Entry #4

Hi all, hope everyone's projects are going well. My advisor's been in KY for a conference the second half of this week, so I got the day off these past couple of days. I took this as an opportunity to delve into a new book that I found a .pdf for online: Language and Power, by Norman Fairclough, who's one of the leading scholars in the field of CDA. I'm only up to Chapter 4, where he talks about discourse's reflection of what he calls ideology, ideology being the non-power-related assumptions about the world around us (he outlines the link between power and discourse pretty comprehensively in Chapter 3, but of course there's a lot of crossover). At the time of this writing I haven't gotten to the section devoted to discourse analysis methods (Chapter 5 I believe), so I can't share anything yet in the realm of application, but I assure you that's coming up (probably next week!). Another thing about the book: Fairclough's version of discourse, and the thing that he's analyzing the most is spoken word (recorded transcripts, spoken texts, speeches, etc.), however he devotes a lot of time to media discourse as well, which is of most relevance to my project. Media discourse, like conversational discourse, is different from a lot of written language in that certain linguistic structures are generally favored, and certain types of information are valued (or omitted), often making for interesting power dynamics as expressed by the piece in question, which Fairclough outlines very methodically in his book.

I've also been working my way, slowly but surely, through what's probably the most difficult (but also the most enlightening!) text I've ever read, Michel Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge. My advisor, Sarah, has herself never read the book so we're working on this one together, with her guiding me along and clarifying the parts I've found to be impenetrable when reading alone. There's a lot going on here! I'll talk about what I've found to be most interesting: first, in the introduction, he sets up a dichotomy between the "old" version of history and the "new" version it's evolved into, with the traditional one concerned with pinpointing various "discontinuities" (a term he's yet to clearly define, as of Chapter 4) and neutralizing them by defining each of their positions in relation to one another, in effect setting up a chronological series of causality. He argues that history's new role is one of not only defining the limits of each of these "horizontal" series (histories such as medicine, philosophy, religion, literature, politics, etc.), but of determining the "vertical" relationships among these series - as in, what dynamic of correlation (or domination!) exists between them. Foucault suggests, as a means of assessing this interplay, looking at the language used in certain historical documents, in what amounts to one of the earliest cases for CDA: language analysis in terms of looking not at the "what?" but the "why?" of discourse. Later on, he calls into question his own role as a discourse analyst. He insists he's not for an outright denial of all assumptions governing our thinking; despite his assertion that much of discourse is based not so much on a traditional "already-said" but rather a "never-said" (a "repressive presence of what it does not say"), he instead wants to unwind its innate assumptions, to show that they cannot just be commonsensibly, or as he puts it, "tranquilly" accepted. Lastly and quite helpfully, Foucault puts forth what I feel is a really great definition for discourse analysis, summed up by the following three questions:
1. "[A]ccording to what rules has a particular statement been made?"
2. "[A]ccording to what rules could other similar statements be made?" and
3. "[H]ow is it that one discursive statement appeared rather than another?"
These are the questions I need to be asking when I begin actual discursive analysis of media sources relating to Pascua Lama in the coming weeks.

I mentioned last week I'd talk a bit about Mike Carey's book In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers and how it relates to the field of Political Ecology as detailed by Paul Robbins. Not only a great introduction for someone like me, in terms thinking about the social, economic, and political implications of glacier retreat, Carey's book also addresses how all human ecological assumptions and endeavors have power-laden ideologies backing them, conscious or no. The book, which I've nearly finished, describes the social and political climates of towns in the Andes affected by glacier retreat throughout the 20th century, in which a host of actors, including local residents, rural farmers, various Peruvian regimes, and glacier experts interact to confront the issues posed by climatic change and the natural disasters in the region caused by that climatic change. Carey analyzes competing strategies regarding things such as glacial lake draining, hazard zoning, and dam construction as not just an allegory for but evidence and a result of the racial and class distinctions present in Peru. He explains how in the wake of numerous natural disasters in the area (outburst floods, avalanches, an earthquakes), government officials and government-backed capitalists descended upon the area to enact sociopolitical and economic agendas, respectively - things such as the construction of infrastructure, building of hydrological and hydroelectric frameworks, and even socialistic land redistribution. All of these implemented strategies are shown to be reflective of gains of political power - and too often for the locals most affected by the natural disasters, losses of it. These are trends to be on the lookout for when conducting discursive analysis on texts relevant to Pascua Lama, and how the language used in those (mostly media) sources suggests narratives different to or in line with these highly thematic struggles.

That's all for now! I hope you enjoyed this post (I know I did - these blog posts are actually quite helpful for me in terms of distilling key points from my, frankly, all-over-the-place notes). I'm quite enjoying this project and where my research is headed!