In this chapter, Castells explains how the Information Age is evolving into a network society with new means of power, production and experience.
Castells begins the chapter talking about a change from traditional capitalism to one he coins "informational capitalism". With this new form, Castells sees changes ahead for the way class relationships occur and they way in which production and labor will be carried out.
He speaks of generic labor (limited skill base) vs self-programmable labor (educated/limitless potential) Unlike the self-programmable laborers, the generic laborers can be easily replaced with machines, hence the reason they are usually the first to go.
Along with labor/production being transformed, so to is capital. Castells has three levels to explain how capital works under "the network enterprise". First level relates to "the holders of property rights"; shareholders, families, and the entrepreneurs. Castells mentions the latter as being key to the future of informational capitalism. The second level, "managerial class" is basically the ones in charge of the capital when the holders of the property are absent. Lastly, "global financial markets" are where the business goes down. Thanks to technology, informationalism brings about the "annihilation of space and time by electronic means." In other words, capital is always in motion and new ventures always being sought after. Institutions around the world are jumping on the global financial networks to boost revenue and seek out potential earnings.
Next, class relationships are discussed with regards to the social stratification theory. The new system will cause the top and bottoms of the social classes to greatly expand creating greater "polarization" among them. Basically, those who are less educated and cannot hold their own will lose their "safety net." Castells also mentions "social exclusion" and how life crises lead the person/worker on a "downward spiral of social exclusion, toward what I have called the "black holes of informational capitalism," which is difficult to escape." Going along with this idea, a Marxist way of looking at these new class relationships is looked at..and I think it is safe to say we all know his deal. I kind of got the whole survival of the fittest notion when reading this chapter.
Castells brings a good point; politics has become a theater and it's the media's job to spread the power. (I believe) the bottom of p.320 helps relate this point quite clearly. "Cultural battles are the power battles of the Information Age. They are primarily fought in and by the media, but the media are not the power-holders. Power, as the capacity to impose behavior, lies in the networks of information exchange and symbol manipulation, which relate social actors, institutions, and cultural movements, through icons, spokespersons, and intellectual amplifiers." After reading this, I could not help but think of Fox News and CNN.
Moving on, Castells talks of how an end to patriarchalism and the emergence of an egalitarian family structure will mean the dawn of a new system/society. "Rebuilding families under egalitarian forms is the necessary foundation for rebuilding society from the bottom up." I read that a couple of times because I think it makes a great deal of sense. Down the road this would mean the end of gender roles/norms, as they would not make any sense in a society where men and women are looked at as exact equals.
The new network society Castells speaks of exists in a "real virtuality." From what I gathered on this part, it seems as though culture/the way things are done, is being, like everything else, transformed. "This virtuality is our reality because it is within the framework of these timeless, placeless, symbolic systems that we construct the categories, and evoke the images, that shape behavior, induce politics, nurture dreams, and trigger nightmares." Interactions between others occur on an individual "self" and "net" basis now.
In order for the network society to work, a new form of politics based on changing culture attitudes must arise. "Culture as the source of power, and power as the source of capital, underlie the new social hierarchy of the Information Age."
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Chapter 31: A New Society
Friday, April 24, 2009
Chapter 28 - Whose Imagined Community?
Chatterjee is giving a summary and critique of Benedict Anderson’s previous chapter, which is Imagined Communities. In order for you to understand what is being said in this chapter you need to read the previous chapter. And in case you didn’t read it because it is the end of the semester and you have lots of work to do, I will try to give you a little info on it and follow it with Chatterjee and Whose Imagined Community. Anderson is talking about the origin and spread of nationalism. He says that since World War II every successful revolution has defined itself in national terms and because of this “has grounded itself firmly in a territorial and social space inherited from the pre revolutionary past”. Anderson says nationalism is difficult to define and analyze, so he proposes the following definition of the nation: “it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”.
Anderson says it is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. This made me think of all the communities on the Internet, myspace, facebook, and of course the new tweeter communities, among others. They are imagined communities were the people never meet each other yet they consider themselves a type of fraternity. Anderson says these imagined communities are limited because of boundaries, and outside of these are other nations. Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation…the nation is always conceived as a deep horizonal comradership. What Anderson tries to figure out is why so many members are will to die for their imagined community. Why die in war, suicide bombing, genocide, etc.? He gives an example of the unknown soldiers grave and how that tomb is saturated with ‘ghostly national imaginings. He believes this answer lies in the roots of nationalism. And that nationalism has to be understood by aligning it with the large cultural systems that preceded it. He says the novel and the newspaper are the "basic structure of two forms of imagining which first flowered in Europe in the eighteenth century. He explains the simple novel plot, basically what we see over and over again, yet this shows the novelty of this imagined world that has been conjured up by the author in his readers’ minds. He gives another example of how an American will never meet, or even know the names of more than a handful of his thousands of other Americans, or even know what they are up to, but he says that “he has complete confidence in their steady, anonymous, simultaneous activity. Anderson goes on to explain the imagined linkage to community of newspaper readers and their relation to the people and events they are reading about. Even after explaining all this Anderson goes back to why people are ready to die for these inventions. He says “it is doubtful whether either social change or transformed consciousness, in themselves, do much to explain the attachment that people feel for the inventions of their imaginations – or, to revive a question raised at the beginning of this text…. Why people are ready to die?” Chatterjee says, “nationalism is now viewed as a dark, elemental, unpredictable force of primordial nature threatening the orderly calm of civilized life.” And that nationalism was entirely a product to the political history of Europe and “there may be in the recent amnesia on the origins of nationalism more than a hint of anxiety about whether it has quite been tamed in the land of its birth.” Chatterjee says it is great that Anderson has brought attention to nationalism with his writings, but Chatterjee’s objection is “whose imagined community” is he talking about? “If nationalism in the rest of the world have to choose their imagined community from certain ‘modular’ forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine?” Chatterjee cannot reconcile Anderson’s thought, because of the evidence on anticolonial nationalism. He says is it not totally Anderson fault because we have all taken the claims of nationalism to be a political movement much to literally and much to seriously. He agrees with Anderson’s example of “print capitalism” which provides the new institutional space for the development of the modern “national” language. But, he says in his country of Bengal, the East India Company and the European missionaries first printed books in the 18th century, and in the 19th century the English “displace Persian as the language of bureaucracy and emerges as the most powerful vehicle of intellectual influence on the new Bengali elite.” So the language became a zone over which the nation first had to declare its sovereignty and then had to transform in order to make it adequate for the modern world. He goes on to discuss his community and the changes in it because of European influence and how the Europeans criticized Indian tradition as barbaric and focused on teaching religious beliefs and practices. Sound like America to me. Chatterjee goes on to discuss nationalism more and makes a good point. “If European newspapers in India were given the right of free speech, could the same apply to native newspapers? Ironically, it became the historical task of nationalism, which insisted on its own marks of cultural difference with the West, to demand that there be no rule of difference in the domain of the state.” So why are our nations imagined? Who imagined them into being? Are they really our nations or someone else’s imagined communities? Chatterjee says “If the nation is an imagined community and if nations must also take the form of states, then our theoretical language must allow us to talk about community and state at the same time. I do not think our present theoretical language allows us to do this.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
ch 31-A new society- manuel castells
Manuel Castells begins by saying that in order for a new society to emerge, transformations must be visible in the relationships of production, power, and experience. Castells splits the production, power, and experience into categories to better understand what is expected in each.
