Problems of Boundary: Reflections upon the Connections between Discursive and Extradiscursive Orders within French Discourse Analysis

ABSTRACT

French Discourse Analysis (FDA) aroused as a line of analysis when positing that both an intersection between linguistics and history and a link to the theory of ideologies as raised by Althusser are necessary to understand discourse. This proposal unveiled a real theoretical problem concerning the relationship between discourse and its exterior. We will develop such problem taking two proposals for analysis into consideration: one centered on the concept of "interdiscourse" and the other, on the categories of discursive practice and event. Thus, we will consider the tensions and challenges posed by this relation in the conceptual and methodological level.

KEYWORDS:
French Discourse Analysis; Ideology; Discursive; Extradiscursive

RESUMO

A Análise do Discurso Francesa (ADF) nasceu como corrente de análise ao propor, para a compreensão do seu objeto, uma intersecção entre linguística e história e uma união com a teoria das ideologias, tal como foi elaborada por Althusser. Esta proposta inaugurou um verdadeiro problema teórico em torno da relação entre o discurso e o seu exterior. Procuraremos desenvolver este problema retomando duas propostas de análise que, com frequência, travaram uma polêmica no interior da ADF: uma centralizada no conceito de "interdiscurso"; outra, nas categorias de prática e acontecimento discursivos. Assim, refletiremos sobre as tensões e desafios que esta relação estabelece em nível conceitual e metodológico.

PALAVRAS- CHAVE:
Análise do Discurso Francesa; Ideologia; Discursivo; Extradiscursivo

RESUMEN

El Análisis Francés del Discurso (AFD) nació como corriente de análisis al plantear, para la comprensión de su objeto, una intersección entre lingüística e historia y un anudamiento a la teoría de las ideologías, tal como fuera planteada por Althusser. Esta propuesta inauguró un verdadero problema teórico en torno a la relación entre el discurso y su exterior. Buscaremos desarrollar este problema recogiendo dos propuestas de análisis que, a menudo, entablaron una polémica al interior del AFD: una centrada en el concepto de "interdiscurso"; otra, en las categorías de práctica y acontecimiento discursivos. Así, reflexionaremos sobre las tensiones y desafíos que esta relación plantea a nivel conceptual y metodológico.

PALABRAS CLAVE:
Análisis Francés del Discurso; Ideología; Discursivo; Extradiscursivo

Writing is the method of using the word as bait: the word fishing for whatever is not word. When this non-word - between the lines - takes the bait, something has been written.

Clarice Lispector¹

Introduction

Towards the end of the 1960s, many disciplines began to produce conceptual developments concerning the discursive field as the object of analysis of social sciences. These ideas entailed the appearance of new important theoretical, epistemological and methodological concepts, which not only redefined certain methods of history, sociology and even linguistics, but also opened a specific field of research.²

Studying French Discourse Analysis (FDA), a school of analysis³ that emerged in the beginning of the 1970s, we come across a fertile search regarding the construction of discourse as the object of analysis, inscribing it into history (GUILHAUMOU, 2006). The pledge of this theoretical adventure (MALDIDIER, 1992) was to understand discourse in an intersection between linguistics and history, relying on materialism and psychoanalysis. Moreover, the theoretical devising of discourse was based on a convergence with Althusser's theory of ideologies. Hence, discourse was rethought from its specific materiality, not being reduced to its linguistic dimension, which is one of the most significant advantages of these approaches.

In this regard, FDA discussions on the relationship between the discursive and the extradiscursive dimensions were not incidental regarding the definition and conceptualization of discourse itself. We uphold the idea that, since the FDA enterprise has been trying to inscribe discourse into history and to connect it with the processes of ideological interpellation, the problem posed by the extradiscursive dimension has become a problem of inquiry, an essential part of discourse as an object. The extradiscursive field was a problem during the early stages of creation of the FDA, and it continued being a relevant problem in the development of different conceptual movements that began growing towards the 1980s. In our opinion, the relationship between discourse and its exterior still raises a problem due to the fact that, by presenting this constitutional link, FDA studies created a new object of inquiry, rather than resolving a debate when faced with other approaches.

The purpose of this work is to contribute to the analysis of the relationship between the discursive and the extradiscursive fields as a problem in FDA. In the first place, we will go back to what we call the "initial pledge" of this theoretical adventure that laid a common ground of categories that redefined the connection between discourse and its exterior, such as discursive formations and conditions of production. At this initial stage, linking discourse with ideology (MONTERO, 2014) as well as focusing upon the historical creation of the utterances was fundamental (GOLDMAN, 1989). We will identify the characteristics of the relation between discourse and the exterior, along with the problems posed by that perspective.

