On Thinqon the word discourse comes up quite a bit. Admittedly, a lot of the times it's me who is throwing it around liberally. 

But what does it mean really? What is a discourse and why is it distinguished from a conversation? What is a discourse responsible for discussing and what is its role to the subject? 

To start, Foucault: 

Discourse is not the majestically unfolding manifestation of a thinking, knowing, speaking subject, but, on the contrary, a totality, in which the dispersion of the subject and his discontinuity with himself may be determined. 


For Foucault then, discourse is the means by which we create ourselves. We are not talking around the subject, but in talking, producing the subject.

Further, we can't separate the subject from the modes of language in which we talk about the subject. 

So how does this understanding of discourse exist inside thinqon? Is any single thread a discourse, or is it the entire website the totality?