Bodies, Bio-power and Bio-politics

The Body:

            Black...child...endangered...species. A physical marking, a stage of life, an existential threat, part of a larger group who have real, concrete individual and collective needs that must be addressed. These few categories, Foucault would argue, are all examples of the expressions of power interacting at the level of the body. Indeed, Foucault argues that in the transition from what he calls the Classical period to the period that brought with it the age of enlightenment, the rise of capitalism and the human sciences the concept of power transitioned from the right of a sovereign to either make die or let live to an expression of power whose aim is to administer and maintain life.

            Black...child...endangered...species. The child in the picture above, if I understand Foucault correctly, exists in the midst of a multiplicity of forces—a multitude of power relations—that are continuously categorizing, ordering, naming, placing and managing him from birth. He is not a vague theoretical concept—nor is he the object of a top-down exercise of power. He is affected in his physical form by the expressions of power in the society into which he was born and exerts forces—expresses power—himself. From the moment he enters into a family, he will begin to be affected by the discipline Foucault says characterizes the power expressed on, in and through bodies. By rituals of repetition, spatial placement, arrangement of resources and countless other effects, he will be trained to be efficient and useful, yet docile. In school, he will be on a rigid time schedule and will repeat the same routine every day for years, but not before he has submitted to medical testing and manipulation, been registered and verified.

            Before he is six years old, he will have been examined and scrutinized in more ways than he can count. When he enters kindergarten, before he is taught to spell his own name, he will be taught to sit, stand, line up, walk and stop on command. And if he does not comply with the norms established, then he will move through a series of procedures that will further investigate, measure and categorize him in attempts to produce a normal response until, ultimately, if he does not comply with the norms, he will participate in the system of strict disciplinary activity that is the penal system. It is not the fact that he is a subject of the law that makes this possible, but that he is an embodied being on and in whom the relations of power in his society are at work. His body is, “directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs” (173).

The disciplining of the body takes many forms

Let's look again at the original picture, shall we?

Only the child's picture is shown, but the statement in the picture serves to implicate Black women as abnormal, endangering factors to their own children. This child has made it into the world safely, but—if we believe this picture—many do not. In a society whose collective aim is now to manage and promote life, an entire group of women are implicated in the destruction of life. If the above description of the first years of the child's life is (as I hope it is) an accurate description of the expressions of disciplinary power relations on the body, what is happening to Black women in this picture opens us to the concepts of bio-power and bio-politics.

           

Bio-Power and Bio-Politics:

            The reason this little baby can be investigated and examined as thoroughly as he can is because of the advancements of the sciences during 19^th century. Foucault—in line with his understanding of knowledge/power—understands the specialization of the sciences to have contributed to the powers of surveillance and categorization. Along with the disciplines' power to control the productive capacity and docility of bodies, advances in medical knowledge increased the power to extend and enhance life. With the advancement of the sciences, the body and all of its functions and needs and interests are presumed to be “knowable” and with this new knowledge comes a new form of power relation—bio-power. Bio-power, according to Foucault:

evolved in two basic forms…the first to be formed, it seems—centered on the body as a machine: its disciplining, the optimization of its capabilities, the extortion of its forces, the parallel increase of its usefulness and its docility, its integrations into systems of efficient and economic controls, all this was ensured by the procedures that characterized the disciplines: an anatomo-politics of the human body (261-262).

This form of bio-power is what we see in the conditioning of the baby by ritual and social norming. The training of his body from childhood to perform in the ways that are acceptable and fruitful to his society. We can clearly imagine the baby in physical form and the forces that will seek to train his body. Most of us have been children in this country. We can estimate some of the ways in which power will invest his little body without much difficulty, however, when we consider the second form of bio-power, the picture this picture becomes both clearer and more complicated.

The second, formed somewhat later, focused on the species body, the body imbued with the mechanics of life and serving as the basis of the biological processes: propagation, births and mortality, the level of health, life expectancy and longevity with all the conditions that can cause these to vary. Their supervision was effected through an entire series of interventions and regulatory controls: the bio-politics of the population (262).

