Tagged: power

Foucault, thinking during a lecture, disocurse theory

Philosophy

Foucault’s discourse analysis

Almost every subject in humanities at university level currently devotes a module on discourse analysis – which invariably will feature Foucault. There is a good reason for this, because Foucault’s discourse not only predates most other theorists, such as Laclau and Mouffe, and is therefore a better starting point; but also because in many ways it is more versatile and broadly applicable. Discourse – discours – is not merely a subject of study. For Foucault,...

Aldous Huxley or George Orwell

Paradoxes

The Animal Farm paradox, or how we are all more equal than others

In the well-known and much repeated [amazon text=Animal Farm&asin=0451526341] by George Orwell [sidenote: should I really say who wrote the Animal Farm?], the paradoxical sentence “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others” is part of the cardinal rules set up by the (capitalist?) pigs. Certainly, this statement does not make any sense. And even more certainly, Orwell’s point was to point out an ‘evident truth’ – a political statement on dictatorial/totalitarian regimes which function through...