• Relationships of Production (pg 315): productivity and competitiveness are the commanding processes of the informational/global economy. In order to maximize production, companies must be flexible, innovative, and competitive. Labor is the main function for production. Labor is used in order to produce. There are 2 kinds of labor: 1) generic, 2)self-programmable. Labor stems from education and skills. Going above and beyond have skills, education gives people the ability to relearn ways of their tasks. It allows them to gain new skills since production is always changing and improving. This is self-programmable labor. On the other hand, generic labor does not require workers to gain additional knowledge about what they are doing. They learn their task, and stick to it. Which is why much of the generic labor has been replaced by machines.
The informational/global economy is considered capitalist. This is because production and profit are key. There are 3 different levels talking about who the capitalists are.
1. The holders of property rights: these are shareholders of companies, family owners, and individual entrepreneurs.
2. Managerial class: these people control capital assets on behalf of shareholders.
3. Global Financial Markets: profits from these markets turn into a search for higher profits. People are always in search of bigger and better and more money profiting investments. By having wins and losses in the market, it keeps a dynamic equilibrium. All capitalists are dependent on their investments. Castells says: “Global financial markets, and their networks of management, are the actual collective capitalist, the mother of all accumulations.” (pg. 317). “..global financial networks are the nerve center of informational capitalism.” The network movements determine pretty much everything in relation to it, such as stocks, bonds, and currency. By other factors impact the market, such as computer-enacted strategic maneuvers, crowd psychology, and unexpected turbulences.
There are consequences on the social class relationships, which will be defined into four sections.
1. tendency to increased social inequality and polarization: this is the simultaneous growth of both the top and bottom of the social scale. Three features impact this growth:
a. a differentiation between self-programmable and generic labor.
b. individualization of labor—this gets rid of the weakest people in the work force because people are not working collectively, but competitively.
c. the gradual demise of the welfare state- this removes the safety net for people who are not well off.
2. Social exclusion: by this Castells means “..the de-linking between people-as-people and people-as-workers/consumers in the dynamics of informational capitalism on a global scale. He goes on to say that there are many occasional and temporary jobs created for production, but are often discontinued. Because of this, people frequently go from having a job one day, to not having one the next. This can have many negative consequences on the individual and their family since their employment is not stable. Many people begin to fall behind and are no longer qualified for many job positions. So, those people who are constantly trying to avoid being poor and needing welfare cannot seem to get ahead.
3. Who are the producers and who appropriates the products of their labor?:
4. Truly fundamental social cleavages of the Information Age:
a. Internal fragmentation of labor between informational producers and replaceable generic labor
b. Social exclusion of a significant segment of society
c. The separation between the market logic of global networks and the human experience of workers’ lives.
• Power Relations (pg 319): I have no clue what half of this stuff he talked about means but—“The main transformation concerns the crisis of the nation-state as a sovereign entity, and the related crisis of political democracy..” (pg. 319). “The new structure of power is dominated by a network geometry, in which power relationships are always specific to a given configuration of actors and institutions.” Power relationships are always changing. Power is very fundamental in an informational society. Power lies in the networks of information exchange and symbol manipulation. Apparently, in the long run it does not matter who has the power because the role of holding power becomes so widespread and rotating. Places will hold the power for some time, and then another place will be the most powerful. Culture and material resources fuel the desire of power.
• Relationships of Experience (pg 321): Patriarchy is the root of relationships of experience. The family is a main issue for this category. There are many women as single parents and their struggles have spanned across the world, even though men have started to become more involved in their children’s lives. Castells says that men are now more willing than ever to make the sacrifices needed in order to support and assist their family. Castells believes that rebuilding families is the key ingredient for building society. The author calls the new society “ the network society” since it is made up of networks of production, power, and experience. Not all places follow the ways of the network society, but all are influenced in some way or another by it.
• The new Avenues of social change (ph. 323): “it appears that our societies are constituted by the interaction between the “net” and the “self,” between the network society and the power of identity.
• So basically, there are many factors influencing the new/network society. People are excluded if they do not have the skills and education to keep up with the ever quickly changing work force. By production, power emerges. Power is transferred from place to place depending on how they profit and succeed economically. Production and Power influence families and those people who are trying to move up in the world.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Chapter 26 Multicultural Citizenship
I found the first half of this reading to be very easy to understand, however the second half is hazy to me. Kymlicka early on in the reading points out how generalizations on what multiculturalism is can be misleading. I believe that defining the term “multiculturalism” can be extremely difficult. Basically what I think multiculturalism to be is where many different cultures exist in one large society. The nation in which the groups of cultures live, practice their own traditions while coexisting with other cultures. As defined by dictionary.com, “Multiculturalism is the preservation of different cultures or cultural identities within a unified society, as a state or nation” (Dictionary.com).
Kymlicka points out how there is two broad patterns of cultural diversity. As stated by Kymlicka, “In the first case, cultural diversity arises from the incorporation of previously self-governing territorially concentrated cultures into a larger state. These incorporated cultures, which I call ‘nation minorities’, typically with to maintain themselves as distinct societies alongside the majority culture, and demand various forms of autonomy of self-government to ensure their survival as distinct societies” (Kymlicka pg. 270). The second pattern of cultural diversity is when immigrants move to a different country and basically assimilate to the larger society’s culture, customs and values. In the second pattern, it is not the individual’s goal to continue carrying their past ethnic identity alongside with the newer identity.
It is described how there are also different ways cultures have been integrated into a country. The first way in which a culture can be incorporated into another country is when a culture is conquered by another and by colonizing settlers. Kymlicka provides a good example of how cultures were involuntarily mixed with another country. Kymlicka describes, “For example, there are a number of national minorities in the United States, including the American Indians, Puerto Ricans, the descendants of Mexicans living in the south-west when the United States annexed Texas, New Mexico, and California after the Mexican War of 1846-1848” (Kymlicka pg. 271). This is an example how a culture that was once recognized as sovereign, was then controlled by another country by colonization.