            The above is not just a picture and a fact. It is an argument in a bio-political discourse. Why is the Black child an endangered species? Because some statistics show that Black women are more likely to abort their fetuses than white women and other minorities. Demography—the statistical study of populations—is one of the many tools through which bio-politics organizes living beings in a living world. Because the sciences produced the knowledge that Black women abort fetuses more often than white women (statistics that others question and challenge), and because bio-power is expressed in the administering of life, it is no surprise that a movement toward mitigating what may be considered by some to be the ritual destruction of life was born to address this issue. It would be easy for someone like with me—someone with a strictly pro-reproductive rights/justice orientation—to dismiss these billboards as products of flawed ideology or attempts at top down control of Black women, but Foulcault calls me to consider this a little more deeply.

        If power is productive and discourse constitutes realities—then the “endangered Black child” is no matter of abstraction, but a reality—produced by power/knowledge—that must now be managed. The creation of the endangered Black child also implicates other bodies in its situation. If the Black child is in danger of being aborted because statistics tell us so, then there are implications that point to the Black woman. If she—in a world of power relations that seek to manage life—is making the decision to stop life, then her own life must be inspected, investigated and categorized in order to situate it in terms abnormal vs. normal. This particular billboard (as have many images of the Black woman in Western discursive practices) seems to seek to categorize her as abnormal. It does not say why—it only needs to produce an endangered child in order to point—through the web of the discourse that surrounds the “proper” functioning of a woman and a mother—to an abnormal mother.

            Luckily, Foucault reminds us, power is no longer the possession of any one person or group. So even as statistics produce knowledge about Black female bodies that seems to imply abnormality and permit punitive action, other forms of knowledge/power express themselves within the same bio-political discourse to challenge those forces. When this particular expression of the bio-political discourse that seems to classify Black women as dangerous and irresponsible—abnormal—reared its head in 2010 it immediately attracted attention and encountered opposition in the form of other bio-political powers. The statistics that supported the argument were investigated more closely and new knowledge was produced. Several groups of people who had been operating independently of each other combined their knowledge/power to create a new, concrete reality—an organization AND a movement called Trust Black Women.

Trust Black Women—in response to the messages deployed by these billboards and other tactics—utilizes medical knowledge, psychology, sociology, economics, urban anthropology, political advocacy and the arts in order to express the relations of power found in the lived experiences of women as decision-makers. Their use of all of the tools of as many of the sciences available to them in order to help categorize the Black female population differently from the way it has been categorized in the picture above is a bio-political strategy—seeking to address the lived existence of a population in the midst of political forces that are ever changing and influencing it.



"Sapphire" angry and overbearing



Questions for reflection/discussion:

1) Where and how do you see Bio-political strategies expressed in each of the presidential candidates' main messages. (The birth control debate is TOO easy!!!)

2) I mentioned before that discursive practices surrounding Black women's bodies in the West have often categorized them as abnormal. To the righ are three of the images that have been used to do so. How do you think biopolitics plays itself out in the deployment of such images? Which one of these is most likely to create an "endangered" Black child?



3) What other bio-political discourses are important to you and why?

"Mammy" asexual and safe



"Jezebel" sexually available and dangerous







Post-Structuralism

Post-Structuralism

From Marx, we learn that power dynamics and hierarchy are rooted in the economical structure. Althusser shows us the problematic that exists in ideological structures where assumptions are made based on what is presented as real. Gramsci posits a conscious adherence to “social stability” (CTPC 80) that creates a hegemonic structure. Lacan explains the psychological structure of the lack and the Real. All of these theorists connote a system of perceived reality and that which truly underlies that perception—the false consciousness, the imaginary, the assumed, the Symbolic, all undermining true relationships, reality, the actual, and the Real. The framework of these theories is exemplified in Saussure’s structure of language, explaining structure in terms of parole and langue and signifier and signified.