The subsequent proposals of conceptual and methodological approaches were diverse. Thus, in a further analysis of this work, we will come back to two modalities of addressing the relationship between discourse and ideology as well as the relationship, in more general terms, between discourse and the extradiscursive field, which have started many arguments within FDA.⁴ One is centered on the notion of "interdiscourse"; the other is focused on the concepts of "juncture" and "event." The presentations of the decade of the 1970s evidence dissimilar questions about the link between discourse and its exterior, which indicates the different emphasis placed on the task of conceptualizing discourse. This scenario can be related to the second moment of FDA, which, according to different periodizations, began around the 1980s (MONTERO, 2014; MALDIDIER, 1992; GOLDMAN, 1989). "Enunciation moment" (MONTERO, 2014) or "enunciation studies" (GOLDMAN, 1989) are names that synthesize the shift from inquiry towards the difficulties arising from enunciation and from determining the position subjects are placed within their own discourse. Thus, it is possible to identify a critical revision of the categories established during the previous years as well as the creation of reformulations intended to recognize both the "evental" nature of discourse and the problem of heterogeneity and the other.⁵

The theoretical and methodological proposals we will analyze can be found during the aforementioned transition, since they emerged in the 1970s, and each of them began to make its specific imprint in the following years. We may think, as pointed out by Guilhaumou (2006), that the conceptual shifts brought about a change in the meaning of the terms of the discussion, but had no effect on the places where it occurred. One of them is the relationship between discourse and its exterior, and we will take a closer look at it in the following paragraphs.

1 The Initial Pledge: The Adventure of Discursive Materiality

One of the most valuable developments of the FDA is the new conceptualization of discourse it proposed. Different authors, such as R. Robin (1972, 1986), M. Pêcheux (1975) or J. Courtine (1981), discussed the double reduction operating on discourse as empiricist, formalist and subjectivist approaches prevailed in the academic context: from discourse to language, as an ideologically neutral object, and to code, in its strictly informative function (ROBIN et al., 1972). These authors believed that specific materiality, created by the inscription of effects of sense in history, had to be released from the discursive order.

The emphasis placed on such materiality stimulated the discussion about the purely referential notion of discourse, which considered discursivity as nothing more than a "shop window fogged" by the subjective shapes of language, from where real things could be spied on (PÊCHEUX, 1994). On the other hand, the idea of discourse as a mere surface of inscription of processes taking place out of themselves, deriving their character from a global logic or central nucleus (FOUCAULT, 2008), was also being criticized. In this way, the relationship between discourse and "things" was being substantially affected. "There can be no question of interpreting discourse with a view to writing a history of the referent" (FOUCAULT, 1982, p.47),⁶ nor about extrapolating the logics of other social processes to discourse. The idea is to recognize the essential and mediated relationship between discourse and the extradiscourse.⁷ The referential conceptions or the notion of discourse as a symptom of other social phenomena blocked the problem of discourse and its exterior: the relation of transparency or "symptomization" involved a denial of the discursive as a specific order. When rescuing discourse's own materiality, which consists in the fact that discourse shapes the objects about which it "speaks," and, therefore, produces effects, the relation with non-discursive social processes became problematic.

The theory that objects are formed within discourse led to the assertion that meaning is not unequivocally determined by the correlation between words and referents, but by the net woven between utterances. This was a theoretical nodal breakdown. Thus, we arrived at the notion of discursive formation (DF), also taken from Foucault. He believes discourse is a regulated order: objects, types of utterances, concepts and thematic choices follow anonymous rules of formation within discourse, and regularities can be identified from these rules. A DF is a set of utterances that follow a determined principle of distribution (appearance, succession, repetition, transformation). In this order, discourse would not be considered as synonym of everything that has been said/written, but rather "a constructed object, different from the empiric sequence" (MALDIDIER, 1992, p.204),⁸ constituted by means of regulating what is said/thought and the unsaid. Then, an intimate link between "[...] what is being said 'here' (at a precise place in a text) - said in such a way and no other - [and] what is being said elsewhere and in another way" was established "in order to be able to 'hear' the presence of the 'unsaid' within what is said (PÊCHEUX, 1988, p.643).⁹

Relating Foucault's category of DF to Althusser's concept of ideology led to its revision (ROBIN et al., 1972; PÊCHEUX; FUCHS, 1975; MALDIDIER, 1986, 1992). The purpose was to restore the relationship between discursive processes and the development of social formations in the framework of a perspective of totality¹⁰ that placed the discursive order within the region of superstructures. According to Althusser (1976, 1988), ideological relationships are immediately present in the production and circulation processes, and they exert effective determinations over the final determination of the economic base. In this sense, Pêcheux and Fuchs indicated that "it is not enough to consider the ideological superstructure as an expression of the 'economic base', as if [...] it were made of the 'sphere of ideas' above the world of things, of economic facts" (1975, p.10; emphasis added).¹¹

Therefore, the concept of ideology was closely related to discourse and its materiality: ideologies were not conceived as an expression of a false conscience, the production of a free subject, or as a transcendental system coming from class structure. What mattered about ideologies was their role as social forces in struggle (ROBIN et al., 1972). It is possible to think that the conceptualization of discourse was full of these premises shaping ideology. The identification of these materialities warned us about the risk of a transitive and mechanistic analysis of the relationships between social formation, ideology, and discourse (ROBIN et al., 1972).

