DISCURSIVE EVENT I will talk about the concept of discursive event developed by Michel Pêcheux, in a conference initially presented in English at the University of Illinois, USA. This conference was published in a Portuguese translation as "O discurso: estrutura ou acontecimento. " A French translation was published simultaneously by Denise Maldidier in "L'inquiétude du discours".
Why is this concept important for the field? Or, at least, why is it one of the most relevant concepts from both an analytical and a theoretical point of view, linked to the definition of discourse? Because this concept allows us to think about the relation between the real of history and the real of language, which constitutes discourse.
And because it allows us to think about the relation between rupture, emergence, interruption, and what belongs to the order of reformulation, repetition, paraphrase, which is the discursive memory. The first key aspect is that it is not possible to think about discursive event without discursive memory. Why?
Because the discursive event displaces, transforms and stirs the historical networks of afilliations that affect the processes of constitution of meaning and subject. The concept of discursive event is presented by Michel Pêcheux in the book we already talked about, based on an analysis, and this is also relevant because it brings this theory-practice relation, which is constitutive of our field. Pêcheux analyzes the utterance "On a gagné!
" that circulated in France during François Mitterrand's election. This utterance was initially sung in soccer matches, then it was transferred to the field of politics as a shout of victory, a close, unexpected victory of the Socialist Party. Based on this, Pêcheux develops a very detailed analysis of the utterance's form, its linguistic materiality, its circulation in society, and, mainly, of how this utterance raises various interpretations, a dispute over interpretation, not only in media and in society, but also in political parties.
He shows how gaps in the utterance are open to diversion, which he names points of diversion of the linguistic materiality, such as not saying what was won or who won it, allow a dispute over interpretations and a different circulation of the utterance. Well, here we come to an important matter regarding the concept of discursive event: its relation with equivocity, that is, with the possibility of an utterance, as Pêcheux says, becoming something else, signifying differently, making way to displacements in the processes of meaning. So, the event erupts in the memory, producing equivocity.
Not only producing equivocity from its own linguistic materiality, but also from the relation with the real of history. According to Pêcheux, language must be affected by history in order to produce the discursive event. It is not merely language functioning, it needs this connection with the outside, but the discursive event does not close itself nor is it restricted to an innovation in political or historical terms.
This relation between history and language is what operates in the concept of discursive event. For Pêcheux, the discursive event emerges in the memory, producing rupture, interruption and emergence. Rupture hapens to the enunciative rituals that allowed historical filiations in regions of memory, therefore, a reformulation, reproduction of discursive practices that constitute the meaning as well as the subject.
Interruption happens to the paraphrastic reformulation which occurs in the discursive memory and allows the utterable of discursive processes. And emergence is the displacement, the change in these paraphrastic repetitions, giving place to new historical filiations. So rupture, interruption and emergence occur, all at once, in the discursive event.
And to simplify this equivocity within the discursive event, Pecheux uses an analogy, which I think is good: mathematical sequences. He shows how a mathematical sequence, through a paraphrastic reformulation, creates expectation. And he exemplifies discursive event as this expectation's rupture and the opening to a new sequence of repetitions.
For example, if I start a mathematical sequence with 2, 4, 6, 8, there is an expectation that the next element is 10. But if I start this same sequence with 2, 4, 6, 9, this element's irruption creates a rereading of the previous sequence, and it opens up to a new paraphrastic reformulation, one that differs from that of the previous expectation. So, the discursive event brings a series of previous repetitions that breaks and interrupts.
It brings the chance of opening to a new series of paraphrastic reformulation, and brings the conflict between them, which inhabits the discursive event; so, event has a dimension of equivocity. Returning to the necessary relation with the real of history, that constitutes the object discourse as a theoretical object, I propose an interpretation that juxtaposes Pêcheux to Althusser in contemporary texts from 1982-83, and brings the concept of encounter developed by Althusser in his theory about aleatory materialism. In this theory, Althusser affirms that contingency constitutes the historical real, and that the primacy of contingency is what allows both the production of history and the movements of transformation, revolution and resistance.
So, the notion of encounter in Althusser brings the primacy of contingency for the production of historical processes. And the notion of discursive event in Pêcheux, in my interpretation, also brings, along with the real of language and the impossible that make themselves present in the discursive event, the real of history with its primacy of contingency. It is in this sense that the discursive event brings, theoretically, this relation between the real of language and of history that constitutes the object discourse as a paradoxical object.
That is why I believe this concept is so fruitful. In analytical terms, the concept of discursive event allows a reading and an analysis of the <i>corpus</i> because it allows us to organize series of reformulations and their displacements, transformations and ruptures. So, it has been really productive in the analyses of many researchers in the field, and it has given place to several differentiations of discursive event regarding the enunciative event, as in Freda Indursky's works; and regarding historical and journalistic events, as found in Silmara Dela-Silva's works.
So, I believe this is a concept that opens the field to new studies from a theoretical and an analytical point of view, and that has been very productive to my own work. Financial support Project management LAS management Image editing Film crew Translation and subtitles: LABESTRAD/UFF G. Muniz/I.
Fortunato/V. Hanes /G. Campos Transl.
Revn: G. Campos/B. Caldas Coord.