Post-structuralism can be thought of as what structuralism evolved into. In some ways, it does not separate itself entirely from structuralism but is a critique of structuralism and questions the “stability” on which structuralism depends. Post-structuralism does not shift it’s focus to a new subject of study (e.g. economy or the psyche), but, like structuralism, continues to examine the nature of “meaning” in terms of language. However, unlike structuralism, post-structuralism doubts that there is a reality “out there” (even though structuralism claims that reality is always fleeting). Post-structuralism demonstrates the incoherence of the systems of discourse, the dual and chaotic nature of meaning, the falsity of universal truths, the malleability of human kind or that which makes us different, and the unpredictability of “systems.” Whereas structuralism focuses on the structure and system themselves, post-structuralism focuses on the readers or speakers participating in that structure (http://webs.wofford.edu/whisnantcj/his389/differences_struct_poststruct.pdf).

Language, Power, and The History of Sexuality

Michel Foucault shows this post-modern approach to language by explaining that “power produces reality; through discourses it produces the ‘truths’ we live by” (CTPC 130). In other words, discourse produces knowledge, thus enabling, constraining, and constituting the reality in which we live. Knowledge isn’t just produced, but it is organized through our interpretations upon interpretations of discourse. “Power produces knowledge…power and knowledge directly imply one another” (CTPC 130). You cannot have one without the other. Both power and knowledge are intrinsically tied into language. Foucault illustrates the nature of power through discussing sexuality in the Victorian Era in his The History of Sexuality.

To better understand Foucault and post-structuralism, I think it is important to get a grasp of his repressive hypothesis. The repressive hypothesis refers to the idea that sexuality is “something ‘essential’ that the Victorians repressed” (CTPC 129). You cannot talk about sex or have sex except within the bounds of marriage, a ceremony that was only recognized by the State. Of course, there were rebellions to this—men going to brothels, detailed confessions to religious clergy. Society (as controlled by the bourgeoisie) looked down upon sexual desires and expressions of sex, and therefore the appropriateness off sexuality was ultimately defined by the bourgeois. This led to a sexual revolution in which men and women needed to break free from such repression.

Foucault rejected this hypothesis, asking: 1) Is it reasonable to conclude that there is a correlation between the rise of the bourgeoisie in the 17^th century and sexual repression? 2) Is power (or what we think of as power) expressed through repressing society? 3) Because we tend to define and analyze the 17^th century as a distant culture/time apart from ours, we assume that we are different from it in terms of repression and power. Our we separate and can we make judgments about repression? (HS 10). Foucault is asking why we tend to talk about sexuality in terms of repression and rebellion. Why do we perceive sexuality like we do, and how did we get to the point of perceiving sexuality as being repressed? “What Foucault calls ‘regimes of truth’ do not have to be ‘true’; they have only to be thought of as ‘true’ and acting on as if ‘true’” (CTPC 130).

It is interesting to think about sexual repression in the context of the 21^st century. Is society still fighting against the oppression just as those in the 17^th century were perceived to do? If so, how have the weapons changed but continued within the same war? For example, the legalization of gay marriage is arguably the hottest debate currently in the U.S. How have gay-rights activists talked about a history of repression in terms of same-sex expression? Is even saying “gay-rights activists” a reflection of how society perceives sexual power/repression? As stated earlier, discourse produces power, and power is not necessarily something that comes from “the top” and enforced upon the “controlled masses.” It is created through discourse generated by society’s perception of repression. How could “don’t ask don’t tell” be looked at through a Foucauldian lens to demonstrate the incapacitating of power as discourse of "asking and telling" is silenced?

In the following clip, Conan O’brien pushes the envelope, or he maybe about to. Does the expression “push the envelope” reveal something about how modern-day society thinks of the boundaries of “taboo” subjects like sex?

Panoptic machine meets biopolitics and the carceral society.