Under this reasoning, discourse did not identify with ideology or reduced itself to it, but it was one of its material aspects:

Ideological formations¹² [...] necessarily entail one or more interlinked discursive formations as a component, which determine what can and must be said [...] in a certain relationship of positions within an ideological apparatus and inscribed on a class relation (PÊCHEUX; FUCHS, 1975, p.11).¹³

The formation system of discursive objects would no longer refer to anonymous rules from the dynamics of discourse, as in Foucault, but rather to the process of ideological interpellation in a society traversed by class conflict. In this way, the subject of the enunciation became more complex, since he stopped being a guarantor of the meaning of its own discourse, to find himself marked by his class position, by the processes of ideological interpellation and by his own subconscious.¹⁴

The link to the theory of ideologies allowed for the reintroduction of discourse in the dynamics of social and economic formations, which clearly exposed the problem of its articulation with extradiscourse (ROBIN et al., 1972). Hence, a fundamental idea emerged within this initial pledge: the idea of "condition of production." By displacing the subject and the situation of enunciation in the understanding of discourse, this category turned out to be essential for "dismantling" discourse in its evident character and scrutinizing the constitutive discursive formations, imbricated in ideological formations. The conditions of production comprised different levels of formation of discursive processes, integrating from conditions referring to the enunciation to methods of formation starting from networks of utterances.¹⁵

The inversion of the referential and mechanistic conceptions of discourse, which lead us to consider that objects were formed within discursive processes, allowed for the questioning of the relation with the exterior of discourse. The problem of the discursive order in its relationship with extra-linguistic processes was essential for its reconceptualization as a theoretical object. The emphasis on its materiality was the spearhead to think the link to its exterior. In fact, it involves an "interior" constitutively linked to its "exterior," because the processes of discursive formation do not follow an autonomous or immanent logic. They are inscribed on the social totality, tied together with the ideological processes and struggles. We say this relationship becomes problematic because, initially, the authors refused to consider it as immediate or deterministic.

The approaches we will examine below propose different ways of mediation between these two orders. The analytic mediations present a significant complexity, considering the diverse "exteriors" of the discursive order involved in its own creation. A level of exteriority is the one of language itself that, as a structure, presents a relative autonomy concerning the ideological functioning and shapes discourse (COURTINE, 1981). Moreover, processes of struggle and ideological ones, as well as relations of force, are tied together with discursive formations. But in what way? Through which mechanisms? Finally, another series of social processes, such as economic, political and cultural ones, is closely related to the unfolding of ideological struggles. Is it possible to figure out a mediation area between them and discourses?

On the other hand, the conceptualization on the type of relationship between discourse and these various "exteriors" became more complex when confronted with two main issues: the notions of historical time and subject. The homogeneity and continuity of historical time was questioned by these initial conceptualizations. They inscribed the utterances on networks of formulations produced in dissimilar conditions and heterogeneous temporalities. The resulting register of historicity set out a present time inhabited by other acting temporalities. Besides, the subject, thought of as divided, "dominated" by ideology and the subconscious, proved to be decentered on his saying.¹⁶ This series of problems focused on the tension between the level of the intradiscourse¹⁷ and the one of the interdiscourse and the extradiscourse. In the following paragraphs, we will examine two proposed different ways of "solving" or addressing such tensions.

2 "Interdiscourse": Between Initial Formulations and Displacements of Meaning¹⁸

The concept of "interdiscourse" is a key part of the theoretical and methodological plan suggested by Pêcheux to address the process of formation of discourses in relation to ideology. Along his work, several displacements of meaning have taken place around this category that separates the most systematic productions of the decade of the 1970s from those elaborated since the 1980s (GLOZMAN; MONTERO, 2010; MONTERO, 2014).

At first, interdiscourse was a domain created from the articulation of different discursive formations. It does not involve a juxtaposition or confrontation between discourses, for they are not placed in symmetric positions from which they can refer to each other. Instead, relationships between the many DFs are structured upon their contradictions, and these determine the dominance of one relationship over the other.¹⁹ Therefore, the forms of "articulation" can be understood as relationships of antagonism, alliance, absorption, etc. Thus, in its earliest formulations, the defining feature of interdiscourse is being a complex and articulated whole, contradictory and unequal, of discursive formations (GLOZMAN; MONTERO, 2010). This whole shapes the elements of a certain DF from the outside.

Since a DF delimits what is said/thought and what cannot be formulated, the "lacks" within it refer to the relationships the DF has with other discursive formations in terms of confrontation, subsumption, alliance, etc. Accordingly, "a discursive formation is constitutively bordered by what is outside of it, hence, by what remains strictly unsayable since it determines it" (PÊCHEUX; FUCHS, 1975, p.21; emphasis in original).²⁰ Interdiscourse is formed by discourses whose interlocutor has been forgotten, which form the specific exterior of a discursive process, for they are "the real cause of lack of that discursive process" (GLOZMAN; MONTERO, 2010, p.85)²¹ The unsayable constitutes what cannot be said because it dominates what has been said. Interdiscourse is configured as an evidence due to its exterior and previous nature, and that is the reason why it cannot be conceived or even distinguished within the inside of discourse.

Interdiscourse is a concept of mediation between discursive and ideological formations. The relationships of inequality, subordination and contradiction that exist between different discursive formations refer to the relationships established between ideological formations into which they are inscribed. As pointed out by Glozman and Montero (2010), interdiscourse is structured as a complex whole in dominance of discursive formations, just as the complex whole of ideological formations is articulated, making a parallelism between these two levels. As we have already mentioned in the previous paragraph, the notion of ideology is closely related to the definition of discourse: both have their own materiality, produce effects, subjects, institutions, practices, and they connect with other social processes. Accordingly, the authors argue that in these initial formulations "the concept of interdiscourse is overdetermined by the 'complex whole' of ideological formations" (GLOZMAN; MONTERO, 2010, p.95).²² The mechanisms of articulation between levels are not entirely determined, but rather enlightened by this parallelism.

