Learning from 5 year old Joanne: Linguistic lessons for theorists, methodologists and activists


nob doran, University of New Brunswick

This paper (an extract from `doran, nob {forthcoming} “Codifying Parrhesian Bodies”, Oxford: Routledge’) examines the contributions to social science that can be gained by synthesizing the Millerian approach to ‘Femenist Discourse analysis’ with the Foucauldian perspective on ‘power’, and applying it to the ‘ordinary language’ of underdogs, like 5 year old Joanne. Specifically, it will allow us to see the importance, in mundane interaction, of having a ‘macro cultural discourse’ with which to resist a ‘dominant discourse’. These insights are then used to inform current debates about standpoint theory and qualitative methodology (Smith and Griffin 2022), reflexivity (Onishenko, Doran, Torres and Nyaga 2023) and social/theoretical activism (Collins 2019). The paper finishes by suggesting the need to go beyond Miller’s ‘standpoint’ of the strategic ‘Underdog’; and  proposes, instead, Foucault’s final concept of ‘parrhesia’ (Doran 2015, 2023) so as to forge a “parrhesian underdog standpoint”.

This paper will be presented at the following session: