Critical Discourse Analysis - Discourse Analysis

4.1 Discourse Analysis

4.1.1 Critical Discourse Analysis

Chapter 2: Applying a feminist postructuralist method: detecting the discourses of gender in media and society.

As argued in the previous chapter, this research project employed a feminist postructuralist perspective to analyse the construction of female subjectivity in Italy. By doing so, I wished to detach myself from most of the literature produced in Italy, that generally frames media as producing a monolithic and unrealistic representation of femininity, mainly in terms of bodies and roles, which constitute a 'gender ideology', which is at best detached from 'real' women's lives, and at worst manipulates and oppresses young, vulnerable women (Zanardo 2009; Pallotta 2000; Boccia et al. 2009;

Melandri 2009; Rangeri 2007; Marzano 2010; Campani 2009).

In contrast to this body of literature, this research project has been informed by the understanding that media representations of female bodies, subjectivities and sexualities participate in producing and reproducing normative gender identities and bodies, as well as reproducing unequal power relations which permeate different spheres of Italian culture and society. Hence, following this approach, there are no 'real' women untouched by media representations, nor women abiding by the 'false consciousness' sold by the media, but only subjects that come into being gendered and perform gender via (but not only) mediated representations of femininity. For this reason, and as this chapter will show, this project was designed following the insights and influence of two different yet interconnected scholars Foucault (1972; 1975; 1976; 1980; 1991; 2010) and Butler (1990;

1993; 1997a; 1997b).

In this chapter, I will show that both Foucault and Butler's works have been central in the methodological development of this research project, because the first interrogated the concept of knowledge and deconstructed the processes of knowledge production, while the latter developed an understanding of gendered subjectivity as non-essential, historical and socially constituted. Hence, I will first establish the ontological position of the research study by focusing on Foucault's theorisation of power (1976) and

subjectivation (2010), and subsequently on Butler’s interpretation of Foucault’s work for her conceptualisation of gendered subjectivity. However, feminist critiques to positivist values such as 'universality', 'objectivity' and 'value-neutrality' in research process provide equally important insight about this project's claims to knowledge. Thus, after the discussion of Foucault and Butler’s work, this chapter will engage with some of the feminist critiques to positivist values in knowledge production, to outline the epistemological stance of this thesis and to sustain the validity of the claims made throughout its execution.

By employing the work of Foucault, Butler and feminist critiques to positivist epistemologies, I discuss how I designed this research project by focussing on discourses of gender and female sexuality which circulate in society and media texts. I have done this by combining a genealogical approach to the understanding of discourse with the case study method, influenced by the work of early feminist Cultural Studies scholars. The chapter, therefore, dwells in a description of the project: how and why I engage with Berlusconi's political and media power; the rationale behind the choice of case studies;

the sources selected and why I chose these; the sampling of material to be analysed; and the methods for textual analysis.

Power, discourse and gendered subjectivation

Foucault (1976; 1977; 1980; 2010) takes issue with the notion of power as repressive, limiting and constricting, claiming instead that power not only regulates but also creates attitudes, behaviours and desires. Furthermore, according to Foucault (1980), power needs to be understood in terms of a net-like formation, which circulates in society connecting bodies, institutions, signifying systems, artefacts, and so on. Knowledge is closely interconnected with the working of power, power producing while at the same time being sustained by systems of knowledge. And ultimately, knowledge plays a fundamental role in the construction of social reality, of human bodies and their management.

As part of Foucault's theory of power, he introduces the concept of discourse. This is one of the most important terms in the whole of Foucault’s work (Carabine 2001). Foucault (1972) recognises that he himself has employed the term discourse in different guises: as 'the general domain of all statements'; as 'an individualizable groups of statements'; and as 'a regulated practice which accounts for a number of statements' (p. 80). However, in the development of the methodology of this project I conclude that it is useful to think of discourse as an identifiable group of statements, which seem to create a grouping, such as the discourse of gender or the discourse of race (Carabine 2001). As Hall (1992) eloquently describes, discourse is 'a group of statements which provide a language for talking about – a way of representing the knowledge about – a particular topic at a particular historical moment’ (p. 291). At the same time, as Hall (1997) has argued, it is important to stress that Foucault's discourse does not solely encapsulate language, but is to be understood as a wider system of representation which makes the world intelligible to us.