Cultures have not always had the luxury of practicing their traditions freely. Before the 1960’s, any immigrant migrating to Australia, Canada and the United States were expected to assimilate their customs to what the “norm” of that country they were moving to was. This idea of assimilating different cultures into one large one was called ‘Anglo-conformity’. One of the cultures that suffered the most from this ‘Anglo-conformity’ was the Native Americans. The reason for assimilation was because the government believed it was vital for political stability. This form of assimilating all cultures into on completely contradicts the idea of the ‘melting-pot’. By the 1970’s the model of ‘Anglo-conformity’ and assimilation was disregarded. What happened was the government was under too much pressure by all the immigrants because they wanted back the right to be able to practice their born culture. Soon after, the government gave into the immigrant’s demands to allow different cultures to coexist.
This change in 1970’s was a huge turning point allowing all cultures to be allowed to practice their old customs that were once outlawed for many years. Kymlicka talks about how there are two types of cultural pluralism. The first type of cultural pluralism is multination which means the culture became immigrant when they were colonized. The second type of cultural pluralism is called polyethnic. Polyethnic is a type of immigration that is by choice when one person or a family decides to move to another country. The United States and Canada can both be looked at as multinational and polyethnic.
Individual rights and collective rights
I found this section of the reading to be somewhat difficult. I really did not understand what was being said because the author assumed the reader already knew what he was talking about.
I actually looked up what individual rights and collective rights meant and found a more clear definition. Individual rights and collective rights is defined as, “A prominent issue in human rights is the between collective rights and individual rights. Collective rights protect a group of people, while individual rights protect the individual.” Kymlicka goes on to talk about how individual rights vs. collective rights are unhelpful. He then goes on to talk about two different kinds of claims ethnic or national groups might make. The first claim is going against its own members of the ethnic group and the second claim is against the larger society. It is thought that both claims help protect the ethnic communities.
There are also two types of destabilizing impact. As stated by Kymlicka, “Internal dissent (e.g. the decision of individual members not to follow traditional practices or customs), whereas the second is intended to protect the group from the impact of external decisions (e.g. the economic or political decisions of the larger society)” (Kymlicka pg. 274). Kymlicka then goes on to talk about how polethnic rights could be used to impose internal restrictions. This would then give minority groups the legal power to impose their old traditions on its members. As stated by Kymilcka, “Ethnic groups could demand the right to take their children out of school before the legally prescribed age, so as to reduce the chances that the child will leave the community; or the right to continue traditional customs such as clitoridectomy or compulsory arranged marriages that violate existing laws regarding informed consent” (Kymlicka pg.276)
Kymlicka then goes on to talk about how it is vital for individuals to take pride in their community and their culture. If individuals lose pride for their culture, it will disappear and other cultures will take over and change it. Cultures need to be preserved or else they will disappear.
Ch. 24 Mary Kaldor-Global Civil Society: An Answer to War
The global context of social, political, and economic transformation were taking place within different parts of the world. They came to surface after 1989. It is said that the reasons for the transformation of the global context is because of the reintegration of civil society in the 1970’s and 80’s in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Globalization is somewhat of a new concept within the civil society realm since 1989. Civil society is no longer restricted to the borders of the territorial state. Civil society is linked with a rule-governed society based largely on the consent of individual citizens rather than force. Yet, the fact that civil society was territorially bound meant that it was always contrasted with coercive rule- governed societies and with societies that lacked rules.
The undermining territorial distinction between civil and uncivil is a result of the end of the Cold War and growing global interconnectedness. These new developments have opened up new possibilities for political emancipation. This also brings new risks and great insecurity. A question dealing with a global civil society is that the global civil societies are in the process of helping form and re-form the global system of rules and underpinning the overlapping inter-governmental, governmental and global authorities. However, the new form of politics is both an outcome and an agent of violence that spills over the borders so there it is no longer possible to contain war.
Interpretations of the Global
Globalization refers to the spread of global capitalism and an assortment of political views. It is suggested that the spread of global capitalism is leading to a single global community and the dwindling nation-state. There is some debate on the specific definition of globalization, but by reducing the term globalization to global capitalism, we grant the unstoppable logic of market forces. A second definition of globalization is the growing interconnectedness in all fields- political, military, economic, and cultural. This version of the definition is the notion that people’s lives are ever more shaped by events that take place far away. Technology is an important element of this definition and the ways in which changes in technology, especially in air travel and new forms of information and communication technology, have led to the narrowing of distance. The new technologies have created new horizontal communities of people.
According to Paul Virilio, this has changed the forms of social differentiation: the ‘haves’ and the ‘have not’s are the sorted out between those who live in the hyper-real shrunken world instant technology and those more disadvantaged than ever, who live in local villages, cut off from worldly forces. The growing political interconnectedness, expressed in the growth of international organizations is changing the character and role of states. States are losing their autonomy in making and enforcing rules. The power to shape regulatory frameworks and policies affect their societies and their membership of various regional or global arrangements.
Lastly, a third definition to globalization refers to the emergence of a common global consciousness on a world scale. This is an increasing awareness of the entirety of human social relations as the largest constitutive framework of all relations, although all of these remain in complex and overlapping ways within global society. This definition places more emphasis on human agency and defines the global as something more than spatial. The key factor is the way in which global conflict has constructed a shared communal memory. The wars in the 20th century produced global consciousness. They shaped the experiences of all people around the world creating huge international and transnational communities of struggle. The 20th century is not just seen as a century of war, but a century in which there was a dramatic increase in peace oriented concepts and institutions as well as in the development of human rights norms. The spread of global capitalism resulted in the burst in the nature of international political relations that is a result of the end of the Cold War.
A starting point of globalization is the reactions against the state in the 1960’s and 70’s. In the post-war period, the state was more interventionist than ever before, reaching out into nearly all aspects of everyday life not only in the totalitarian societies, but in the Atlantic regions as well. The reactions to the state took a couple of form. The neoliberal reaction is the argument that state intervention in the economy had overreached itself and created inflexibility that suppressed the market against innovation and efficiency. Believers of the free market came to power in Western Europe and North America in the 1980’s and helped to provide the situations to accelerate spread of global capitalism. The other was the democratic reaction, the opposition to paternalism, authoritarianism and war. The new social movements that came into concern about global issues was to inform the waves of democratization in Southern Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa, and eventually Eastern Europe and was to provide the basis for global civil society. Whereas the neoliberals were concerned to limit and roll back state power, at least in the economic arena, the new social movements were more concerned about accountability and participation.