In 1787 Jeremy Bentham designed a new type of prison, the panopticon. The basic design had tower constructed in the middle of the prison that would allow guards a 360-degree view of prisoners. The tower was constructed so that they never knew when they were being observed. Bentham stated that the panoptic was “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind…” and believed the panoptic design would be used by multiple establishments (schools, hospitals, etc.) as an inspection tool (Storey, p. 131).

Foucault was fond of the panopticon and what it meant for the surveillance of society. He believed that this type of prison forced the prisoner to be aware of his visibility. In his own words Foucault said the following “the major effect of the Panopticon is to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power…surveillance is permanents in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action” (Storey, p.131). The prisoners, being aware of the ‘guard’ watching them, monitor their actions, not having any way to determine if there is in fact a guard in the tower. When they engage in this type of activity Foucault claims they are playing a dual role: the role of both prisoner and guard. As a society we do this all the time!

The panopticon, for Foucault, represented a shift in power and social control. Prior to Betham’s design the focus was on punishment (think about the public beheadings and hangings) and then to discipline afterwards. This shift and use of surveillance “has become the dominant mode of the operation of power” (Storey, p. 132).

Take a minute and think about the following scenario:

How many of you have been speeding down the highway when you suddenly see the cop car sitting under the overpass? As you drive past you cannot see through the tinted windows. We have no way of telling if there is a police officer sitting in the car. If you are any thing like most drivers the second you see the car you tap your brakes and slow down. The same could be said for the cameras at traffic lights. Not knowing if there is an actual officer nearby we engage in self-surveillance. While this is not the panopticon these types of power and surveillance techniques directly flow from Bentham’s design and are examples of Foucault’s surveillance theory.

In the United Kingdom the use of CCTV is another example of how surveillance is used. Below is a video from the UK which addresses the issue of surveillance and power.

Throughout our Lemert reading we continue to see Foucault’s interest in the panopticon. In an excerpt from Discipline and Punishment, Foucault discussed the implications of the panopticon on the “entire social body”. Foucault believed that this transformation of society had several important results. Below are three of Foucault’s six results.

1.) Prison gave us ‘delinquents’. The prison system does not simply take offenders and toss them away; this type of system uses them as examples. Foucault states that panoptic society uses imprisonment as a form of defense (omnipresent armature). The delinquent is then used to transfer from discipline to law (Lemert, p. 418). For Foucault this meant that the delinquent was nothing but a product of the institution. A way to deter society from actions, which might land them in prison!

2.) The power to punish abnormal or deviant actions becomes natural; it does so by lowering tolerance for acts of deviance. Foucault raises an interesting point in the following statement, “…the authority that sentence infiltrates all those other authorities that supervise, transform, correct, improve. It might even be said that nothing really distinguishes them any more except the singularly ‘dangerous’ character of the delinquents…” (Lemert, p. 420). What sets the executioner apart from the soon to be executed?

3.) The prison system paved the way for “new form of law” (Lemert, p.420). Simply stated, it gave a judge (school teacher, government official, etc.) the ability to “assess, diagnose, recognize the normal and abnormal and claim the honour of curing or rehabilitating” (Lemert, p.420). With this new system members of society can even act as judges! Think to times when you have examined a situation or person and found the situation to be abnormal. You can thank the carceral society for this ability!

While Foucault did not wish to be classified by terms such as post-structuralism, his approach to power and the panoptic suggest that he would fall into this category. Post-structuralism suggest that meaning is unstable. After reading and exploring Foucault this reminds us of the instability of ‘normal’ society. I believe Marx would have shared some of Foucault’s theories. For Marx the panopticism would have been the bourgeoisie’s way of monitoring and exercising power over the proletariat.

Discussion Questions:

1. The textbook gave several examples of television shows and we also offered examples of panopticism. What are other modern day examples of panopticism?

