oppositional discourses

Discourses always exist in networks and are related in mutually supportive or

contradictory ways (see INTERDISCURSIVITY). Oppositional discourses draw
upon
each other in order to contradict each other. For example, in the context of
some African countries, a women as victims of poverty discourse seems to
exist in an oppositional relationship with a women as agents of development
discourse, suggesting that women are constructed simultaneously as being
vulnerable and prone to poverty and disease as well as being the backbone of
rural economies. Oppositional discourses can be indicators of a dominant
discourse being challenged by marginal or emerging discourses (see also
ORDER OF DISCOURSE).