Discourse, Complexity, Normativity: Tracing the elaboration of Foucault's materialist concept of discourse

Abstract

In this article, I want to suggest that it is through the elaboration of the concept of discourse that the differences between Foucault and thinkers like Habermas, Hegel and Marx can best be understood. Foucault progressively develops a conception of discourse as a purely historical category that resists all reference to transcendental principles of unity—whether of substance or form—but sees the emergence of discursive frameworks as precarious and contested assemblages characterized by indeterminacy, complexity, openness, uncertainty and contingency. His approach thus enables a reconciliation of difference and commonality, or the particular and the general, in a distinctive and viable way.