Based on these formulations, interdiscourse is configured as a domain that cannot be grasped, except for its effects. As noted by Montero, "interdiscourse is linguistically crystallized in the figure of the preconstructed, syntactic structures (...) that become the "traces of previous constructions (...)" (MONTERO, 2014, p.251).²³ Interdiscourse is the "place" where objects are constituted. Not only does the interlocutor appropriate these objects to turn them into objects of his own discourse, but he also weaves the "thread" that links these objects and gives coherence and linearity to the formulated sequence. Interdiscourse refers to the evidences the subject uses to order his discourse and link objects, as if they were already present there beforehand (COURTINE, 1981).

In such a way, enunciation was redefined as "a series of successive determinations by which the utterance is little by little constituted and that is characterized by postulating the 'said' and then rejecting the 'unsaid'" (PÊCHEUX; FUCHS, 1975, p.18; emphasis in original).²⁴ Pêcheux and Fuchs believed the "illusion" that the subject was a guarantor of meaning of his own saying is an ideological effect that conceals the ideological interpellation and the link between what is said and interdiscourse. As a consequence, two orders were distinguished: the one of enunciative processes, in which the subject unconsciously²⁵ takes hold of the objects present in interdiscourse, and the order of the processes of discourse formation, governed by interdiscourse, which cannot be linguistically grasped and undistinguishable by what is said, since it organizes and links its elements. Thus, interdiscourse acquired "a theoretical status, similar to that of the subconscious or of ideology" (GLOZMAN; MONTERO, 2010, p.81).²⁶

Pêcheux's later works from the 1980s introduced some changes in this proposal. Maldidier (1992) argued that the theoretical framework designed upon the conceptualizations of DF and interdiscourse had created an illusion of closed totality, which was reviewed afterwards. It was criticized that "under the governance of both the dominant ideology and interdiscourse, meaning is constructed in the discursive formation behind the subject's back, who, ignorant of the hold ideology has on him, thinks he owns his discourse [...]" (MALDIDIER, 1992, p.208; emphasis added).²⁷ Then, a characteristic of the outline was revised: that of being closed in on itself, which originated from the notion of paraphrastic meaning, from the dominance of what cannot be said over the utterance, of what has already been said over what can be said.

As the participation of the subject was revised, the register of historicity forged by the concept of interdiscourse, which meant that what had already been said governed enunciation, was also criticized. In this regard, Pêcheux stated that

One should not pretend that any discourse would be a miraculous aerolite, independent of networks of memory and the social trajectories within which it erupts. But the fact that should be stressed here is that a discourse, by its very existence, marks the possibility of a destructuring-restructuring of these networks and trajectories. Any given discourse is the potential sign of a movement within the sociohistorical filiations of identification, inasmuch as it constitutes, at the same time, a result of these filiations and the work (1988, p.648; emphasis added).²⁸

This self-criticism reached the concept of DF that, according to Pêcheux,

has too often drifted toward the ideas of a discursive machine of subjection fitted with an internal semiotic structure and therefore bound to be repetitive. [...] this structural conception of discursivity would lead to an obliteration of the event through its absorption in anticipatory overinterpretation (1988, p.648; emphasis added)²⁹

Interdiscourse prevailed in the author's works, but after such revision it was linked to the networks of memory into which utterances are inscribed, and that, apart from its repetitive nature, govern its transformation and forgetting. Henceforth, interdiscourse became accessible by means of "a series of connections of legible signs that constitute a sociohistorical body of traces" (PÊCHEUX, 1990, p.90).³⁰ This led to a juxtaposition with the notion of discursive memory, which, in turn, lightened the density of discursive formations as a stable and structured whole, when it was established that meaning always carries out transformations on itself in an "indefinite relaunch of interpretations" (PÊCHEUX, 2013, p.16).³¹ Thus, the idea of discursive formations as closed structures became unstable, and it opened up a greater space for the discursive agency (MALDIDIER, 1992), the event and the reflexive nature of discursivity.

As outlined by Glozman and Montero (2010), the exterior, previous and constitutive nature of interdiscourse was maintained, but the sense of complex totality, articulated by contradiction, lost its clarity. The authors explain that, when this totality nature was lost, the link to the complex whole of ideological formations was diminished, which only reaffirmed the capacity of an utterance of changing its meaning. Therefore, they come to the conclusion that the destabilization of the ultimate determination of ideological formations was what made the reformulation of interdiscourse possible.

Upon this brief overview, we can account for the importance of interdiscourse in the conceptualization of the discursive order and its relation with the ideological in Pêcheux's work. The reason is that discursive formations are created from a complexity of relations they have with each other, organized by the contradictions between the ideological formations of which they are part. Thus, what is said in a historical moment cannot be dissociated from the ideological processes and struggles that are also part of what is thought. On the other hand, interdiscourse conceives a "vertical" formation of discourses: they are historically created from their relationship with utterances already made, repeating, transforming, omitting, or forgetting them. As a result, current discourse is inscribed into a historical web of discourses already said and in a certain position as regards the ideological apparatuses of a given society. When shedding light on the relations of contradiction between discourses, interdiscourse allows us to think of the ideological conflicts traversing them.

