlike Westerners]
(Ingold, 1986: 120)
Complementary to this act of cultural comparison are Foucault's highly
influential attempts to describe historic mutations in ways of thinking
within European societies. In both his 'grand' works, such as
The order
of things
, and his more circumscribed ones, such as
Discipline and pun-
ish
, Foucault charted the rise of distinctive new templates for categorising
and characterising the world (1970, 1979). In turn, these templates pro-
duced new objects of analysis and action. For instance, he argued that
the rapid changes to European medicine in the late eighteenth century
were not simply reflective of 'better science' (Foucault, 1973). For him,
they were as much a reflection of new metaphors chosen to characterise
the body. In Foucault's view, discourses were both mutable and material:
as they waxed and waned over time, the world not only
looked
different
but, in a real sense,
was
different because of the practical efficacy of ruling
discourses.
This is why Butler prefers the term 'discursive practices' to 'discourse'
because these practices can, given time,
...
name' (1993: 2). Whatever stability and normalcy these practices possess,
she argues, arises from their repeated and routinised performance: they
allow us to
do
,asmuchasto
know
(think of legal discourse, for exam-
ple, which is eminently performative). As I will explain in
Chapter 2,
this
is, in part, because the practices are realised in and through various mate-
rial infrastructures. Their 'validity' and potency is in no way a function of
some 'extra-discursive' realm that they either represent objectively or operate
upon 'properly'. Instead, Butler argues, the very idea of an extra-discursive
realm is
itself
a contingent part of modern Western discourse. It is a way
we've come to secure the content, purchase and legitimacy of many of our
utterances.
'produce the effects [they]
Contemporary Western discourse and its antonyms
To return to the distinction between
langue
(discourse as a mass noun) and
specific discourses (e.g. those employed in medicine, ecological restoration
or nuclear physics), Butler's suggestion that the representation-reality dis-
tinction is constructed (not given) speaks to a much larger set of categorical
