Impact of Foucauldian Discourse on Feminism and Postcolonial Studies

Abstract

Foucault’s concept of power and its working in a complex process for the formation of identity and the mobilization of resistance has been of paramount interest over the years to individuals and groups located in unfavorable positions in power-relations. That knowledge and power work together in an exclusionary formation signified in the concept of discourse have inspired feminists and theorists of colonial and post-colonial studies to rework discourse theories to map out new identities and programs of resistance. Although Foucault’s ideas are appropriated by critical schools for various reasons, such appropriation still requires a measure of clarification, since there is no unified position among the schools themselves. In this paper, We, therefore, attempt to show how themes of exclusion, identity, and resistance-very seminal to Foucault’s critical oeuvre, are received and modified by feminist thinkers and theorists of colonial and post-colonial studies.