UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO

FACULDADE DE FILOSOFIA, LETRAS E CIÊNCIAS HUMANAS

Departamento de Letras Modernas
Discurso I

Prof. Dr. Lynn Mario

Marcela Oliveira Machado 5673949

Excerpts extracted from A Ordem do Discurso, de Michel Foucault.

“Existe em nossa sociedade outro princípio de exclusão: não mais a interdição, mas uma
separação e uma rejeição. Penso na oposição razão e loucura.(...) Louco é aquele cujo
discurso não pode circular como o dos outros: pode ocorrer que sua palavra seja
considerada nula (...)”.

According to Foucault’s point of view, everyone who breaks the rules (the discourse
established by a certain group) is excluded from society. The madman is one of these types
of people. As the citation says, madness is opposed to reason and everything that is
unreasonable must be separated from what is reasonable and then rejected, excluded.
We’ve been learning that Foucault considers this type of aspects of society
(madness, criminality, society, etc.) as effects. For him, madness is both social and
political, not anything else. It is a (social or political) group that decides what is mad and
what is not, what kind of thinking will be accepted or rejected. The interpretation of this
phenomenon depends on social values which, in turn, are connected to power relations
within society.

“Com forma de funcionar parcialmente distinta há as “sociedades de discurso”, cuja função

é conservar ou produzir discursos, mas para fazê-los circular em um espaço fechado,
distribuí-los somente regras estritas, sem que seus detentores sejam despossuídos por essa
distribuição.”
 We have learned that knowledge is also something which is governed by rules. Each
group has its own set of rules to be followed regarding what can be accepted or not. For
example, in a group of linguists, a single linguist has to release articles and statements that
follow the rules of his/her group; everything else which is different from what it is accepted
will be excluded. That is why each group can be considered as a “sociedade de discurso”,
and that is why, even though one belongs to one of these groups, one must only state things
that follow the internal rules of his/her group.

Excerpts extracted from Discourse and Truth:

“Who is able to tell the truth? What are the moral, the ethical, and the spiritual conditions
which entitle someone to present himself as, and to be considered as, a truth-teller? About
what topics is it important to tell the truth? (About the world? About nature? About the
city? About behavior? About man? ) What are the consequences of telling the truth? What
are its anticipated positive effects for the city, for the city's rulers, for the individual, etc.?
And finally: what is the relation between the activity of truth-telling and the exercise of
power, or should these activities be completely independent and kept separate?(…)”

The way Foucault sees truth and power as related effects is very interesting. If truth
and power are not substances, if they are not absolute, but relative effects, so an interesting
question to be raised is “who is able to tell the truth?”. In fact, in a society governed by a
discourse, the only people who can tell the truth is the people considered as “owners of
truth”, for example, the scientists. A statement by a scientist will be way more accepted
than a statement by a regular citizen or even a professional who is not a scientist.
Also, even scientists cannot say anything. There are rules about what can be said
and how it can be said, since truth can have effects over the city, the people, etc. Besides,
the group who makes these rules is who decides what is the truth that can be told.
Therefore, the only truth that can be told is the truth commonly agreed within the group, the
truth that has positive rather than negative effects. That is why truth is an effect; otherwise,
anything considered true could be said anytime, by anyone.
 For Foucault, all these aspects of truth telling: how truth is told, what is said and
who tells it are governed by the power relations, since there are rules which say who can
say what to whom and how. That is why for Foucault, truth and power are always related
and cannot be separated or independent from each other.

“For I think there is a relation between the thing which is problematized and the process of
problematization. The problematization is an "answer" to a concrete situation which is
real.”

Foucault’s discussions on how things become problems are very interesting. For
him, everything which breaks the rules of a given group is considered something which
must be excluded from society, such as criminals, mad people, sick people, etc. When
something becomes a problem, the only answer found is to create a way to condemn the
problem and to solve it in a way that is better suited to the ruling group. For example, when
AIDS started, it was considered threatening, not only because it is a disease, but also
because people couldn’t understand or explain it, neither scientists, who began to lose
power. So, AIDS was said to be the disease of the perverts. That is why, for Foucault,
sickness is also a political problem, an issue of discourse. The problematization of AIDS
was, then, a way to deal with a problem of power.