Initially, interdiscourse had a role of "mediation" between discourse and ideology not because mediation was a concept of "intermediate" scale, but due to the fact that it could delimit a border area where they could interlace. We refer to a "border" since the mechanisms of articulation between discourse and ideology were not properly identified. The introduction of both categories was possible because discourse was organized as such from the relations of contradiction organizing the positions among ideological formations. Therefore, the effect interdiscourse has on the creation of discourses is silent, almost impossible to grasp in its linguistic correlate.

The continuous and silent presence of interdiscourse posed two risks. The first one was that the subject's submission to ideology, and interdiscourse was not structured as something to explain, but rather it constituted an assumption within the functioning of interdiscourse. Secondly, current discourse could be interpreted in terms of "paraphrastic" relations with utterances already made, and historic constitution could be assimilated into repetition modalities of the elements assigned to a DF. Thus, the juncture could be understood in terms of what was historically constructed, instead of what was potentially emerging. Moreover, the individual subject -but we could also think of collective subjects- had no place in these processes of discourse formation. His place was in the processes of "formulation" that, according to the forms of conceptualization we have been reconstructing, run the risk of being conceived as continuous "reformulation." In this sense, criticisms voiced by historians of the FDA, which we will study in the following section, must be heard: this way of addressing discourse had the risk of taking ideology for granted, basing empirical studies on hypothesis about historiographical or sociological research that had not been problematized.

The subsequent reformulations of the concept took into account this problematic issue and altered the regime of historicity as well as the type of participation of individual and collective subjects in the configuration of the discursive order. The juxtaposition of the category of interdiscourse with the one of discursive memory shifted the focus onto the effects of memory in the constitution of discourse (of enunciative modalities as well as utterances). On the basis of this idea, the interdiscursive order went from being defined as a complex whole to being referred to as networks of memory that can be grasped by linguistic traces. It should be noted that the definition of interdiscourse as a complex whole made possible the establishment of functioning analogous to the complex whole of ideological formations. Hence, the movement towards the definition of "networks" dissolved the intersection with the ideological order. Although the inscription of the discursive order in the ideological processes was not a central concept to be reformulated, there were no new analytical mediations addressing such relation.

However, the concept of interdiscourse opened a fertile line of inquiry into the historical constitution of discourse, identifying the different threads of historicity that converge in it and make discourse an object with its own density.

3 Focus on the Discursive Practice: The Scale of the Juncture and the Event

We come across other types of problematization regarding the link between ideologies and the discursive order, in which the categories of "discursive practice" and "juncture" became central. They were established by a group of historians in the framework of the FDA, such as R. Robin, J. Guilhaumou, and D. Maldidier.

They emphasized that the theorization of the discursive order based on ideology, history and linguistics brought many problems that each of these disciplines had been addressing (ROBIN et al., 1972). As to history, the question at issue was related to the "status of historical discourse, its relation with a social formation and, in particular, with the ideological instance and its relation with a linguistic synchrony" (ROBIN et al., 1972, p.117).³² From linguistics, the problem referred to the status of discourse and to "the problems caused by the exclusion and the need to bring back everything that was called 'extralinguistic'" (ROBIN et al., 1972, p.117).³³ In sum, it involves all the problems with which we have been dealing.

Robin, Normand and Maldidier (1972) questioned the place of the utterance in the conceptualization of discourse. On the one hand, they took up the limit established by the FDA concerning purely enunciative perspectives that prioritized the situation of utterances as determinant of discursive processes. Thus, they noticed the relevance of the determinations of the subject's saying through ideology, class, language, the subconscious. However, they also discussed that those determinations denied the constant intervention of the subject in his own discourse. The process of enunciation revealed both the discursive agency of subjects and the importance the signifier had in the processes of ideological interpellation. Therefore, it was necessary to include it in the conceptualization of discourse.

Consequently, they realized that certain categories of the FDA had limitations to develop that perspective on the discursive order. This led the authors to a critical assessment of Foucault's categories brought back by the FDA, trying to identify and overcome certain conceptual reductions to think the relationship between the discursive and the extradiscursive orders, between a historical formation of discourse and a linguistic synchrony. They believed that, when Foucault mentioned history, he pointed out the necessary relation between discursive and non-discursive practices. But he did it using general concepts, which left no place for an analytical translation to guide the research work. In this sense, the risk was not only to think that the rules of the discursive order were internal but also that it would acquire a self-generated dynamics. On the other hand, Foucault had omitted the linguistic level and the materiality of the signifier, since he believed utterances were formed on the edge of language. A final reduction, according to the authors, was the implied refusal to recognize causalities, arising from the predominance of the description in the archaeological proposal of the author.

As a result, the authors suggested redefining the notion of discursive practice offered by Foucault by including the interaction with the extralinguistic in it. Furthermore, the concept of DF also had to be able to address the relationship between discursive events and extradiscursive determinations (institutions, social and economic relations, etc.) in order to establish how to explain discursive processes and not just to describe them. In their opinion, discursive formations were created by the principles of articulation between the discursive and the extradiscursive orders, since they were formations that shaped practices within specific social institutions.

