A genealogy of postmodern subjects: Discourse analysis and late capitalism

Abstract

Critiques of psychology's complicities with the ideological workings of capitalism have focused on psychologies developed prior to the 1980s, against which discursive and postmodern theories are often positioned as liberatory or revolutionary. Critical Marxist theory and anthropologies of finance are used here to frame a genealogy of Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell's seminal text of discourse analysis Discourse and Social Psychology that challenges this narrative. We focus on the ontological differences between Potter and Wetherell and the modernist theorists of language and social order that they cite: Noam Chomsky, John Austin, and Harold Garfinkel. We argue that the ontology of both personhood and research within this text converged with the subjectivities constituted and required by late capitalism that dislocate and dispense notions of individual accountability upon which earlier modes of capitalism depended.

Commemoration in crisis: A discursive analysis of who ‘we’ and ‘they’ have been or become in ceremonial political speeches before and during the Greek financial downturn

“…Of course, the political crises in Greece both in the late 1960s and in the 21st century were about the balance of national and free market control of Greek society. It is beyond the scope of this empirical paper to do more than suggest the continued need for a ‘genealogical’ understanding (cf, Hook, ) of the metaphors by which discursive psychology structures understanding of discursive actors and actions at our own historical times (see Hayter & Hegarty, ; Wetherell & Potter, for further discussion).…”

The power of discourse: How agency is constructed and constituted in discourse of smart technologies, systems and associated developments

“…We situate our work in relation to advances in discursive social psychology and ongoing work and debates therein (see Gibson, 2013; Hayter and Hegarty, 2015; Wetherell, 1998) and maintain that deconstruction as a method can be instrumented for ongoing communications about phenomena. Deconstructing discourses for the assumptions or ‘fixations’ they hold serves to “destabilise prevailing systems of meaning’’ (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002: 178).…”

Del sujeto estructura al sujeto proteiforme en la contemporaneidad: demandas, tensiones y desafíos para la psicología clínica

“…Con base en ello, también ofrecen distintas posibilidades para comprender y abordar el sujeto en la contemporaneidad que se diferencian sustancialmente de aquellas sostenidas por el enfoque dominante. No obstante, prácticamente no han tenido injerencia en los procesos de investigación, intervención y formación propios de la psicología hegemónica, motivo por el cual su impacto en la psicología clínica, a la fecha, es bastante restringido (Baker & Hayes, 2005;Fescoe, 2016;Hayter & Hegarty, 2015;Holman, Jaffee, & Brendel, 2007;Hughes, 2015;McFall & Shoham, 2008;Snyder & Elliott, 2005). momento actual.…”