2. What concerns does the use of panopticism raise?

3. Do you agree with Foucault’s views on the ways the carceral society has transformed the “entire social body”?

For all you LOST fans, here is an article that discusses Foucauldian themes in seasons one and two. You could make the argument that the entire show itself is based on notions of surveillance, particularly when Jack discovers the “lighthouse” in season six: http://loststudies.com/1.2/discipline.html

Here are a few “creeper” songs for your enjoyment.

Structuralism

Structuralism is an approach to cultural studies that assumes society and language are products of, and part of a large overarching system.  Under Structuralism, language and other cultural elements can only be understood as a part of this system.  For Marx, the structure was inherently economic; for Freud, it was psychological; Althusser – ideology.  While Structuralism has fallen out of favor in the last 50 years, its influence on contemporary philosophy and social science cannot be overstated.

Arabic: وَرْدَة (wardä)

Aramaic: rosi

Syriac: ܘܪܕܐ (wardā, wardo)  

Hebrew: ורדא (wardā, wardo)  

Bosnian: ruža (bs)  

Breton: roz collective noun rozenn singular

Catalan: rosa,  

Chinese: 薔薇 (qiángwéi)

Croatian: ruža (hr)  

Czech: růže (cs)  

Danish: rose (da)  

Dutch: roos (nl)  

Estonian: roos (et)

Faroese: rósa (fo)  

Finnish: ruusu (fi)

French: rose (fr)  

Galician: rosa (gl)  

German: Rose (de)  

Greek: τριαντάφυλλο [tria(n)ˈdafiˌlo̞]  , ρόδο [ˈro̞ðo̞]  

Hebrew: ורד (vered)  

Hindi: गुलाब (gulāb)

Hungarian: rózsa (hu)

Indonesian: bunga mawar

Italian: rosa (it)  

Japanese: 薔薇 (ばら, bara), バラの花 (bara no hana)

Latin: rosa (la)  

Lithuanian: rožė (lt)

Maltese: warda (mt)  

Marathi: गुलाब (gulāb)

Norwegian: rose (no)  

Persian: گل (gol)

Polish: róża (pl)  

Portuguese: rosa (pt)  

Romanian: trandafir (ro)  , roză (ro)  

Russian: роза (ru)  

Cyrillic: ружа  

Roman: ruža  

Slovene: vrtnica (sl)  

Spanish: rosa (es)  

Swedish: ros (sv)  

Telugu: గులాబి (gulaabi)

Turkish: gül (tr)

Urdu: گلاب (ur) (gulāb)

Yiddish: רויז (roiz)

(Source: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rose#Translations )

Whatever you call it, it still has thorns.  Maybe Shakespeare was a structuralist 300 years before Ferdinand de Saussure. 

What Bill and Ferd were both pointing out was the word “rose” has no real relationship to the thing we call a rose.  “Rose” is not a living thing; it does not smell; the spoken word does not sound like the flower and the written letters make no sound; it is not even shaped like the flower.  In fact, nothing about “rose” relates to the plant except that someone long ago decided “rose” would be linked to the flower in a specific way.  “Rose” the word is the signifier which conjures a mental conception (the signified) of a thing.  Furthermore, not only does the signifier (word: rose) have no real relationship to the thing, neither does the signified (whatever you think of when you hear or see the word “rose”).  Like the word, the thought does not look like, smell like, sound like or feel like the flower.  Together, the signifier and the signified form the sign for the usually fragrant, often red, generally attractive botanical thing that was distributed to millions earlier this week as a sign of love. (But why that is requires a whole long discussion by itself.)

(This is not a pipe)

The Treachery of Images, by painter René Magritte (1929)

Despite having no tangible connection to the things they represent, Saussure argued that signs (the combined signifier and signified) were not arbitrary. Language in all forms is part of a large meaningful system of culture.  This system has a form or structure and understanding language (or any element of culture) requires an understanding the larger structure and language’s place in that structure, hence the term Structuralism.

