Discussants/Stakeholders: Kathy Doherty [k.h.doherty@shu.ac.uk], Peter Jones [p.e.jones@shu.ac.uk]

Abstract: This paper outlines theoretical resources that have informed the work of the Discourse Unit in the last decade. The institutional location of the Discourse Unit - as a Centre for Qualitative and Theoretical Research on the Reproduction and Transformation of Language, Subjectivity and Practice - within the discipline of psychology, and the political orientation of its researchers are guiding themes in this account, and a historical framing of the work of the Unit is elaborated. The four key resources - Marxism, Feminism, Post-structuralism and Psychoanalysis - demand an attention to the construction of subjectivity in discourse, and a reflexive focus on the subjectivity of a researcher attempting to explicate patterns of ideology and power. Researchers here are concerned with an analysis of psychology as ideology, and their work entails a refusal of any reduction to the level of the psychological. Participation in the activities of the radical network Psychology Politics Resistance, kept alive now by Asylum magazine is one expression of the political dimension of our work.

Keywords: Politics, Resistance, Marxism, Feminism, Post-structuralism, Psychoanalysis

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