Discourse is the framework in which we speak and by its nature pulls on how we think about a subject. It’s the lie that’s not a lie, the cheap “spin” of politicians but also that which defines how we define our world, illuminating certain facts at the expense of the greater whole. Foucault argued that it made modern societies nearly totalitarian in that we policed ourselves in what what we spoke and how we thought. In other words, work in the social sciences like the DSMV – the Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – are shackles on whole our being not because it’s being enforced on us from the outside, but because internalize these sorts of codified standards of thinking and behaving and often willingly commit ourselves to mental institutions if we fall outside it’s norms. A curious facet of Foucault’s thinking was that he thought it inescapable. You can never destroy discourse, only replace it with a new one. We are, in essence, as blind about the problems of our day as my ancestors were about slavery in theirs.
Take that idea and look at this New York Time’s article about the iPhone supply chain. It’s a discourse that reinforces, uncritically, the global capitalism discourse. The title, alone, is striking: “Supply Chain for iPhone Highlights Costs in China“. We’re told that the bill of materials, the cost of all the parts that goes into an iPhone, is $187.50. The phone retails for $600, “though the cost to consumers is less, subsidized by AT&T in exchange for service contracts.” The total cost of labor at assembly is thought to be about 7%, but everyone depends “on Chinese factories to hold down prices. And those factories now seem likely to pass along their cost increases.” So now companies like Foxconn are planning to abandon Shenzhen for poorer provinces where they can pay even less to worker.
Treyopia v3.0 