DISCURSIVE FORMATION (DF) My topic will be discursive formation (DF), a relevant theoretical-analytical operator in Discourse Analysis, which has raised debate and questioning since its conception. According to Foucault, the main point is to establish regularities, dispersion systems which produce regions of meaning; to establish how meanings are arranged in certain regions. He clearly stated in <i>The Archaeology of Knowledge</i> that whenever we can describe a dispersion system, there is a discursive formation.
He uses the term to avoid, in his words, inadequate or quite marked terms, plenty of causes and consequences such as science, theory, ideology. From this arises Pêcheux's criticism regarding the appropriation of the discursive formation concept. According to Pêcheux, ideology, that is, ideological formations are essential for forming regions of meaning, for what we can group as part of a discourse formation.
Pêcheux's first formulation using 'discursive formation" appears in his text of 1971, with Claudine Haroche and Paul Henry. In the text they approach the relevance of a field change to deal with Semantics in relation to what was called Saussurean break. They also discuss the importance of considering ideology as something that establishes discourse formations.
It is so, as Pêcheux always pointed out, since class struggle is understood as competition for meaning in order to reflect on discourses. So. .
. in Pêcheux's works we cannot identify or overlay the notion of ideology with that of discourse. A different approach is needed, precisely because ideology does not show itself, it does not fully materialize itself in discourses.
As highlighted by Pêcheux, discourse belongs to the field of ideology, so this is a matter of belonging, not of identification. Why is it so? In Pecheuxtian thought, there is a primacy of contradiction over opposites, of the class struggle, that is, of the struggle for signifiying, of the struggle for meaning over the classes.
So, to handle this, something that is single and divisible at the same time, that forms a whole but is also porous, an adjective used by Freda Indursky to describe discursive formation, something that has gaps, that lets other discourses and meanings through, Pêcheux appropriates the notion of discursive formation (DF) and introduces its relation with ideology. Other DF's relevant feature, as Pêcheux understands it, is the idea of interdiscourse. Since DF "determines what can or should be said" in a given context, in a given situation, interdiscourse is something that supports meaning, something that is not being said but produces meaning in the formation of that region of meaning.
Thus. . .
discursive formation is a very relevant theoretical-analytical tool. Besides, Indursky is a researcher, a scholar who reflects on such analytical gesture realized when a discursive formation is understood. She has several texts approaching Pêcheux’s history and his theoretical appropriation of Foucault's discursive formation showing how important it is to fight for such concept, since it enables us, analysts, to deal with difference, heterogeneity, with all this that constitutes meaning.
Financial support Project management LAS management Image editing Film crew Translated by LABESTRAD/UFF Subtitles: Bruno Leivas and Giovana Campos Revn: Matheus de Magalhães and Beatriz Caldas Transl.
