Critical Discourse Analysis & Policy Analysis: Where Does Agency Lie?

This paper advances the methodological debate on discourse analysis for policy analysis and suggests complementing CPDA’s insights on the discursive attributes of the power/knowledge relationship with those provided by psychoanalytical approaches, drawing on the work of Lacan, Deleuze, Guattari and potentially Fanon (for postcolonial lenses). The purpose is not to “psychoanalyse” CPDA, but to explore alternative ways for studying socio-political subjectivations and equip policy studies with methodological tools to assess if and how (hegemonic) discourses can be resisted and potentially subverted. Psychoanalytical approaches to discourse overcome Fairclough’s criticism of poststructuralism as “language imperialism” (Fairclough, 2010) by treating materiality as inseparable from the ideational, within a perspective of dialectical materialism in which materiality cannot be understood without immateriality. Further, they provide CDA with a theory of agency that pushes our understanding of discourse beyond the linguistic constitution of the socio-political world and explains how the structure operates in the subject, by conceiving the relationship between discourse and subject dialectically. Subjectivities should not be seen as “whole” and reason-driven, but as lacking, desiring totality with language and thus instable, insofar as the socio-linguistic structure (discourse) that defines our socio-political relations cannot confer this totality. Full and conclusive meaning is thus endlessly deferred, resulting in a surplus-loss of signification that make discourse open, fractured and inconsistent, as opposed to "discourse" qua locked, totalising, “full” narratives competing in a meaning struggle. The discursive practices constituting governance processes and knowledge production become then instances of those societal relations made possible by the shared presupposed overarching linguistic structure (discourse), in which the subjects’ coping mechanisms with the effects, deficiencies, and impossibilities of the discourse can be observed. It is in these fractures that the conditions for resistance, subversion, and potential transformation, or alternatively, co-optation (i.e. integration into the hegemonic knowledge) are produced. Such approach enables us to study ideology as the disavowal of the real authority of the discourse - identifiable in “there is no alternative” mantras - even when this manifests through desirable policy objects. Further, it emphasises the construction of beliefs and narratives which promise to achieve a desired object - identifiable in the techno-rationality of ‘sustainability ‘narratives - as well as the subjects’ painful enjoyment in identifying with a discourse that repeatedly fail them (i.e. “we must accelerate transition to clean energy”). Finally, it highlights the “actorness” of differently split subjectivities who can either be convinced by the discourse or disavow its breaking points to deal with personal conflicts, or challenge the hegemonic discourse (and whose efficacy can be hindered by the hegemonic discourse). Empirically, it also enables us to study new signifiers, such as "energy sufficiency". This was embraced by grassroot movements as an alternative to the techno-rational promise of climate neutrality embodied by energy efficiency’s policies, but its transformative potential needs further investigation to assess whether it can convey ideas of climate justice and wealth redistribution, or whether it risks co-optation into the hegemonic signification as a further instance of injustice and affect only those who are already vulnerable and marginalised.