Changes in the Patterns of Governance
Liberation and deregulation at the national level actually involves reregulation at a global level as transnational companies attempt to create the conditions for a global market. Pressure from social movements and NGO’s also promotes interconnectedness. What has changed after 1989 was the opening up of both states and inter-governmental organizations to NGO’s and other citizens groups operating in the global arena on a scale different from what went on before. Inter-governmental organizations merely reflect the inter-state system, in which the primary actors are states. The key characteristic of the modern state was its control of violence within a given territory. Domestically, the modern state provided security for its citizens both through force and supervision and through the extension of the rule of law. The modern state emerged as part of an inter-state system in which sovereignty was mutually recognized and war, waged according to certain rules could be justified. The first wave of accelerated interconnectedness depended on the stability provided by the inter-imperial order. States controlled large amounts of territory and provided a framework within which international regulatory agencies could function. The second wave of accelerated interconnectedness depended on the stability within the borders, but a fundamental break within the inter-state system. The bloc system became the border power containers, which means that the integration of military forces meant that members within the bloc had no longer the capacity to wage war unilaterally. This provided the outline for the development of systems of multilateral agencies regulating global economic relations. Therefore, civil society needs a framework of security; hence the growing pressure or an international framework of law to be applied in local situations where the state unravels. What is seen now is not so much the authority based on territory, but the authority based on issues. Civil society is a voluntary principle that is open to all individuals that offers the possibility of participation and deliberation at global levels.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
22- David Harvey; the condition of post moderninity
Post Modernity is embraced as the general rejection of all that was modernity (mass production and unified presentation and common solidarity), but in completely rejecting all of that it has done little more than flip the structure on its head- thereby embracing the categories that were set before them and validating all they seek to reject.
I think I might be missing something critical with Harvey, but I’m just gonna go ahead and write my criticism as if I know what I’m talking about. I had a lot of trouble digesting Harvey. Not only because it’s a complex read, but more because he seems to assess postmodern theory from its most extreme platform. While I think it’s necessary to look at extremes - it’s about as useful as saying all feminists are lesbian separatists and all Catholics think they’re the only ones going to heaven. For most of the article I got the sense that Harvey equated Pomo thinkers to little more than teenage anarchists without a clue, pot stirrers without a point. Harvey opens by saying that pomo is an expression of social conditions. In my book this is true of most art/architecture/theory. What makes pomo different is that it embraces and mimics the subcultures. Pomo embraces the "other". Pomo rejects modernism in that modernism tried to create a universal solidarity focused on functionality. Pomo itself prefers to focus on individuals and aesthetic. However by othering the dominant structure doesn’t pomo succeeding in doing what it condemns modernism for?
Harvey assesses both Modernism and Post Modernism as a reaction to social conditions, particularly capitalism. Modernism made aweful cookie cutter box shaped houses out of fiscally friendly, but solid materials. Yeah they’re ugly, but at the same time they solved a pressing issue of the time- affordable mass housing. Pomo embraces a more aesthetic method, but if these methods can only be taken upon by the rich (making a crazy artistic house or building is expensive) then aren’t you just buying into the system you’re trying to subvert? Harvey points out that the anarchy embraced by post modernism is mostly an illusion.
I get the feeling that Harvey is all but calling Pomo subversive to the point of stupidity. He seems to feel that pomo desires to invalidate the structure when I always interpreted it as simply questioning the structure; Should the structure fall in the face of said questioning- all the better. (The difference is subtle but I think important.) Harvey is also annoyed that Pomo has no unified political face, but I thought instability was the point?
It is only toward the end that I start to get at Harvey’s basic argument (or perhaps it is merely that I only then start to see some validity). Post Modernity only succeeds in flipping the social structure (the way that lesbian separatism merely flips the patriarchal gender structure) rather that truly subverting it. And when it turns the structure on its head it does little more than embrace the categories that have been established before them. Harvey closes on the note that Pomo has the right idea (in that it seeks to change that which is contradictory) but it fails to materialize change in a meaningful way.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
ch 21 Baudrillard: Simulacra and Simulations
When we make an image (a simulation) we at first use that image to represent something real. But after a time the line between which is real and which is a simulation becomes distorted. Sooner or later it is the simulation that we treat as the real object and by treating it as the real object it becomes real (the simulacrum).
The first section of this excerpt was so abstract to me that I couldn't entirely follow. It wasnt until I got to "divine irreference" that things started to make sense. Here Baudrillard introduces us to a bit of philosophy that flows throughout the piece. If we treat things as if they are real, are they not real? For instance a person who believes they have an illness to the point that they develop symptoms. If they have symptoms dont we consider that person to be sick? I thought about the movie Patch Adams. There's the crazy guy who sees killer squirrels everywhere. No one else sees them, they're not "real", but to him they *are* real so it is ridiculous to expect him to act as if he cant see them.
Then Baudrillard dives in. His comparisons include, the medical field, the military (which apparently got him into hella trouble in the 90's and early 2000's before his death), and religion. Take for example the crucifix. We create the crucifix to represent Christ. But after a time the line between the divinity in Christ and the divinity in that statue are blurred. (Consider the argument that the crucifix is idolatrous. Are people praying to Jesus or to the statue of Jesus?) Here Baudrillard makes a point that loses me for a bit. He suggests that by embracing the simulation (the crucifix) we are masking that the real object (Christ) does not in fact exist. Doesnt something original have to exist for there to be a simulation? It seems rather circular, but I could understand if we'd merely forgotten that a real existed. Baudrillards final point is that eventually we lose the original object and the simulation is embraced as and becomes the real.
He does elaborate on that middle point (the one that confused me). He says that we often embrace a simulation, a fantasy, in order to prove to ourselves that what came before is real. His example....Disney Land (that section is kind of a mind trip it's fun. If you didn't read it you should). We have this disgustingly idealogical fantasy land and we're there and it's oh-my-god-awesome and then we get into the parking lot and we're back in the real world. But the real world isnt real, it has become itself a simulation (This is where I decided Baudrillard was being philosophical to the extent of pointlessness.)
So a final example I got from a friend. The Cave Paintings in Lascaux France. We have this cave full of neolithic(?) art- it is real. But we dont want the paintings to be damaged from exposure so we close up the original and make a fake cave a little ways away. When a tourist goes inside of that recreation *it is the reality for them*. If that is the experience that everyone has, if all people just know the recreation of the cave, then it is that recreation that is the reality and the real cave (supposedly) ceases to have meaning.
Chapter 22: The Condition of Postmodernity
To begin the chapter, David Hardy starts discussing the changes in culture and political-economic practices since the early 1970’s. Hardy says:
“There is some kind of necessary relationship between the rise of postmodernist cultural forms, the emergence of more flexible modes of capital accumulation, and a new round of ‘time-space compression’ in the organization of capitalism. But these changes, when set against the basic rules of capitalistic accumulation, appear more as shifts in surface appearance rather than as signs of the emergence of some entirely new postcapitalist or even postindustrial society…”
With the word capital popping up so much, I couldn’t help but want to relate this to Marx and his economic viewpoint of traditional capital accumulation. Traditionally, investing in real goods, workers’ skills and living off less than you earn are all values to focus upon. The introduction is saying that though cultural forms, flexible capital accumulation modes and time space compression have a relationship, is more like the were shuffled to look like a new society rather than offering something new.
