Discourse and Truth in Bourdieu and Foucault Cover Image

Дискурс и истина при Бурдийо и Фуко
Discourse and Truth in Bourdieu and Foucault

Author(s): Stoika Penkova
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Институт по философия и социология при БАН

Summary/Abstract: The article attempts to rethink critically the terms discourse and truth in the context of two different social theories, those of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault. The analysis assumes a reconstruction of certain authors’ „analytics of truth“ and, in this perspective, continues with „analytics of power“ and „analytics of the subject“. The ostensible similarity between the initial perspective of reference to discourse and truth that is grounded in the essential determination of these terms of power relations, allows for different views of social reality and, hence, different solutions to the crisis of Modernity. As a result, in contrast to Foucault’s „critical ontology for us“, Bourdieu’s „social ontology“ stakes on reflexivity as a means for overcoming the effects of the modern „will to truth“. In this perspective the article stresses on the role (modest, but significant) of social scientists to help in transforming the principles and classification schemes through which the agent acts in and on the world. This would permit not only to diagnose but also to form „us“ as „free human beings“.

  • Issue Year: 40/2008
  • Issue No: 1-2
  • Page Range: 132-146
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Bulgarian