Structuralism seems a natural next step from the psychoanalytic theory of culture where signs are the product of the Symbolic, which is a product of, but distinct from the Real and the Imaginary.  Saussure believed that language could be opened up to reveal the hidden reality and ideology that produced the language.  His approach was to separate the use of language, which he termed parole, from the langue, which were the rules of language, or grammar.   Langue is the set of rules we learn about how to construct phrases, sentences, texts, and conversations.  Parole is the specific acts of language in use.  Separating these two concepts was central to Saussure’s argument.  As parole, specific texts contain elements with are sometimes unique to an individual and based personal experience.  Langue, on the other hand, is an impersonal social phenomenon, whose rules apply to everyone.  As such, the processes involved and the influential conditions that form its creation can be studied as generalities that apply to the whole culture.  

Consider the following metaphor:  You may be able to tell a lot about a person by the clothes they wear: size, gender, personality, cultural associations, typical physical environment, and the list goes on...  You can also tell a lot about humans by looking at clothes generally.  We generally have two arm and two legs.  Humans seem to come in two basic shapes (male, female).  Humans grow over time and have changing physical needs.  Our bodies have limited resistance to environmental conditions.  The list goes on…

Saussure believed the commonalities of language, as part of a social structure, revealed things about people in that society like how they thought, how they organized information, what they valued.  The list goes on…  Furthermore, because language is how we connect to and express elements of reality, language influences our perception of reality.  People with fundamentally different languages may experience the same phenomenon in different ways.

Claude Lévi-Strauss

On Halloween, 2009 the “father of modern anthropology” died, just 28 days short of his 101^st birthday.  Claude Lévi-Strauss was a contemporary of Saussure and actually first used the term “structuralism” to describe this theoretical approach to linguistic and culture.  While his work has had significant influence on a number of disciplines, his primary contribution to media and cultural criticism may be his study of myth.  Lévi-Strauss pointed to the commonality of myths from divergent cultures to make statements about how human beings see themselves relative to both the experienced and idealized universe.  Myths and mythical thought provide a way to mediate or resolve contradictions and oppositional elements.  In Le Cru et le cuit (The Raw and the Cooked), Lévi-Strauss tries "to reduce apparently arbitrary data (the myths) to some kind of order, and to attain a level at which a kind of necessity becomes apparent, underlying the illusions of liberty".

Later critics and theorist would build on Lévi-Strauss’ theories to examine films and other popular narratives.  Will Wright applied structural views of myth to examine Hollywood Westerns.  Wright identified 16 stages common to myths and Western movies specifically.  Likewise, Joseph Campbell received fairly wide recognition for his work on myths.  In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell argued for the existence of the “Monomyth”.  Pointing to similarities between Jesus Christ, Luke Skywalker, and Neo (The Matrix), he argued that all hero myths have the same structure.  Campbell collaborated with Bill Moyers on the PBS series The Power of Myth, which was first broadcast in 1988.  It is a six part series, of which, each part is available on Youtube.

Joseph Campbell--Myth As the Mirror for the Ego 

Roland Barthes

Jackass?

Roland Barthes sought to “make explicit what too often remains implicit in the texts and practices of popular culture” (Storey, 118). He elaborates on Saussure’s “signifier/signified” design by pointing out a “secondary signification” beyond the “primary signification.” To clarify by way of an animal, consider the word ‘jackass.’ At the primary level, the word signifies a male donkey. This is the “denotation” of the word. At the secondary level, the signified male donkey becomes the signifier to produce a new meaning: a stupid person, or a democrat. This is the “connotation” of the words. Barthes “claims that it is at the level of secondary signification or connotations that myth is produced for consumption” (Storey, 119).

Jackass?

Jackass?

