Similar to de Saussure’s concept of signs, Michel Foucault claims that there are things that exist in the world – IRL – there are objects, bodies, events, practices, institutions, etc. These are prediscursive, existing outside of and perhaps prior to our talking about them or even our knowledge of them.
However, there’s also the discursive, the way we talk about these things. We interpret the prediscursive through the way that it is caught up in the discursive, which represents a whole vast cloud of knowledge and assumptions about characteristics, connections, relationships, etc. that Foucault calls a discourse formation.
It’s not that the prediscursive doesn’t matter outside of the discursive – it really does – but its complicated. First off, ‘this prediscursive is still discursive,” that is to say, it signifies. While it doesn’t “specify” how the object should be taken up and interpreted, it does serve to limit, to “characterize” and “define rules” (76). In this way, the prediscursive elements are kind of like signifiers: we see a body that is marked by physical attributes, we see that this body is a certain size, we see that it has a particular skin color. These are real characteristics of bodies.
When we add the discursive on top of it, we get a set of signifieds that together create a sign; we begin to assign things meanings: those physical attributes mark her as a “woman.” That size of a woman is “heavyset,” or “big, fat.” That skin color is “black.” Each of those interpretations comes along with a whole gang of other attributions – and taken collectively, they create more – about her lifestyle, her habits, her character, and why and how she’s funny.
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To really blow your mind, the prediscursive exceeds the interpretation it’s given in any set of discourse formations. They say, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” that’s what we’re going for here.
When I try to describe an older photograph to you, you might agree that I did a better or worse job, but I will never capture all of it. Further, someone with a background in art or composition will see more than me. Someone with a background in photography may see more and different things. A historian would see different things. With a great photograph, we could all sit around and talk for days and never express everything that the photo means, what it evokes in us.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
References:
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.
