Discourse is a system through which knowledge becomes power over the known.

Evidence

Foucault sums up these arguments as follows. Not only is discourse always implicated in power, but discourse is one of the “systems” through which power circulates. The knowledge which a discourse produces constitutes a kind of power exercised over those who are “known.” When that knowledge is exercised in practice, those who are “known” in a particular way will be subject (i.e., subjected) to it. This is always a power relation (see Foucault 1980, 201.) Those who produce the discourse also have the power to make it true—i.e., to enforce its validity, its scientific status. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 588

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the core Foucault-inherited mechanism: knowledge/subjectification/power circulate together through discourse.
• XREF: This is the exact conceptual ladder Hall and the Islamophobia field build on; connects to later exposure of how Western scholarship on Islam produced the ‘known’ Muslim subject. — connects to: Discourses are systems of shared cultural meanings built from interlocking root metaphors. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 665; the MOC “The Tongue of Power: When Language Becomes the Battlefield of Empire”