In the aforementioned work, they also entered into a discussion with Pêcheux. Analyzing his model of analysis, they found that in the processes of production of meaning, the subject was a bearer or effect (of ideology), rather than an agent. They criticized the power of interdiscourse over the border between what is said and what is not said. Finally, they believed this transition could be explained by identifying the subject of the utterance with the position of the subject of the ideological formation into which the DF is inscribed. In this regard,

The notion of utterance has been completely rethought and reformulated: we are talking about processes by which the 'speaking subject' situates himself with respect to the representations he bears -representations that are put together by means of the linguistically analyzable 'preconstructed' (Pêcheux, 1978)" (ROBIN et al., 1975, p.138; emphasis added).³⁴

The main criticism about Pêcheux's conceptual framework was the loss of substance of the discursive practices, by their assembling to the complex of ideological practices. "That is not the price we will pay to make the theory of discourse enter the historical materialism," they concluded (ROBIN et al., 1975, p.138).³⁵

The authors considered that the notion of "discursive practices" was attached to the definition of discourse as a social practice, resulting from "the rules of its internal organization and the rules of its relation with other discursive and nondiscursive practices" (ROBIN et al., 1972, p.129).³⁶ They took up the productions in the field of FDA to conceive these determinations, maintaining the articulating category of complex social totality. However, they recognized an open challenge: "The whole problem here is precisely thinking about the status of this need" (ROBIN et al., 1972, p.130).³⁷ The authors believed that the determinations of the discursive practices -socially regulated and institutionalized- could not be purely discursive.

Even though the aforementioned text does not present a complete and thorough proposal regarding the challenges we have already discussed, it is possible to notice a gravitation of the enunciative processes in the configuration of the discursive order that is different from the one assumed in the theorization of interdiscourse. Certainly, the bond between the discursive and the extradiscursive orders was also being altered, by criticizing the notions of practice and DF. The need to link the historical with the synchronic as well as the subject's determinations and its discursive agency became more essential.

Subsequently, Robin (1976) coined the notion of "juncture effect" to think of the relations between the discursive and the extradiscursive orders. Instead of analyzing them in terms of "covariations," the author suggested connecting the discursive practices to the relations of forces produced within the hegemonic apparatuses of a social formation in a certain juncture. Nonetheless, she pointed out that such juncture is not perceived in discourse, but rather through a series of effects: the effect of "the real," the effect of "identification" on the basis of signifiers linked to the juncture, and the effect of unawareness/recognition. The juncture, understood as the unit of the contradictions of a social formation at a specific time, imposes a series of restrictions to the practices -ideological, of power, linguistic, textual-, from which these effects appear. The juncture works and inscribes itself into discourse -and vice versa (HAIDAR, 2000). Thus, such category is established as a level of intermediation between the processes of enunciation and the notions of discursive and ideological formation.

Moreover, Guilhaumou and Maldidier (1986) systematized another work perspective, which Robin shared in some of her works (1986). They said that it was necessary to highlight that certain historical facts are constructed in a combination of the long-term and the events. Thus, they could only be apprehended by confronting archival series and reduced systems of production, circulation, and text reading. The authors suggested a particular method of reading archives in order to account for discursive emergencies in particular junctures. This method entailed the reconstruction of a thematic route linked to discursive events, the work with cotext and the moment of analysis in corpus.

The idea of a thematic route is closely related to that of event. A discursive event emerges as such in a horizon of expectations or a set of "possibilities" for each historical situation, accomplishing one of those possibilities and inscribing the theme in referential position. The discursive event is not about the "news fact," nor about the designations it acquires, but it "must be understood in the consistency of utterances forming a network at a given time" (GUILHAUMOU; MALDIDIER, 1986, p.44).³⁸ The study of the "thematic route" consisted in accounting for the textual configurations that associate one event to another, based on the knowledge of the rhetoric traditions, the forms of writing and the social uses of language. In here, the discursive event follows a configurational nonstructural logic: both in its emergence and in its nature as a producer of arguments and judgments.

The reconstruction of the thematic route was followed by the work with the "cotext," understood as the disposition of utterances referring to the widest viewpoint on the topic, from which it is possible to identify linguistic recurrences. If the designing of the thematic route is a comprehensive operation, the moment of the cotext introduces a perspective of global understanding and the possibility of constructing the discursive object from the analyzed recurrences. Therefore, the series of textual and historical descriptions, material of the final moment of analysis in corpus, would open up - a privileged moment to establish "[...] a relationship with the materiality of language, with history, with what is real [...] centered on the evidence of the link between discursive strategies and relations of force in a given juncture" (GUILHAUMOU; MALDIDIER, 1986, p.47).³⁹

These productions show us that, despite the continuity of the ideological order as a region into which the discursive order is inscribed, the forms of relation between both orders were presented in a way that differed from the one regarding interdiscourse. In the first place, the "discursive practice" is the axis that articulates these orders: the determinants of discourse as practice are what allow us to approach the modality in which ideology models discourse. It involves determinants that are not strictly discursive, but that inscribe themselves into the juncture and the institutions within which discourses are created. With the purpose of apprehending these determinants acting in a certain juncture, categories of intermediate scale of analysis and observation emerged, such as the institutions and ideological apparatuses of the State. Along that same line, emphasis was laid on the need to identify the forces in confrontation around specific discursive events, which would make possible mapping the dynamics of the conflict between classes and fractions of classes. The reference to the ideological order was not presented by the complex of ideological formations, but by these institutionalized social practices and the relations of force and confrontation within the ideological apparatuses.