Post modernists focus on knowing the “multiple forms over otherness”, whether it be dealing with sex and/or gender, race/ethnicity, class, or location geographically.
Post modernism is also supposed to mimic societal practices in a sense. Hardy discusses the AT&T building and how it was made out of granite, despite being twice the price of glass, to be different. This goes back to class discussions we’ve had on class and power, and how perhaps AT&T were trying to show their worth.
At the top of page 237 Hardy discusses Postmodernism as a movement that tries to overcome modernism’s ills, though Hardy thinks bashing modernism is a bit overdone. By the middle of the page, Hardy is explaining how modernists had many great ideas and achievements from which many postmodernist ideas sprang. He goes on to say that perhaps capitalists are just as much if not wholly to blame for some of the downfall. It’s as if postmodernism has issues with modernism, so the postmodernism, in all its fractured, fragmented glory, takes the achievements of the modernists and owns them, and then changes the parts they don’t like to make it even more of their own.
From what I could gather from page 238, postmodernism really likes to take apart everything. Break down items piece by piece to find more depth and meaning. I did not understand the third full paragraph on this page when Hardy says that the authenticity of other voices occurs, but at the same time makes them shut off by universal sources of power. By the end of the page, Hardy loses me completely, discussing how postmodernists avoids “confronting the realities of political economy and the circumstances of global power….the postmodernist simply push it underground to function as a ‘now unconscious effectivity’”. Does this mean they are not open to discussing this or is it just not a concern to them? Or perhaps neither and there is an entirely different explanation.
Hardy uses the table on 240 to makes some points on Fordist modernity and flexible postmodernism. When Fordist modernity’s portion of the table is showing things such as fixed capital and stable and standardized ideas, it also has a focus of, as Hardy puts it “Becoming- of growth and transformation”. Likewise, flexible postmodernism looks at the fantasy intangible items, but also has a commitment to “Being and a place, a penchant for charismatic politics, concerns for ontology, and the stable institutions favored by neo-conservatism”.
The first full paragraph on 241 was hard for me to grasp, but what I think it is trying to say is that the table could be the full description of ideas and rationale within capitalism. It has both ends of the spectrum on many topics and there is a constant state of fluctuation between the modern and the postmodern ideas.
To finish up the chapter, Hardy asks where real change can come from. He mentions that our value systems and beliefs cannot be mechanically reproduced, and that critique can happen somewhere between “subjective and objective structures”.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity
This article was extremely interesting as it presents the problems in today’s society past society and how it affects women. Bordo talks about three main afflictions to the female population: hysteria, agoraphobia, and anorexia nervosa. She goes into great detail about how many women just “don't feel good enough.” These diseases mainly afflict white upper and middle class women and although they are concentrated in different areas of time, its not to say that all three did not exist at the same time.
Hysteria was seen in the 19th century, however it was seen that a lady was idealized in terms of delicacy and dreaminess, sexual passivity, and a charmingly unbalanced and unpredictable emotionality. This can be seen in the way that they drifting and fogging of perception, the nervous tremors and faints, etc. These are all the symptoms of hysteria and yet these were the qualities that society valued in women.
The 1950s and early 1960s were the time period where Bordo
concentrates on agoraphobia. I believe the best way to explain this section is that “content in a world of bedroom and kitchen, sex, babies and home!” These women were taught to
stay home, that men would go out into the world and make the money while the women stayed at home all day cooking, cleaning and taking care of the kids.
Anorexia is more of a recent development and it generally is created because of the idea that women should be extremely slim, it is the norm these days. Society is teaching women to feed others and not themselves and these rules are constantly reinforced by commercials and such. “A number of feminist writers have interpreted anorexia as a species of unconscious feminists protests.” These women, however, don’t even know that they are creating a protest. I don’t think I agree with that statement.
These women are those who are obsessed with their practices, which create these afflictions, they are simply unable to create the necessary change in their life. Bordo mentions that there are two different types of bodies, the intelligible body and the useful body. “The intelligible body includes our scientific, philosophic and aesthetic representations of the body. These are our cultural conceptions of the body, norms of beauty, models of health, and so forth.” The useful body is basically the practical rules of society, the “ trained, shaped, obeys, responds.” These two bodies often support each other and mirror one another.
Power and slenderness are sometimes associated with one another. When women with an eating disorder speak about their illness they always say that it had something to do with the power they held over it. However, women with anorexia has nothing to do with strength and they are not in control.
Bordo ends her piece by explaining that our bodies are a site of struggle and that “we must work to keep our daily practices in the service of resistance to gender domination, not in the service of “docility” and gender normalization.” We must be aware of the contradictions of image and practice, rhetoric and reality and that we must “restore a focus on female praxis to its formerly central place in feminist politics.”
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Chapter 20 The Politics of Life Itself
There is so much information to digest in these few pages so I will give it my best to try to cover it. Nikolas Rose sums up the whole chapter as for once "our very biological life itself has entered the domain of decision and choice...We have entered the age of vital politics, of biological ethics and genetic responsibility." In the past it used to be survival of the fittest, then starting in the 18th century according to Rose, political authorities took on the task of managing life in the name of well being "of the population as a vital order and of each of its living subjects." Politics now address the process of human existence concerning the size and quality of population, human sexuality, reproduction, life and death.
