Where does power fit in thestudy of variation?

Antonio Gramsci(1891-1937)

1957. The Modern Prince and otherwritings by Antonio Gramsci. Translated with an introduction byLouis Marks. London: Lawrence &Wishart.

1971. Selections from the PrisonNotebooks. Trans. and ed. QuintinHoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith.New York: International Publishers.

GramsciPower as consent

• "...Dominant groups in society, includingfundamentally but not exclusively the rulingclass, maintain their dominance by securingthe 'spontaneous consent' of subordinategroups, including the working class, throughthe negotiated construction of a political andideological consensus which incorporatesboth dominant and dominated groups."(Strinati 1995: 165)

• Strinati, Dominic (1995), An Introduction to Theoriesof Popular Culture. London:Routledge.

Hegemony

Class fractionClass fraction

Classfraction

Class fraction

Dominant ideology

MASS

mass media

Hegemony

Class fraction Class fractionClassfraction

Class fraction

Dominant ideology

MASS

mass media

BourdieuPower as méconnaissance

• I call misrecognition the fact ofrecognizing a violence which is wieldedprecisely inasmuch as one does notperceive it as such

BourdieuPower as symbolic violence

• Symbolic violence is the violence whichis exercised upon a social agent withhis or her complicity (1992:167)

Michel Foucault1926-1984

1975. Discipline and Punish: TheBirth of the Prison. Alan Sheridan,trans. New York: Random House.

1989. Power/Knowledge: SelectedInterviews & Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Random House.

Power as productive(as opposed to repressive power)

• A form of power which makesindividuals subjects. There are twomeanings of the word subject: subjectto someone else by control anddependence, and tied to his ownidentity by a conscience or self-knowledge (The subject and power:212)

FoucaultPower and freedom

• Power as a mode of action uponactions.

• To govern is to structure the possiblefield of action of others.

• Power is exercised only over freesubjects, and only insofar as they arefree.

(The Subject and Power, 221)

Pastoral Power

• Power that administers life, not death• Salvationtaking on different meanings

– Health– Well-being (sufficient wealth, standard of

living)– Security– Protection against accidents

(The Subject of Power, 214)

Disciplinary powerthe meticulous control of the operation of the

body• Spatialization• Minute control of activity• Repetitive exercises• Detailed hierarchies• Normalizing judgments

--The body as the target of power--Power exercised directly on the individual(docile) body

Docile body

• A body is docile that may be subjected,used, transformed and improved(Discipline and Punish, 136)

The Panopticon

“Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in theinmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility thatassures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrangethings that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, evenif it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection ofpower should tend to render its actual exerciseunnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be amachine for creating and sustaining a power relationindependent of the person who operates it; in short, thatthe inmates should be caught up in a power situation ofwhich they are themselves the bearers” (Disc&Pun, 201)

A model for an ideal prison proposed by JeremyBentham (1748-1832), English philosopher andreformer, particularly known for his theory ofutilitarianism.

The Panopticon

The Panopticon

The Modern Panopticon

Where does power fit in thestudy of variation?

Where there is power, thereis resistance

(The history of sexuality, 97)

Average height of white people 20-39 years

Erasure, iconicity, recursivity

men’s height

women’s height

Why don’t we see more couples in which the woman is taller?

http://ww

w.shortsupport.org/R

esearch/analyzer.html

GOFFMAN, ERVING. 1976. Gender advertisements. Studies in theAnthropology of Visual Commmunication, 3.69-154.

misrecognition

Why do girls want pink frilly dresses?

Prom

Talbot, Mary. 1992. A synthetic sisterhood: False friends in a teenagemagazine. Locating Power: Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women andLanguage Conference, ed. by Kira Hall, Mary Bucholtz and Birch Moonwomon,573-80. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group.

Penny: Do people spend a lot of time with theirboyfriends?

Rachel: Not really. Sometimes like theboyfriends, you know, won’t talk to you andstuff. Sometimes.

Transactional relationships

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Ideology, power and indexical fields

• How is ideology embedded in theindexical field of stop release?

clear

educated

articulate

prissyangry

precise

annoyedcareful

formal

polite

elegant

emphatic

snotty threatening

excited

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effortful

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