Biopolitical discourses shape reality.

Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) is form of Critical Discourse Analysis interested in unveiling the power relations through the analysis of discourses and power apparatuses (dispositifs). There is no handbook or a single way of doing FDA, but rather an assemblage of theoretical and methodological 23 I use "community" to name their collectivity, as it is the noun that they themselves have designated to name it. tools for discourse analysis, inspired by the contributions of Michel Foucault (Jäger 2007). In this project, I use a loose version of FDA to analyze the discourse and practices of inclusion in the city of San José. From a decolonial perspective, I do not seek to apply the categories created in the North to explain what happens in Costa Rica, but to take FDA as a method to approach this complex reality.

Discourses must not be understood as simple texts or oral expressions, but rather in wider perspective. Echoing Foucault’s robust theory of power, Michael Arribas-Allyon and Valerie Walkerdine affirm:

‘Discourses are not ‘things’ but form relations between things; they are not objects as such but the rules and procedures that make objects thinkable and governable; they are not autonomous entities but cohere among relations of force; and, finally, discourses do not ‘determine’ things when there is always the possibility of resistance and indeterminacy (2008, 105).’

Discourses are linked to action; they serve to exercise power with all its effects (Foucault 2002; Jäger 2007). Discourses are not static; they are produced in a historical context that determines their conditions of possibility. In this sense, it is always necessary to address the context in which a discourse is produced. The next chapter, for instance, delves into the conditions of possibility in which the discourse of inclusion emerges in Costa Rica.

FDA acknowledges that, as historical subjects, researchers are also embedded in dynamics of power. In this sense, FDA proposes to make explicit the ideological position of the researcher, and to always keep in perspective that we do not live outside the power apparatuses we analyze. In this sense, like Siegfried Jäger, I am interested in the “function of discourses in the bourgeois-capitalist modern industrial society as techniques to legitimize and ensure government” (2007, 33–34).

Based on Foucault’s theoretical contributions, Arribas-Allyon and Walkerdine (2008) propose three broad dimensions that a FDA should take into account:

1. Genealogy: which they understand as an analysis of the historical and cultural context, the conditions of possibility in which discourses emerge.

2. Power: the description of power relations, the way power mechanisms function and the apparatuses that organize these relations.

3. Subjectification: the material/signifying practices in which subjects are made up (91-92).

For this project, I will focus specially on the last two dimensions. Although a genealogy of the discourse of inclusion in Costa Rica would be enriching and valuable, it would imply a different kind of research. In fact, Jäger (2007) suggest that the amplitude of a genealogic analysis is such, that it can be addressed by a large number of single projects (51). Nevertheless, when analyzing the context in the next chapter, I will address the conditions that make possible the rise of the discourse of inclusion from a historical perspective. This should not be understood as a genealogy, but it provides important elements for future studies seeking to develop a genealogy of the discourse of inclusion.

“As ‘agents’ of ‘knowledge (valid at a certain place at a certain time)' discourses exercise power. They are themselves a power factor by being apt to induce behaviour and (other) discourses. Thus, they contribute to the structuring of the power relations in a society” (Jäger 2007, 37). Michel Foucault (2002) states that power is everywhere, it crosses and constitutes the relationships between people, between groups and institutions, configures subjects, defines the limits of their actions, and channels them. Power acts on and in social relations, it does not simply drops control over the subjects or groups, but operates through their actions. In this sense, Foucault moves away from the vertical conception of power, in which some subjects and groups exercise power from a superior plane, in a univocal way over those who are oppressed.