Furthermore, there is another perspective upon the register of historicity and the participation of subjects. The focus on the formation of utterances is based on the category of discursive event and its relation with the juncture, conceiving a shorter period of time as a measure of analysis that could be combined with other long-term historical series in the end. The change in scale produced a change in the field, which sought for a greater opening of the discursive agency. The aim was to describe the constitution of discourse from social, political, economic and ideological processes of the extradiscursive order.

The incorporation of the discursive agency to the analysis was not followed by a relaxation of the ideological determination. It was introduced as a characteristic of every process of submission. The proposed sequence of thematic route/cotext/moment of the corpus examined relationships between utterances not on the basis of the concept of interdiscourse, but took into account the effects of the relations of conflict in a series of discursive events. Finally, establishing a mediated link between discourse and its exteriors enabled the protection of a strictly linguistic dimension of inquiry, which, in turn, increased the importance of the enunciative modalities and signifiers in the proposed analytical tools.

Conclusions and Questions

After the revision carried out, we can reaffirm our starting point: the conceptualizations about discourse offered by FDA see the problematizations of the relation with its exterior as an "edge." We have noticed that such "exterior" cannot be easily understood. On the contrary, we have placed emphasis on "exteriors" of different nature and various forms of "articulation" and "mediation" at the expense of a mechanical causality.

Addressing the theoretical problems caused by the forms of such relation involves a theoretical and epistemological dimension. The debate and reformulations have revolved around the regimens of historicity and the problem of the subject's agency. How can we conjugate the historical configuration of discourse and its moment as practice? How can we integrate the determinations of such practice with the capacity of agency and reflexivity? One has to confront these classic problems of social theory especially when trying to analyze discourse from the viewpoint of the social formations in which they are produced.

Since the problem to which these questions refer involves the analytical mediations, it is necessary to mention that the scales of analysis at stake determine another channel through which the differences between the two approaches are recognized. While interdiscourse is a structure delimited by "long-term" processes, the intention of the "juncture" is to study an event as the result of a configurational logic. The possibility of combining both proposals does not consist in choosing different scales of analysis, since they are not an interchangeable lens to apprehend social processes. Choosing them allows for the emergence of dissimilar conceptual issues about a same object (REVEL, 2011).

In this regard, the articulation between both proposals remains a concept opened to inquiry. At first, it would necessarily involve an epistemological and theoretical consideration of the limits for its compatibility. The reformulation of interdiscourse over the idea of discursive memory may entail possibilities of approximation. On the other hand, setting up a play of scales (REVEL, 2011) could also be a theoretical and methodological channel to explore, combining archival series of different temporalities. Without seeking to exhaust the discursive phenomena, we can commit ourselves to the search of conceptual categories of a problematic and reflective nature.

