Paul-Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist and literary critic whose theories focused on the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. After a 'classical' philosophical curriculum - a preparatory class, the Ecole Normale Supérieure and an agrégation in philosophy - he published his first major book, Histoire de la folie in 1961. But the work that contributed to his fame was Les mots et les choses, published in 1966, which bears witness to his reflection on structuralism. He became a professor at the Collège de France in 1970 and gave his inaugural lecture: L’ordre du discours.
We tend to say that speech is power. That, as in the Athenian democratic city of the fifth century, the one who can speak is the one who dominates. Speech would therefore have immense power which we could access as soon as we opened our mouths. Some will reproach - and you are probably doing so yourself at this moment while reading this text - this speech for being too superficial, not very reasoned, not very nuanced: in short, not legitimate. This is the complexity of speech, of discourse. What is said must comply with rules of structure, scientificity and morality, otherwise it is not considered audible. Questions about language and its access are paradoxical. In the sense that they are the questions of those who are part of the order of discourse.
Dans toute société la production du discours est à la fois contrôlée, sélectionnée, organisée et redistribuée par un certain nombre de procédures qui ont pour rôle d’en conjurer les pouvoirs et les dangers, d’en maîtriser l’événement aléatoire, d’en esquiver la lourde, la redoutable matérialité.
Since the nineteenth century, the increase in access to higher education and the establishment of a literary industry (with publishing and the press) have allowed the emergence of an imaginary that makes the most noble figure of the intellectual, the one who opposes the economic world and who speaks not to the masses but to a circle of insiders by means of a complicated language containing equally complicated images. We can therefore ask ourselves what criteria we use to judge discourse, in this case literature. Are our discriminations of discourse the result of our own reflection or are they the result of a relationship of domination? But as a reflection is never born ex-nihilo, even if we are opposed to the domination induced, we must reflect on the very foundations of our reflection as being themselves tools of domination or at least the legacy of the dominant.
As we are now in the order of discourse (as academics), we use its rules, its norms. Thus, our criteria of judgement are transmitted to us without our even questioning their legitimacy. Both in its creation and in its dissemination, knowledge is divisive, it is not interested in everything and is not accessible to everyone. We integrate the order in spite of ourselves when we think, speak, criticise, even if we try to escape it. The example of literature is also convincing: I don't read just anything (philosophy, yes, when personal development is just bullshit) according to certain criteria such as the author, the edition, the subject...
Reading L’ordre du discours is necessary in my opinion to become aware of all these things and especially to have an ethical reading of both the world and the books!