Type rest of the post here Biopolitics came with the rise of life sciences and clinical medicine involving new techniques and modern technologies for the care of people through modern health services. Rose points out that in the 20th century state organized tactics played a part in biological politics concerning modification of reproductive decisions in the name of health of the population. There will probably be a whole lot more involvement with Biopolitics with women being able to presently have a litter of babies and the moral and ethical responsibility behind it. Rose says "however great the moral and political distance between the euthanasia, compulsory sterilization and genetic counseling, we cannot simply counter pose positive to negative policies, voluntary to compulsory measures, coercion and persuasion." I believe he is saying that just because there is a controversy issue on these things we cannot impose or do anything about it. (Not sure though). The first half of the century ws easy for biopolitics because health was understood as fit, and fit people were more disirable than unhealthy people. It was the Governments job to make sure its population stayed healthy and took measures through policies. Vaccinations come to my mind among other policies. Things have changed according to Rose - 'the political rationalities of our preset are no longer inspired by the dream of the takig in charge of the lives of each in the name of the destiny of all.' Now there is an array of identity politics and cultures to deal with. People are expected to take care of their own health. The state does not give up total control though. They are still regulating the sale of foodstuffs and making sure the water is pure and fluoride is added to water for public health. What the state is willing to give up is that individuals are to become active partners in their own health and well being. Now there are all kinds of self help groups, medicines as well as alternative medicines, public and private health insurances to help with all of it. Rose spends a lot of time on genetic health. We can change the old normal and have a new normal through genetics. We can do in vitro fertilization, stem cell reproduction and repair of almost any part of the body by playing with DNA. We can cut, suck, lift and fill any part of us to make us look better, and also shorten sickness, and prevent premature death. Psychiatry can manipulate and improve personalities using bio medicine. Rose says that with original biopolitical theses there was an implied separation between those in power and the subjects such as the "medical experimentation on prisoners and psychiatric inmates, euthanasia of those whose lives are not worth living, even such benign strategies as medical inspeciotn of schoolchildren". He says now there are new strategies of advertising and "marketing in the rapidly developing consumer market for health". This makes me think of the commercials that tell you to ask your doctor about a prescription medication being right for you. Biopolitics merges here to what Rose terms "ethopolitics", the politics of life itself. He says dicipline equals individualizes and normalizes, biopower equals collectivizes and socializes, and ethopolitics equals self-techniques - humans to make themselves better than they are, "disputes over the value to be accorded to life itself: quality of life, right to life, or the right to choose, euthanasia, gene therapy, human cloning and the like." There is a new responsibility and choices that come with the new bio techno age. rose says that "individuals seem to have acquired a kind of biological citizenship"...and that this argument would suggest that "biological ethics ascribes each human life equal worth. But our practices and techniques show us that the biological lives of individual human beings are recurrently subject to judgments of worth." I don't know why Terri Schiavo came to mind at this time. Maybe it was because while judgment was being made of her worth to live, she took forever to die. Rose ends with "For once our very biological life itself has entered the domain of decision and choice...We have entered the age of vital politics, of biological ethics and genetic responsibility." Personally, I am glad to see all of the change that is going on in the field of medicine and look forward to seeing how it progresses.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Chapter 19 The Reproduction of Femininity
Bordo starts off by saying that our bodies are “a medium of culture.” What I took from this, and from the rest of the passage, is that our bodies are used to teach culture and to transfer cultural beliefs. Our bodies are just another place for the messages of society to be represented. This reminded me of symbolic interaction. I thought of how young girls learn to act the way they do and if their biggest influence is their mother and how she represents her body a little girl will do the same thing, such as playing with mommy’s make up or putting on mommy’s high heels.
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The Body as a text of femininity
In this part of the chapter Bordo talks about disorders and the reason that they come about is to portray the story of the women. This part of the chapter made a lot of sense to me because Bordo talks about anorexia and how it’s the woman’s way of filling the role that society shows her to be her correct role. Women develop this disorder to stay slim because that’s what they feel that society has labeled them as needing to be. She gave another reason for anorexia which I had never considered before. She writes that anorexia is a woman’s way of showing the male characteristics that are liked. She writes “Self control, determination, cool, emotional discipline, mastery” and “The anorexic pursues these virtues with single minded, unswerving dedication.” Showing that women are trying to live up to the characteristics that make men have the power. Women using anorexia as a way to gain power? Women are using their bodies as a message or as a social text. The woman is saying “So culture wants us to be ultra slender well I’ve got that message covered, I’ll starve and show them that I can fill the role of a woman and have the discipline of a man.” Sadly it’s a way for the woman to feel like she has some power in a society that grants her very little.
Protest and Retreat in the same gesture
What I got from this section is that by obtaining the disorder a woman is also protesting what that disorder stands for. The best way I understood it was through the example of anorexia again. So a woman becomes anorexic to fit the socially shown role of the skinny woman. In one way she is trying to fit her role but in another the toll it takes on her body is a protest in itself. Bordo writes that the anorexic is not consciously protesting but the way that her body disintegrates is the message of protest. This is the role you want women to fill and yet it’s killing them. Bordo also explains fits of hysteria that would cause a woman to become silent. So the woman develops this hysteria in an effort to fit some norm and as her body “retreats” or becomes weak she loses her voice and becomes exactly what society wants and that’s a silent submissive woman. I was confused on why hysteria would be a protest? I don’t understand that example but the anorexia one made more sense. A woman tries to take control of her body but ends up destroying it making her weak. What does society want again, oh yeah weaker women.
Collusion, Resistance, and the body
The main message that Bordo sends here is that women use their bodies and the disorders as a way to gain power. Being anorexic is like a power trip. The woman feels like she has complete power and also feels safe from the dangers of the female world once she starts to take on the male body. Being anorexic is a way to enter the sphere of men, or at least that’s how they feel. However, it takes its toll and instead of the original feminist meaning behind the disorder where the woman was just looking for a way to gain power in a male dominated world, the disorder ultimately destroys the woman.
Textuality, praxis, and the body
“Body as a machine” I think that this is the best quote that summarizes this section. Bordo talks about women’s body praxis and the fact that woman have been shown what their body type should be throughout the decades but the means in which they achieve this body form is dangerous, for example corsets. Such attention to the body that was brought on by these praxis were what made femininity develop. I thought that this is what she meant by textuality, that the measures that were being taken were the message that was being sent and made feminist step up and take notice. However the problem with femininity and “having it all” is that it develops these disorders. I thought that this section was a little more confusing like she was explaining the cause and effect in circles. So the ideal woman in society is shown, “feminine praxis was required”, and then that is the textuality of the body (as in sending a message), which results in feminist attention, but then the feminist want it all which only reverts back to means of getting it all, the power, the perfect body, and respect. How do we get these things we’ll revert back to the praxis. A vicious circle, does that make sense? She then tries to wrap it up by saying that taking care of your body for your body’s health sake is good and that it should be done but often we take care of our body so that it can form it’s docile role instead of taking care of our body as a way to resist the gender domination that society puts on it.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Chapter 19: Queer Politics
The goal of homosexual politics has fought to move heterosexuality from its status as obviously natural, good, and superior and to change homosexuality from its status as abnormal to legitimate. Nineteenth-century scientific discrimination and classification spurred homosexuals to speak out against these incrementing sciences and fight for homosexuality to be seen as natural. The author complains that many homosexual advocators continue to use the terms and ideas that perpetuates discrimination against homosexuals, accepting the terms and ideas that there is a natural state of sexuality for example. They accept that there is a natural sexuality they just want to move homosexual into the category of natural sexuality.