Both Levi-Strauss and Barthes were interested in studying the nature of mythology and its ideological implications. Levi-Strauss focuses on the classic conception of myths as stories and finds it noteworthy that myths around the world share similarities. As shown earlier, Joseph Campbell shared this fascination. In considering language in terms of myth, Levi-Strauss wrote that “there is a very good reason why myth cannot simply be treated as language if its specific problems are to be solved; myth is language: to be known, myth has to be told; it is part of human speech. In order to preserve its specificity we must be able to show that it is both the same things as language, and also something different from it” (Lemert, 314). Levi-Strauss seems to be suggesting the connotative creation of meaning. However, when Barthes speaks of myth, he “means ideology understood as a body of ideas and practices, which by actively promoting the values and interests of dominant groups of society, defend the prevailing structures of power” (Storey, 119). In suggesting the connotative quality of signs, Barthes seeks to reveal the myths we are sitting on top of and experiencing constantly. More importantly, Barthes wants to reveal how these myths are used to manipulate.

The classic display of Barthes’ connotation according to Storey’s text is the example from the French Magazine Paris Match that depicts a young black soldier looking upward and saluting something unseen. Storey details the significance of this image, though the relevance is linked to historical incidents from which we, living 55 years later, are detached.  As a more up to date example of how one might read a text, consider this Rolling Stone cover with Kanye West as Jesus.

To name a few of the connotations the image conjures: abuse, struggle, martyrdom, holiness, defiance, or blasphemy. Just like the Paris Match soldier, Kanye is looking upward, a visual decision that creates the impression of his subordination and control. Who he is looking at remains in question. Whether it is God, a music Producer, or his fans, the one he is hailing is left to the person viewing the image. The text sharing the cover with Kanye’s face “controls the production of connotations of the image”(Storey, 122). In this instance, the main guiding text is “The Passion of Kanye West.” This connects to the widely seen movie “The Passion of the Christ,” and supports the reading the Kanye has endured all manner of abuse. We are to glean suffering from this image, the blood on Kanye’s cheek. But his defiant eyes maintain his will and resolve. Should we ignore the other texts on the page: “Out of Control,” “Inside the War Room of the Religious Right,” “Wilson Pickett 1941-2006”? These words attach themselves to Kanye and suggest a loss of control, religious leanings, and death! This reading of texts is dependent upon our experience of culture. “What makes the move from denotation to connotation possible is the store of social knowledge (a cultural repertoire) upon which the reader is able to draw when he or she reads the image” (Storey, 124). In the end, we can only draw from what we have experienced.

Reflection Questions:

1. Structuralism argues that everything is language, what is meant by this? Give examples.

2. Cite and explain a “myth” that is part of our current culture.  How is it being used to shape public discourse or actions?

3. What do you make of the connotations in either or both of these baby-centric magazine covers?

              

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud thought humans were all repressed, which amounts to being closed off from our true urges in an effort to maintain a functional society. If this repression were not in place, we might be tackling one another without warning in an effort to sexually or violently satisfy ourselves.

Freud identifies the conscious and the unconscious in terms of how the mind, or “psyche” functions. The conscious is apparent and perceivable to ourselves and to those around us, while the unconscious is hidden in the deepest recesses of our brains and must be sought after by specialized techniques, namely psychoanalysis.

The unconscious is the home of the “id,” or the unabated animal passions that stir from within. “The power of the id expresses the true purpose of the individual organism’s life.” (Lemert, 131) The id is made slave to the “ego,” or the rational and purposeful side of ourselves; the ego, “whose business it also is to discover the most favorable and least perilous method of obtaining satisfaction, taking the external world into account”(Lemert, 132). Storey mentions an analogy used by Freud where he compares the ego to a person and the id to a horse. The ego rides the id and helps to keep potentially unbridled energy in check.

If the ego were to let the id run wild, it might look like this:

Freud’s ego/id split makes sense for classifying the inner workings of an individual. The modern film example of a repressed individual letting his id run wild can be found in the movie Fight Club through the character of Tyler Durden.

