Poststructuralism encourages a way of looking at the world that… (2)
Challenges what comes to be accepted as truth and knowledge
Why does poststructuralism doubt the possibility of attaining universal laws or truths?
As there is no world that exists independently of our own interpretations
Why is knowledge accepted as such? (2)
- ‘Knowledge’ is accepted as such due to the prominence of elites in society, who then impose it on others
- Elites are categorised as ‘experts’, giving them the authority to reinforce the viewpoints that best serve their interests
What is the impact of elite actors referring to famines as unavoidable natural disasters? (4)
- Removing the event from its political context
- Extracting themselves from any responsibility
- That in reality, famines may occur through processes of exploitation
- Such as increased profits on higher food prices
How does discourse favour the elites?
- Power is achieved through manipulation of discourse
- Discourse facilitate the process by which information is accepted as unquestionable truth
What are dominant discourses?
Discourses which augment the power of elites
For the elites, what is the strength of dominant discourses?
Their ability to shut out other opinions, to the extent that thinking outside the realms set by the discourse is seen as irrational
How does language help create and perpetuate a dominant discourse? (5)
- Through language, certain actors, concepts + events are places in hierarchical pairs
- Whereby one element of the set is favoured over the other in order to create meaning
- e.g. good vs. evil, developed vs. underdeveloped
- Allows elites to create favourable meaning out of events
- And for meaning to be easily absorbed + accepted by public
What is one of the most common binary oppositions in discourse?
Us versus them
How is 9/11 an example of us vs. them? (5)
- George W. Bush described Iran, Iraq + North Korea as an ‘axis of evil’
- Made these countries the ‘them’
- To position them as international pariahs
- In contrast to the innocent ‘us’ of the US and its allies
- Helped justify war on terror
Who is Michael Foucault?
One of the leading scholars of poststructuralism
What is Michael Foucault’s ‘Regime of Truth’? (3)
- The concepts of elites, discourses, the power of language + binary oppositions all tie together to create a regime of truth
- It operates unquestioned within society, masquerading as truth or fact
- Used to create + sustain meaning that serves the interest of favoured actors
What is Judith Butler (2003)’s contribution to poststructuralism? (4)
- Builds upon idea of discourses excluding other possibilities
- By proposing that certain lives are deemed as more grievable than others
- Thousands of people lost to conflict in countries like Palestine or Afghanistan, often at the hands of the West
- But these people are not mourned or even heard of within Western reports of war
What is a prime site where discourses within regimes of truth are (re)produced? (2)
- The media
- How we receive information shapes how we conceptualise and react to political events
How were the dominant discourses surrounding 9/11, instigated by governmental elites, perpetuated and reinforced by the media?
- In newspaper reports in weeks after 9/11, terrorists presented as evil, irrational + apolitical
- Driven by ethnic, superstitious + tribal madness
- Media narrative linked the act + actors to images of pestilence + disease
- In contrast to the cultivation of American innocence
