SOC 603 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Michel Foucault, Intersectionality, Shared Experience

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 603
• Professor: Lock Rebecca

Document Summary

A theoretical term conceptualized by theorist michel foucault. A discourse is an institutionalized way of speaking or writing about reality that defines what can be intelligibly thought and said or not about the world. History of sexuality (1976), foucault argued that new discourses of "sexuality (like medical) had fundamentally changed the way we think about desire, pleasure, and our selves. Discourse is an act of discussion- written or spoken communication about the topic of conversation. In commonsense language discourse means: a coherent of rational body of speech, or writing". A discourse is a group of statements which provide a language for talking about- or ways of representing, a particular kind of knowledge about a topic. When statements about a topic are made within a particular discourse, the discourse makes it possible to construct the topic in a certain way. It also limits the other ways in which the topic can be constructed.