In approaching the study of discourse, we need to be aware of the fact that discourse does not simply describe things, concepts and groups of people, but it constructs them in a certain way, normalising certain representations as the way reality is. Therefore, discourses have a normative force: they establish clear boundaries between what is culturally intelligible and what is not (Butler 1993). Furthermore, discourses do not simply produce meaning, but have outcomes and effects which are material and tangible. Hence, power/knowledge takes also the form of bio-power, by which Foucault describes all the techniques and mechanisms that are aimed at controlling the basic biological features of humanity.

Foucault was interested in unravelling the entanglement of knowledge, power and discourse and the way bodies, subjectivities, social relationships, ideas and truth claims are created by the interrelation of these forces. Genealogy is the name Foucault (1977) gave to the methodological approach he employed to reveal the power/knowledge networks that create and are sustained through discourses. Foucault (1980) was interested in interrogating 'the discourses of true and false, by which [he] means the

correlative formation of domains and objects and of the verifiable, falsifiable discourse that bear on them, and [...] the effects in the real world to which they are linked’ (p. 116).

Foucault's genealogical approach has been essential for the development of this research project, as doing discourse analysis through a Foucauldian lenses means to start from an analysis of culture rather than an analysis of language. Hence, discourse is not understood as a linguistic unit, but consisting of groups of statements which cohere in such a way as to show some regularity, and which produce both meaning and concrete and material effects.

Foucault's genealogical approach has provided one element of the theoretical grounding for the methodological choices of this research project, as I will explore in detail in the second part of the chapter. However, Butler's work on gender subjectivity has been equally important. Indeed, Foucault's genealogical approach combined with Butler's conceptualisation of gendered subjectivation have been fundamental in the development of this research project, as well as grounding its methodology.

Butler has employed Foucault's work to develop a theory of gender as non-essential, socially constituted, historical and in flux. As I have outlined in detail in the previous chapter, the Foucauldian work of Butler understands gender not as an essential

characteristic of an individual, but in terms of a performance (1990). Therefore, there is no such thing as 'womanhood': it is a historical category which constructs that which it is believed to describe. The notion of gender in terms of a discursive and regulatory

practice allows this thesis to investigate what discourses of femininity are normalised in Italian culture, in what way media representations participate in the construction of normative femininity, and how they regulate the boundaries of intelligible femininity and female sexuality.

Furthermore, it allows an analysis of media representations of gendered bodies and subjectivities which takes into account how different axes of identity inform and modify normative gender categories and gender relations, as well as how they participate in interrelated patterns of discrimination. This understanding, as future chapters will show,

has been important in the analysis of discourses in political and media representations of racialised and classed femininities, as well as for the analysis of inter-racial and inter-class gender relations. Therefore, while gender issues are central to this research project, Butler's postructuralist gender theory allowed me to carry out a discourse analysis focussing not only on gender, but considering also questions of class, race, nationality, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

Although the work of Foucault and Butler were central to the development of the theoretical and methodological approach of this research, I was also largely influenced by feminist epistemology. Hence, after having introduced Foucault's approach to knowledge and its connection with power and power relations, in this section I endeavour to continue the critique of a conceptualisation of knowledge as neutral and objective through the employment of feminist approaches to epistemology and their critiques to positivism.

Feminist epistemology as critique: the researcher as subject

Epistemology is the area of philosophy that concerns itself with the study of knowledge and processes of knowledge production. More particularly, it is the study of what can be regarded as acceptable knowledge, and is defined by Alcoff (1998) as 'a philosophical enquiry into the nature of knowledge, what justifies a belief, and what we mean when we say that a claim is true’ (p. vii). While it is impossible to define what constitutes a distinctive feminist epistemology, due to this field being incredibly varied and complex, it can be argued that principally feminist epistemology holds that knowledge has a social character and questions the belief in the existence of a clear-cut boundary between what is internal and what is external to science, situating it within its cultural context and stressing the many ways in which social and political elements are enmeshed with knowledge and knowledge production (Tanesini 1999).

