Discursive Psychology: Discourse analysis in and against psychology

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Discursive Psychology Discourse analysis in
and against psychology
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• There are dark forces at work, of which we know
  nothing
• Elisabeth R. II (attrib.)

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• There are dark forces at work, of which we know
  nothing
• Elisabeth R. II (attrib.)

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psychology

• gaze directed at those outside the discipline who
  are assumed to be non-psychologists who are
  routinely deceived and misrepresented
• reduces phenomena to the level of the individual,
  and this reduction proceeds both downwards from
  the level of social processes and upwards from
  the level of physiological functions
• reproduces an abstracted model of behavioural
  sequences and cognitive mechanisms in which each
  individual is assumed to operate as a miniature
  version of the operational forms that define
  positivist investigation
• pretends to merely describe human activity, but
  this description requires a degree of declared or
  surreptitious interpretation that prescribes a
  correct version of events
• subscribes to a form of objectivity, fake
  neutrality which obscures the enduring role of
  personal, institutional and political stakes in
  the formulation of research questions.

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critique

• How is psychology produced as a commonsensical
  resource for individuals to make sense of
  themselves and others and of possibilities for
  changing social conditions?
• How are social processes reproduced and
  maintained at the level of interpersonal
  interaction and individual experience, at the
  level of psychology?
• How are patterns of activity structured to
  replicate power relations regardless of and even
  despite the immediate intentions of an individual
  psychology?
• How can theoretical articulation of the place of
  individual psychology and social structure be
  developed to provide some critical distance from
  ideology?
• How can research into the political functions of
  psychology operate in such a way as to maintain
  a degree of autonomy of activity and experience
  from political interference?

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Darkness
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• You are in black darkness and confusion.
• You have been hugger-muggered and
• carom-shotted into a war,
• and you know nothing about it.
• You know nothing about the forces that caused it,
  
• or you know next to nothing.
• You are not to win this war.
• You cannot win this war.

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• You are in black darkness and confusion.
• You have been hugger-muggered and
• carom-shotted into a war,
• and you know nothing about it.
• You know nothing about the forces that caused it,
  
• or you know next to nothing.
• You are not to win this war.
• You cannot win this war.

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• hugger-muggered

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• hugger-muggered
• 15th-16th century English huddle conceal

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• carom-shotted

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• carom-shotted
• (Billiards), Spanish carambola trick ruse

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Everyday Conversation

• A false opposition is often set up between
  interviews and naturally-occurring conversation

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• (i) focus on the use made of psychology in the
  public domain
• (ii) focus on the reproduction of the conditions
  in which psychological explanations come to
  assume importance

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• You are in black darkness and confusion.
• You have been hugger-muggered and
• carom-shotted into a war,
• and you know nothing about it.
• You know nothing about the forces that caused it,
  
• or you know next to nothing.
• You are not to win this war.
• You cannot win this war.

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• F.I.A.T, Opus Dei
• You are in black darkness and confusion.
• You have been hugger-muggered and
• carom-shotted into a war,
• and you know nothing about it.
• You know nothing about the forces that caused it,
  
• or you know next to nothing.
• You are not to win this war.
• You cannot win this war.

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opus dei
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opus dei
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opus dei
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Interpersonal Interaction

• focus on interpersonal interaction is still at
  the expense of analysis of broader power relations

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• (iii) show how power relations are reiterated in
  the interpersonal realm
• (iv) show how ostensibly individual processes are
  mobilised by wider networks of power

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opus dei
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opus dei
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Formal Sequences

• meaningful context is usually wiped out of the
  analysis as part of an attempt to avoid an appeal
  to the real meaning intended by social actors

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• (v) show how formal devices are injected with
  particular content
• (vi) show how formal devices are resignified in
  different social contexts

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opus dei
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opus dei
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• You are in black darkness and confusion.
• You have been hugger-muggered and
• carom-shotted into a war,
• and you know nothing about it.
• You know nothing about the forces that caused it,
  
• or you know next to nothing.
• You are not to win this war.
• You cannot win this war.

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• You are in black darkness and confusion.
• You have been hugger-muggered and
• carom-shotted into a war,
• and you know nothing about it.
• You know nothing about the forces that caused it,
  
• or you know next to nothing.
• You are not to win this war.
• You cannot win this war.
• Darkness, July 13th, 1942, Ezra Pound

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opus dei
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Correct Explication

• detailed re-description of talk using a
  specialist vocabulary that translates a
  complicated transcription of interaction

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• (vii) learn from the way actually-existing
  interpretations and re-interpretations contest
  versions of reality
• (viii) attend to contested spaces in which there
  is struggle over the nature of correct explication

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opus dei
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opus dei
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Disciplinary Segregation

• claim that a researcher should not talk about
  power in their analysis of a text if the issue of
  power is not actually topicalised there

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• (ix) show how politics frames psychological work
• (x) show the ways in which the process of
  psychologisation in contemporary society is
  profoundly political

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• Laibach, 1987, F.I.A.T, Opus Dei
• You are in black darkness and confusion.
• You have been hugger-muggered and
• carom-shotted into a war,
• and you know nothing about it.
• You know nothing about the forces that caused it,
  
• or you know next to nothing.
• You are not to win this war.
• You cannot win this war.

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opus dei
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• (i) focus on the use made of psychology in the
  public domain
• (ii) focus on the reproduction of the conditions
  in which psychological explanations come to
  assume importance
• (iii) show how power relations are reiterated in
  the interpersonal realm
• (iv) show how ostensibly individual processes are
  mobilised by wider networks of power
• (v) show how formal devices are injected with
  particular content
• (vi) show how formal devices are resignified in
  different social contexts
• (vii) learn from the way actually-existing
  interpretations and re-interpretations contest
  versions of reality
• (viii) attend to contested spaces in which there
  is struggle over the nature of correct
  explication
• (ix) show how politics frames psychological work
• (x) show the ways in which the process of
  psychologisation in contemporary society is
  profoundly political

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• Ian Parker

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• Ian Parker

• www.discourseunit.com

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• www.discourseunit.com
• www.nskstate.com