With God as my Witness:
A Discourse II Analysis and Audience Study of the Catholic Church


"And upon this rock you shall build my church." The words of the Jesus Christ, the Son of God, spoken to his disciple Peter, who would later establish the Catholic church, and eventually become the first Pope. Despite its historical presence and influence for nearly 2000 years, the Catholic church has represented varying ideals for multiple people. To some it is merely a misogynistic, over-glamorized, overrated institution, for others a symbol of conspiracy, manipulation, over-indulgence and sin, and for the devout a beacon of hope, faith, and promise in the next life. Despite the angle one may take in analyzing the Catholic Church, one thing remains the same-its historically uncanny ability to maintain power and influence over millions of people. However, the historical fictions imposed by institutions such as the Catholic Church present a bit of an issue in their methods of obtaining power and gaining knowledge. In referencing the works of philosopher Michel Foucault, Barabara Biesecker states, "the subject of history is but the product of apparatuses of power/knowledge." (Biesecker 351). Thus, it is through the historical structure of the Catholic church, both physically and institutionally, along with its infamously strict edicts, which have essentially consumed and controlled its followers for centuries, making them not only practitioners of the faith, but subjects of the culture that is Catholicism.


Gillian Rose asserts that "...the second form of discourse analysis [discourse II] often works with similar sorts of materials, but is much more concerned with their production by, and their reiteration of particular institutions and their practices, and their production of particular human subjects." (227). Rose references philosopher Michel Foucault, who's theories largely "focus on the display of common cultural values," for a concrete example of a discourse II analysis and the ways in which the institutional apparatuses and its technologies meld together to establish both a unique culture, and even more so, members of that culture. (Danisch 291).








Danielle De Los Santos
email: delossas@southwestern.edu




Church, Cathedral, Basilica



 

 

This Webpage was produced in COM 784: Visual Communication,

a class taught by Bob Bednar in the Communication Studies Department at Southwestern University