The areas of feminist critique that have had an effect on the epistemology of this research project are those that address the limitations of positivism in both the empirical and social sciences. In short, positivism rests on the belief that 'truth' exists in the world outside of

people's minds and can be discovered on the grounds that scientists lead 'objective' and 'value-free' research (Hesse-Biber 2012). As Harding (1987) eloquently puts it:

scientific knowledge-seeking is supposed to be value-neutral, objective, dispassionate, disinterested, and so forth. It is supposed to be protected from political interests, goals and desires (such as feminist ones) by the norms of science. In particular, science's 'method' is supposed to protect the results of research from the social values of the researchers (p. 182).

While not all feminist researchers fully reject the values of the positivist tradition (see for example Farley 1978; Martin 1999; Spalter-Roth & Hartmann 1999), many of its tenets have been criticised at length (see Haraway 1988; Harding 1987, 1991; Jaggar 1996; Code 1991; Tanesini 1999), especially with the emergence of postructuralist and postmodern theories and approaches (see Flax 1990; Haraway 1991; Heckman 1990; Sawicki 1991).

The epistemology that informs this thesis is grounded on the latter body of critiques to traditional epistemology, which takes issue with the modernist belief of being able to uncover a single, absolute and objective truth.

Many of the criticisms that inform the methodology of this research project arise from questioning postivism's ontological conceptualisation of the relationship between ideas, experience and reality. Indeed, this research paradigm assumes that a real world exists outside of subjective experience and that knowledge can provide an adequate representation of it (Hesse-Biber 2012). Postructuralist theories, such as the work by Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari, had a fundamental role in shaking the one-to-one correspondence between experience and reality. The employment of poststructuralist theories, such as Foucault's, have led some feminist epistemologists to question the direct relation between social reality and knowledge (Haraway 1991;

Heckman 1990; Tanesini 1999).

Tanesini's (1999) comprehensive overview of feminist critiques to analytical epistemology not only provides a good introduction to these debates, but also proposes an epistemology grounded on the conception of knowledge as essentially social and relational. She objects to the idea of knowledge as being something which is possessed,

hence being inextricably connected with an individualist conceptualisation that implies the autonomy of the researcher. She is particularly critical of an understanding of knowledge in terms of representations, seeing it instead as an activity rather than a frame of mind. Hence, by employing the insights of feminist theorists and epistemologists, as well as the postructuralist work of Foucault, Tanesini (1999) questions the positivist reliance on knowledge as truthful representation of what is 'out there', framing instead knowledge production in terms of a 'practice' that has material and political effects.

Furthermore, the clear-cut distinction between subject and object has been contested by feminist researchers, who have asserted the impossibility of removing the researcher from the research process. Feminism has always been vocal of the processes of exclusion inherent in knowledge production (Hesse-Biber 2012). Feminist scientists such as Gilligan (1977) Keller (1985) and Lloyd (1983) have criticised the androcentric bias of traditional research across the disciplines, which has had the effect of neglecting gender as an important category for research, ignoring whole areas of research (such as the private sphere), essentialising gender roles, and employing 'masculine' concepts and frameworks.

This critique gathered more strength during the 1980s, with the challenges to the Second Wave by women of colour. The work by bell hooks (1989, 1991, 1996) is important in this respect, as it shifts attention from the centre (white, male, middle-class, able-bodied) to the margin, conceptualised as 'a space of radical possibility, a space of resistance’ (hooks 1996, p. 52), from which a more accurate observation of social reality might arise.

While I am critical of the idea of certain standpoints being more accurate than others for the development of knowledge, the work by hooks (1996), Harding (1991) and other standpoint feminists point out how experience necessarily colours knowledge and the need to acknowledge it as a valid starting point. However, this can only be a starting point, as it must be constantly subjected to a process of critical revision. As Tanesini (1999) very eloquently summarises:

Starting from experience is a sound starting point of enquiry if it is understood as a matter of starting from a perspective which is inevitably partial and subject to revision [...] We can, thus, admit the existence of multiple standpoints, which can

perhaps be unified [...]. Even if this unification is impossible, the multiplicity of viewpoints need not lead to relativism. We can admit the legitimacy of more than one perspective without claiming that all perspectives are as good as any other (p. 157).