• 1
  LISPECTOR, C. Água Viva. Translated by Stefan Tobler. New York: New Directions, 2012, p.15.
• 2
  Within the linguistic field, these problematizations had several precedents, from the works of Saussure, Bakhtin and Voloshinov (ROBIN, 1986; MONTERO, 2016).
• 3
  FDA could be thought of as a research program, since it designed a theoretical, methodological and investigative pledge, unifying certain elements that will be explained in the following section. Furthermore, in 1982, the creation of an interdisciplinary project was the institutional expression of the FDA, with prior antecedents: the RCP (Recherche Coopérative Programée) - ADELA (Analyse de Dioscours et Lecture D' Archive). Finally, this perspective contributed to the creation of a disciplinary field with objects, research questions, and its own methods (MONTERO, 2014).
• 4
  Our interest in addressing both proposals aroused from identifying a controversy between them in several issues of the Langages magazine, which we have taken up for this work.
• 5
  These transformations were situated during a reshaping of the academic field, triggered by the return to the subject and the challenging of the comprehensive positivities (MALDIDIER, 1992). Pêcheux (2013) referred to them in terms of the collapse of French political structuralism.
• 6
  FOUCAULT, M. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.
• 7
  In that regard, Aguilar et al. (2014) delve into these two conceptions about discourse, which FDA helped discuss. They refer to them as liberal/idealistic and mechanistic theories (or ideologies). The former understand discourse as the production of subjects, considering them as responsible for its enunciation, whereas the latter believe that the dynamics and meaning of discourse derive from a homogeneous and single principle, external to discourse.
• 8
  No English version of the text has been found. Source text: "un objeto construido, distinto del encadenamiento empírico."
• 9
  PÊCHEUX, M. Discourse: Structure or Event? Translated by Warren Montag. In: NELSON, C.; GROSSBERG, L. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988, pp.633-650.
• 10
  Such perspective was influenced by the notion of "complex totality" proposed by Althusser. This concept was a global effect structured by the accumulation of unequal contradictions and the relations of overdetermination that develop in a certain juncture. The dominance of a contradiction over the others cannot be deduced beforehand, but from the empiric analysis of the juncture in question.
• 11
  No English version of the text has been found. In its source language: "Il est insuffisant de considérer la superstructure idéologique comme l'expression de 'la base économique', comme si l'idéologie était constituée par la 'sphère des idées' au-dessus du monde des choses, des faits économiques (...)."
• 12
  Pêcheux and Fuchs (1975) define ideological formations as the configuration acquired by a force capable of confronting other forces, from an assembly of attitudes and representations in the ideological juncture of a certain society. This confrontation is related to class positions.
• 13
  Source text: "Les formations idéologiques [...] comportent nécessairement comme une de leurs composantes une ou plusieurs formations discursives inter-reliées qui déterminent ce qui peut et doit être dit (...) dans un certain rapport de places intérieur à un appareil idéologique et inscrit dans un rapport de classes."
• 14
  The issue of the subject of discourse is extensively developed by Robin et. al (1972), Pêcheux and Fuchs (1975), Courtine (1981), Ducrot (1990), Authier-Revuz (1990).
• 15
  In that regard, referring to Courtine (1981) is essential. He was the one who systematized the conceptualization of the conditions of production. Due to the specificity of his proposal, we have not been able to include him within the scope of this work.
• 16
  Could the subconscious be considered as a level of exteriority regarding the discursive order? As to the conditions of production of discourse, Pêcheux mentioned the imaginary formations intervening in their constitution, which refers to a subjective and imaginary level that operates in the creation and from the exterior.
• 17
  According to Courtine (1981), intradiscourse refers to a specific discursive sequence, to the terminal state of discourse, which manifests a visible and horizontal coherence among formed elements.
• 18
  It is not our intention to conduct an extensive revision of Pêcheux's notion of interdiscourse, but to present a brief explanation of its implications regarding the problem of the relation between discourse and its exterior. For such a research, we refer to the work of Glozman and Montero (2010), who propose a reading tied to the storyline of their works.
• 19
  Their constitution involves the analogous process of uneven development of the contradictions proposed by Althusser (1976) to think of a complex totality.
• 20
  Source text: "Une formation discursive est constituée-bordée par ce qui lui est extérieur, donc par ce qui y est strictement informulable puisqu'il la détermin [...]."
• 21
  The article has been published in Spanish. In its original version: "la causa real de las ausencias de ese proceso discursivo."
• 22
  Source text: "La noción de interdiscurso está sobredeterminada por el 'todo complejo' de las formaciones ideológicas."
• 23
  The article has been published in Spanish. In its original version: "el interdiscurso aparece cristalizado lingüísticamente en la figura del preconstruido, estructuras sintácticas (...) que constituyen las 'huellas de construcciones anteriores (...).'"
• 24
  Source text: "[...] Une série de déterminations successives par lesquelles l'énoncé se constitue peu à peu, et qui ont pour caractéristique de poser le 'dit' et donc de rejeter le 'non-dit.'"
• 25
  Pêcheux explains the way subjects access the discursive formation processes from the categories of subconscious and preconscious. For more information in that regard, see Pêcheux and Fuchs (1975) and the theory of two "forgettings." This theory is clearly explained by Glozman and Montero (2010) and Aguilar et al. (2014).
• 26
  Source text: "Un estatus teórico semejante al del inconsciente o al de la ideología."
• 27
  Source text: "Bajo la dominación de la ideología dominante y del interdiscurso, el sentido se constituye en la formación discursiva a espaldas del sujeto que, ignorante de su sujetamiento por la ideología, se cree dueño de su discurso [...]."
• 28
  For reference, see footnote 9.
• 29
  For reference, see footnote 9.
• 30
  No English version of the text has been found. In its original language: "[...] séries de tissus d'indices lisibles, constituant un corps sociohistorique des traces."
• 31
  Source text: "Relanzamiento indefinido de interpretaciones."
• 32
  No English version of the text has been found. In its original language: "Le statut du discours historique, son rapport à une formation sociale, et en particulier à l'instance idéologique, et son rapport à une synchronie linguistique."
• 33
  Source text: "Les problèmes posés par l'exclusion et la nécessité de réintégration de tout ce qui fut appelé 'extra-linguistique.'"
• 34
  Source text: "La notion d'énonciation se trouve totalement repensée et reformulée: il s'agit des processus par lesquels '... le 'sujet parlant' prend position par rapport aux représentations dont il est le support, ces représentations se trouvant réalisées par du 'préconstruit' linguistiquement analysable.'"
• 35
  Source text: "Ce n'est qu'à ce prix qu'on fera entrer la théorie du discours dans le matérialisme historique."
• 36
  Source text: "Les règles de son organisation interne et les règles de son articulation aux autres pratiques discursives et aux pratiques non discursives."
• 37
  Source text: "Tout le problème est ici précisément de penser le statut de cette nécessité."
• 38
  No English version of the text has been found. In its original language: "Il est à saisir dans la consistance d'énoncés qui font réseau à un moment donné."
• 39
  Source text: "[...] rapport à la matérialité de la langue, à l'histoire, au réel, (...) avant tout dans la mise en évidence de stratégies discursives liées à des rapports de force dans une conjoncture donnée."
• Translated by Aimé Flores - [e-mail]

REFERÊNCIAS

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  May-Aug 2017

History

• Received
  04 Nov 2016
• Accepted
  20 Mar 2017