Truth matters : an assessment of Foucauldian discourse analysis through the case study of the George W. Bush's administration's war on terrorism

Abstract

The discourse of the war on terrorism of the George W. Bush administration is used as a case study and a platform to assess the ideas of Michel Foucault on discourse analysis and power. Foucauldian notions prove to be useful tools for highlighting several aspects of the discourse, such as the link between knowledge and power, the construction of the concept of the terrorist, the role of identity in regards to security practices, or biopolitics as the management of life in the context of the war on terrorism. However, a number of specificities in regards to power relations and discursive practices escape a Foucauldian approach. These are revealed by stressing the importance of agency, facts and events for discourse analysis; and by complementing a Foucauldian perspective with the perspectives of alternative authors, such as Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Giorgio Agamben or Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, among others. The process of assessing Foucauldian discourse analysis allows to simultaneously accomplish a secondary objective of analyzing the discourse of the war on terrorism itself.