Page 62 - Šolsko polje, XXIX, 2018, no. 1-2: The Language of Neoliberal Education, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 62
šolsko polje, letnik xxix, številka 1–2
Discourse as the monster concept of the twentieth century, along with
‘discursive formation’, was applied to disciplines like political economy
and public policy, and across the social sciences. Discourse related to a
formal way of thinking through language defining different genres, and
identifying theoretical statements, that led to questions of power and
questions about the state. The concept soon gave way to ‘discourse analy-
sis’ especially in a political sense during the 1970s that served as the means
for analysing public policy in a post-positivistic approach that was sensi-
tive to institutions, bodies of knowledge and questions of power. In the
first instance, it drew methodological lessons and analytical tools from lit-
erary structuralism, textual exegesis and hermeneutics. ‘Critical discourse
analysis’ (CDA) developed in the 1970s as a methodology for analysing
political speech acts by relating them to the wider socio-political context.
Michel Foucault was one of the first to theorise discourse as social prac-
tices that organise knowledge in relation to larger historical epistemes. The
discourses are seen to be produced by the effects of power which legiti-
mate knowledge and truth, and construct meaning and certain kinds of
subjects.
By the time neoliberalism first came on the scene in the first phase of
the shift from political philosophy to policy in the 1980s, well after Hayek’s
formation of the Mt Perelin Society, with the elections of Thatcher and
Reagan, the apparatus for the social anatomy of policy through ‘critical
discourse analysis’ was well established. The political evolution of neolib-
eralism as a Discourse (with a big D, as opposed to a small d, standing for
discourses) can be traced through the emergence of the figure of homo
oeconomicus as a construction of human beings as economic agents who
operate consistently in markets as rational and self-interested ‘utility max-
misers’. The term historically appeared in early works of political econo-
my such as Mill’s (1836) ‘On the Definition of Political Economy, and on
the Method of Investigation Proper to It.’ Adam Smith in The Wealth of
Nations spelt out the notion of self-interest. Economists of the nineteenth
and twentieth century built mathematical models based on these assump-
tions. The inherited philosophical concepts and assumptions of rational
choice actually go back to the beginnings of political economy that expe-
rienced various revivals through to the development of the main schools
of economic liberalism in the twentieth century that Foucault (2009)
identifies in The Birth of Biopolitics.
Discursus Politicus
In ‘The History of Discourse as Literary History’ Fee-Alexandra Haase
(2007) traces ‘discourse’ to dialectics in the Greek philosophical tradition
60
Discourse as the monster concept of the twentieth century, along with
‘discursive formation’, was applied to disciplines like political economy
and public policy, and across the social sciences. Discourse related to a
formal way of thinking through language defining different genres, and
identifying theoretical statements, that led to questions of power and
questions about the state. The concept soon gave way to ‘discourse analy-
sis’ especially in a political sense during the 1970s that served as the means
for analysing public policy in a post-positivistic approach that was sensi-
tive to institutions, bodies of knowledge and questions of power. In the
first instance, it drew methodological lessons and analytical tools from lit-
erary structuralism, textual exegesis and hermeneutics. ‘Critical discourse
analysis’ (CDA) developed in the 1970s as a methodology for analysing
political speech acts by relating them to the wider socio-political context.
Michel Foucault was one of the first to theorise discourse as social prac-
tices that organise knowledge in relation to larger historical epistemes. The
discourses are seen to be produced by the effects of power which legiti-
mate knowledge and truth, and construct meaning and certain kinds of
subjects.
By the time neoliberalism first came on the scene in the first phase of
the shift from political philosophy to policy in the 1980s, well after Hayek’s
formation of the Mt Perelin Society, with the elections of Thatcher and
Reagan, the apparatus for the social anatomy of policy through ‘critical
discourse analysis’ was well established. The political evolution of neolib-
eralism as a Discourse (with a big D, as opposed to a small d, standing for
discourses) can be traced through the emergence of the figure of homo
oeconomicus as a construction of human beings as economic agents who
operate consistently in markets as rational and self-interested ‘utility max-
misers’. The term historically appeared in early works of political econo-
my such as Mill’s (1836) ‘On the Definition of Political Economy, and on
the Method of Investigation Proper to It.’ Adam Smith in The Wealth of
Nations spelt out the notion of self-interest. Economists of the nineteenth
and twentieth century built mathematical models based on these assump-
tions. The inherited philosophical concepts and assumptions of rational
choice actually go back to the beginnings of political economy that expe-
rienced various revivals through to the development of the main schools
of economic liberalism in the twentieth century that Foucault (2009)
identifies in The Birth of Biopolitics.
Discursus Politicus
In ‘The History of Discourse as Literary History’ Fee-Alexandra Haase
(2007) traces ‘discourse’ to dialectics in the Greek philosophical tradition
60