Claiming the partiality of the research findings is to take responsibility for producing a partial view on social reality that can, and should be, integrated and enriched by other situated knowledges. Hence, I acknowledge how my experience influenced the research process, from the research questions I asked at the outset of the project, to the theoretical frameworks and tools I have decided to employ, and finally to the items I decide to focus on for my analysis. This inevitably leads to a partial outlook of the research material;

however, I suggest this does not weaken the project, but enriches it by allowing other perspectives to disagree and differ, hence opening new avenues for further research and debate.

However, it is important to stress that by the term ‘experience’ I do not mean life experience as an individual, but I consider the constructed nature of experience, ‘how subjects are constituted as different in the first place’ (Scott 1992, p. 25). Scott (1992) constructs a very effective critique of the way experience has been used as the starting point of knowledge by several historical analyses. She argues that these accounts tend to understand subjects as pre-existing experience, failing to examine the relationship between discourse, cognition and reality, the importance of one's positioning to the knowledge which is produced, and the effects of difference on this knowledge.

Differently to the authors she critiques, Scott wishes to historicise experience by taking into account the productive force of discourse and how this is implicated in experience.

She convincingly argues:

[s]ubjects are constituted discursively, experience is a linguistic event (it doesn't happen outside of established meanings), but neither is it confined to a fixed order of meaning. Since discourse is by definition shared, experience is collective as well as individual. (Scott 1992, p. 34).

This formulation enables an understanding of experience not as an unmediated relationship between subject and object, words and things, but as intrinsically connected

to categories and identities that circulate in culture. At the same time, it is important to remember that these are never fixed and immutable, but are contextual, contested and contingent.

A final critique to positivist accounts is the one concerning positivism's criteria of objectivity as value-neutrality. Tanesini (1999) argues that '[o]bjectivism is to be understood as value-neutral objectivity, which is the objectivity achieved by the use of reason alone, unaffected by emotions and human interests’ (p. 20). Hence, according to positivism it is vital that any possible influence of the subject on those representations be screened out, which translates into the concept of value-neutrality. Indeed, to take a political stance in relation to the material studied has been regarded with suspicion by scholars committed to value-free research and objective knowledge, arguing that the results of such research would be biased, only confirming the hypothesis of the researcher, hence failing to produce generally valid and authoritative knowledge (Ramazanoğlu & Holland 2002). Feminists, on the other hand, have shown that there is no value-free science and that some values are actually desirable in science (Bleier 1985;

Harding 1987; Haraway 1991). Hence, 'the task is to show how knowledge is possible, not despite value and political engagement, but in part because of them’ (Tanesini 1999, p.

92).

As a consequence of these critiques, the positivist criteria of 'objectivity' and 'universality' not only become impossible to achieve, but might also be undesirable, producing what Haraway (1988) calls 'the gaze from nowhere': the 'gaze that mythically inscribes all the marked bodies, that makes the unmarked category claim to the power to see and not be seen, to represent while escaping representation. This gaze signifies the unmarked position of Man and White’ (Haraway 1988, p. 581). Indeed, writers such as Code (1991), Haraway (1991), hooks (1996) and Collins (1990) have questioned what kind of knowledge has historically been given a privileged position to the detriment of other forms of knowledge or 'subjugated knowledges' (Collins 1990). They have shown how the modernist epistemic position which values objectivity and value-neutrality is not, as a matter of fact, either objective or value-neutral, but constitutes the perspective of those

already powerful in society, resulting in ethnocentric, Eurocentric, gender-blind, class-blind and/or race-blind accounts. Therefore, a positivist approach not only is unable to provide an 'objective' representation of society and of social relations, but actually has the effect of erasing existing power relations.

However, Haraway (1988; 1991) does not deny completely the concept of 'objectivity', but claims instead that 'good research' is produced when researchers acknowledge their social and historical situatedness. Hence, diametrically opposite to the 'gaze from nowhere' she posits the idea of 'embodied' accounts of truth, or 'situated knowledges' (Haraway 1988): the acknowledgement and disclosure that our social positioning influences the research process. From this point of view, the ethical position of the

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