He argues that the homosexual political movement is not however just reflexive, trying to fit into the accepted norms already present in society, but it is also creative and dynamic as a unique and valuable alternative view and perception of society. They are working not just to stop discrimination and homophobia making homosexuality acceptable but still a definite other but to find a real and valued place for homosexuality in our culture. He says that you are either homosexual or not, but there is a “queer culture” that is more intentionally developed. Homosexuals have to work on and develop into this culture.
He also states that the homosexual lifestyle for the culture to be accepting of homosexual lifestyles is more important than it is to pass laws which legalize homosexual behaviors and give rights to homosexual couples. This is not to down play the importance of legal rights of couples but to stress the importance that the importance of a culture which has accepting attitudes of the homosexual couples and their lifestyles is just as important, and possibly even more so to those living as homosexuals in society. Homosexual relationships require norms and social formulas just like heterosexual couples. The difference being that there are no larger societal norms governing homosexual relationship the way there are for heterosexual couples. The creation of these norms within homosexual couples are part of creating the homosexual culture.
He suggests that these new homosexual relationship forms should maximize pleasure and stay away from simply recreating the forms already available. The form which he discusses as an example is S/M. S/M is very much outside the “normal” and institutionalized forms of relationships. He says that in S/M there are roles but it is know to be a game and not actually the institutionalized and ridged power structures that are present in heterosexual relationships. In heterosexual relationships the power play is in the courting before sex and outside of sex, where as in S/M the power play is seen to be fluid, a game in which roles are interchangeable. He states that S/M allows sexual pleasure to take president over sexuality and other outside and institutionalized norms.
He says that S/M is a creative thing that has been developed, not deep desires that people are just now able to express. He say that S/M is part of a movement and realization that pleasure doesn’t have to come form the traditional forms of sexual pleasure that have been normalized by our society but that “we can produce pleasure with very odd things, very strange parts of our bodies, in very unusual situations and so on.”
He explains that queer culture can really explore pleasure because it is already outside the norms set but society on what is normal and good in sexual pleasure and thus can use this freedom to explore more what can be enjoyable.
Queer Politics Chapter 18
In this Chapter Halperin discusses the negativity associated with gay politics as well as the various ideas of why homosexuality does not have to be taboo or frowned upon. Homosexuality is viewed as an object - it is spoken about but cannot speak. Halperin wants to move homosexuality into the subject status so that it has a voice and reality to itself.
In the 19th century movements towards acknowledging and accepting homosexuality began. Halperin elaborates on the thoughts of Foucault throughout this chapter. In 1977 Foucault explained in an interview that he; "believes that the movements labeled 'sexual iberation' ought to be understood as movements of affirmation 'starting with' sexuality." Not only homosexuality but sexuality in general was not acceptable to talk about. This movement towards equalization and new topics of discussion was very upsetting to many in the homosexual community. Many felt labeled and misunderstood, an inability to speak for ones' self. Halperin goes on to describe gay politics; "Gay liberation is not the upside-down reflection of medical pathologization, nor is it the exact opposite of homophobic stigmatization and oppression. Gay liberation, rather, is a surprising, unexpected dynamic, and open-ended movement whose ultimate effects extend beyond its immediate tactics. Gay politics is not a politics of pure reactivity, then, even thought its condition of possibility are admittedly rooted in an oppressive regime of power/knowledge. It is a reversal that takes us in a new direction" (Pg. 199). Gay liberation comes with fresh ideas and new inventive ways of finding equality -- it's not merely reacting to the disgust and disapproval of the public, it's working ahead of it. Moving homosexuality from the position of object to subject means changing the way many look and think they understand homosexuality into a place where it is it's own bank of knowledge.
Homosexuality is being left without an essence, it's simply described as everything heterosexuality is not. Homosexuality has to be viewed not by what it is but rather by where it is found and how it operates in those positions. Defining something as queer is merely to describe it as anything out of the ordinary, anything that is not part of the 'norm.' Queer then is used to describe anyone who is or 'who feels marginalized because of his or her sexual practices.' Examples are married couples who choose not to have children, or married couples with disobedient children. Therefore this exploration is about becoming queer, not about becoming homosexual. Halperin states that, "The problem of inventing queer relationships can be further complicated by additional factors, such as differences between the partners in age or race or class or nationality: there exist no readily available social formulas for mediating and negotiating those differences" (Pg 202). To go on, "Self-invention is not a luxary or a pastime for lesbians and gay men: it is a necessity. And it is therefore part of the acquired practice of what Foucault called 'becoming homosexual'" (Pg. 202). Therefore, creating ones' self is necessary in order to push through boundaries that will arise in the future for anyone who is doing what is out of the norm. Coming to terms with ones' sexuality and self make it easier to work through minor details like inter-racial relationships or diverse ages.
Halperin goes on to discuss in great detail Foucault's discussion regarding S/M -- being a queer pastime. Foucault explains that those who participate in S/M are not in it for aggression but rather to open up new horizons for pleasure and taking away the generalization of pleasure to only the genital region. Foucault calls this 'desexualization' or 'degenitalization.' Seeking pleasure through means other than sexually. Understanding that we are human beings in a sexual body not sexual beings in a human body. This entails liberating ourselves from the 'notion of sexuality,' by finding ourselves outside of our bodies. "By shattering the subject of sexuality, queer sex opens up the possibility for the cultivation of a more impersonal self, a self that can function as the substance of ongoing ethical elaboration -- and thus as the site of future transformation" (Pg. 205). If we merely let go of the labels and the pre-conceived notions of 'who we are' we can move on to a more intimate knowledge of ourselves which only opens the door for more intimate knowing of ourselves as humans.
Ch. 42: The Mirage of an Unmarked Whiteness
Type your summary here
I was very confused with this whole essay of Frankenberg’s Unmarked Whiteness. I really don’t understand what is being said about whiteness throughout this piece.
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It seems to focus mainly around the invisibility of whiteness; whether this notion can be true in the sense or not. It seemed to me that her answer right off the bat to this question was no. The rest of the essay seems to be the foundation to back why the invisibility of whiteness could never be. Talking about how it has only been until recently that we have gotten of the many extreme “whiteness” policies out of commission (non-interracial marriage, white’s only signs, etc). However, even after all the years with this perceived whiteness gone from the picture, white people still have this ideology cemented in their brain that because they’re white, that somehow they are inevitably more powerful than others not like them. I believe that’s where her discussion on the roots of “progressive and/or critical engagements with whiteness” explains how this arose’ along with the list of 6 false presumptions she list about whiteness. All of which I must say I never really thought about such as fact, until I read it. It was very surreal to think about. So, I apologize to those who read this if I seemed to be off the mark on this essay. It was tough.
Chap 42: Unmarked Whitness
Honestly, like all other readings I didn’t quite understand it however, I feel that Chap 42 is basically saying that “if you’re White, you’re Alright.” What I believe Frankenberg is talking about in chapter 42 is that “whiteness” is seen as invisible because history and even present day wants there t be a race that is like a role model for other races to follow.
Now granted we all know that white people in history has been known to be the oppressors to every race in United states, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asian, etc however no one really remembers that unless in a history class but people can remember the typical stereotypes placed on each of these races. I think that whiteness is seen as a normative, the way in which people should try to be like. Look at the Native Americans, they (white people) took their children and put them in boarding schools and completely transformed them into something that was considered civilized. She points out that the only attention to whiteness is correlated with movements led by communities of color for the enhancement of civil, economic, and political rights across lines.
She starts the chapter off by giving eight-point definitions of whiteness, which I personally think is true and she then goes into the invisibility of whiteness and how it is unmarked or seen as a problem/threat to society like other races. My only critique of Frankenberg is that she is vague and leaves one thinking “what or who is she exactly talking about.” However it is clear that her aim is to expose this notion that “whiteness” is the American way, and any other race is taboo.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Imitation and Gender Insubordination- Judith Butler
There was definitely I bit of confusion while reading this essay by Judith Butler on Imitation and Gender Insubordination. I felt I started off understanding what she was trying to get across but as I went on reading, things started to get a bit wordy and harder for me to understand.
She begins with talking about what it is to be a lesbian. One wants to be able to identify who they are as a person and how they seem to identify themselves. However, Butler believes that with doing this it seems that they would be categorizing the gay and lesbian community in terms that are unnecessary. Why do you have to identify yourself to a certain stereotypes, which seem to place each other on different levels and ranks that bound the limits to who someone is able to become. She states this when she says:
“I’m permanently troubled by identity categories, consider them to be invariable stumbling blocks, and understand them, even promote them, as sites of necessary trouble.”
Judith Butler also touched on the fact of “coming out.” Does one “coming out” to society mean that they are free to be whom they want or does it mean, a target is now placed on them, and an identity for others to look at, therefore giving another judgment that can be made toward that person? Butler believes that you may be free and open about whom you are, identifying publicly but you are put into a new sent of boundaries and limitations, a closet inside a closet so to speak.
Then the issue of imitation is brought up. What was original verses what was a copy on the topic of sex identity? It is seen that heterosexuality is the beginning, but others she homosexuality as the original sexuality, so what came first, the chicken or the egg? We all start out as heterosexual people in the eyes of the majority population. People look at being lesbianism as miming heterosexuality because it is not the norm.
“…I suffered for a long time and I suspect many people have, from being told, explicitly or implicitly, that what I ‘am’ is a copy, an imitation, a derivative example, a shadow of the real.”
This continues on to speak about drag. Some may see it as people imitating who they are not. Drag is not playing a role that should be played by a gender of a different group. But this is assuming that gender is placing male and females into the masculine and femine category based on a physical makeup of the body, rather then being an identity based on roles performed.
“…gender is not a performance that a prior subject elects to do, but gender is performative in the sense that it constitutes as an effect the very subject it appears to express.”
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Performance and Power
I had some difficulty trying to grasp exactly what Alexander was trying to get at throughout this whole piece. First he talks about how he is going to take an approach on the “phenomenon of power” in a different way than many do. That he is going to start over basically and use “cultural pragmatics” to understanding power and social performance.“Actions are performative insofar as they can be understood as communicating meaning to an audience. For purposes of understanding such performance, it does not matter what meaning “really” is, either for the actors themselves or in some ontological or normative sense. What matters is how others interpret actors’ meaning.”
With saying this, Alexander is leading into everything he is trying to write in this piece. I understand him to be saying that by doing an action, it is only “successful” (Which he talks about further in the piece), if the audience is getting some sort of meaning out of it and it is the meaning you are trying to give them.
He then goes on the talk about how a performance is successful. According to Alexander, the only way a performance or action can be successful is if the audience believes what you are doing is real, not just a script that you happen to be following. The action cannot appear to be performed and the audience must be able to put their selves into the performance or the actors’ shoes.
I also understood him to be saying the same thing about power, that for something to be powerful people must believe it to be real. He then started to connect what he was talking about with Performance and Power to what we were talking about in class about Gender. He quotes Judith Butter “there is no power construed as a subject that acts, but only a reiterated acting that is power in its persistence and instability about one’s gender.” The reason I believe this to connect is because if you want someone to believe you are a certain gender, than they have to believe it to be real.
He does also talk about power in the sense of dictatorship and the Iraqi War. He is saying that even today dictatorship can be successful. That basically all you need is “audience alienation.” Also that something traumatic helps the actor be successful with their power. For example with the Iraqi War. As many Americans would not have backed up such a war if something like 911 did not happen first.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Performance and Power
Alexander approaches the concept of power through cultural pragmatics, in which social action is a social performance. Our social actions are a performance used to communicate with an audience. The meaning of the actions doesn’t matter, all that matters is how the audience interprets them. The success of an actor is determined by whether or not he can (consciously or unconsciously) control how others receive his message. In order for people to believe he message, he has to deliver it not as a script, which can seem forced or fake, but as something real. He has to come across as authentic so they identify with him, connect emotionally with him, and finally they’ll believe him and his message.
For every performance, there are certain elements that are needed. This includes (1) an actor, which can be an individual, group, or organization. (2) A collective representation (not really sure how to explain this one) says that “every speech is a play upon the variations of a background structure, the collective representations that define the symbolic references for every speech act” (180). (3) A means of symbolic production says the actor needs a stage to communicate, which could be a newspaper, television, etc. (4) Mise-en-scene “is the arranging, and the doing, of actors’ movements in time and space” (181). (5) Social power can be “resources, capacities, and hierarchies, but it involves also the power to project hermeneutical interpretations of performance from outside political and economic power in the narrow sense” (181). Finally, the (6) audience is important because without it all of the social performance is wasted.
Successful social performances have some requirements. The script has to be simple enough that the audience can understand the meaning. The component parts have to be invisible, or else the action will seem false. “Everything must appear to be created for the here and now…to seem authentic” (181). The audience must identify with the actor. The actor is much more understood and believed in a simpler society where it is easier for the audience to relate.
Alexander says that it isn’t a coincidence that theatre develops along with publicly empowered citizens. It is a great resource for the empowered to coerce with. They “assume powerful scripts, great actors, compliant audiences, corrupted or brainwashed journalists, and bought-off critics” (184). They control all aspects of the society (“law, school books, movies, political campaigns, or wars” (184)). He states further in the reading that dictatorships control in this way.
To defeat this power, audiences must be skeptical of the performances. They must create their own counter-performances. Democracy is an example of this because it keeps any single actor from dominating the stage. “Power corrupts, but in differentiated and fragmented social orders it is very difficult for power to corrupt absolutely “ (186).