“The long period of childhood, during which the growing human being lives in dependence on his parents, leaves behind it as a precipitate the formation in his ego of a special agency in which this parental influence is prolonged. It has received the name of super-ego.” (Lemert, 131) In other words, the super-ego is essentially an authority figure living in your head modeled after your parents. Jiminy Cricket acts as Pinocchio’s super-ego:

Freud does not limit the super-ego to the confines of an individual, but expands the notion to that of a collective: “It can be asserted that the community, too, evolves a super-ego under whose influence cultural development proceeds.” (Lemert, 149) The process “is based on the impression left behind by the personalities of great leaders - men of overwhelming force of mind or men in whom one of the human impulsions has found its strongest and purest, and therefore often its most one-sided expression.” (Lemert, 149) Freud goes on to say that these individuals are often abused during their lifetime, Jesus Christ being a prime example.

When we dream, Freud believes what occurs is “a compromise between wishes emanating from the id and censorship enacted by the ego…censorship occurs but wishes are expressed; that is, they are coded in an attempt to elude censorship” (Storey, 94). In considering and interpreting dreams, one must weigh “the latent dream thoughts (unconscious) and the manifest content (what the dreamer remembers dreaming)”(Storey, 94). From Frankenstein combinations of latent elements, to associative shape shifting of people into things, it becomes tricky to decipher meaning in dreams. As movie guys, we are fond of the opening sequence from the movie 8 ½ in which the main character, a movie director, finds himself trapped in a car and under the watchful gaze of those around him as he almost suffocates, barely escapes, only to become a kite flying in the air in the hands of his producer.

Freud’s all-famous “Oedipus Complex” is best understood once you know the premise of the play Oedipus Rex (or Oedipus the King) by Sophocles. “Oedipus kills his father (unaware that he is his father) and marries his mother (unaware that she is his mother)”(Storey, 97). Taking note of John Storey’s use of the word ‘unaware’ in his brief but effective retelling of the story shows how this complex happens unconsciously and unintentionally. With an Oedipus Complex, a male child desires his mother, sees his father as competition for her love, wants to kill the father as a result, can’t do it because a kid against a grown man just won’t work, sides with the father and realizes he’ll just have to find another woman down the road, and if he’s lucky, she’ll be just like his mom. Freud had an Oedipus complex worked out for girls where the situation stated above is repeated, except with the father in the place of the mother and vice versa (Storey, 97). This complex has always made sense to us. Then again, we are both men. Freud’s version of the Oedipus complex for women seems a little weak.

When analyzing texts using Freud’s psychoanalytical method, there are two approaches: “the first approach is author-centered, treating the text as the equivalent to an author’s dream”(Storey, 97). By this method, a reader can try to locate hidden meanings within a given text and essentially reveal the author’s secret desires and motivations. In watching movies and television shows, this technique is invaluable to both of us in our quest for meaning in everything we consume.

“The second approach is reader-centered, and…is concerned with how texts allow readers to symbolically play out desires and fantasies in the texts they read”(Storey, 98). By this method, a reader becomes complicit and involved in the content of a work and can analyze the effect that the work has upon him or her.

Jacques Lacan “seeks to anchor psychoanalysis firmly in culture rather than biology”(Storey, 101). Lacan locates in every individual an “endless quest in search of an imagined moment of plenitude [abundance]”(Storey, 101). What is sought after is termed “l’objet petit a,” and will never be obtained.

Lacan is perhaps best known for his concept of the “mirror stage,” when a child first sees itself in a mirror and recognizes what it is and what it can be. “This form situates the agency of the ego, before its social determination, in a fictional direction, which will always remain irreducible for the individual alone”(Lemert, 344). In other words, this event sets up the formation of the ego wherein the child begins to see itself as someone who looks and is looked upon. The image of itself that the child perceives in the mirror amounts to a “misrecognition” because of the division that occurs. Once the mirror stage has occurred, an individual enters the realm of the “Imaginary” and begins to identify with objects around it. “All our acts of identification are always acts of misidentification; it is never our selves that we recognize but only ever another potential image of our selves”(Lemert, 102). If you imagine the movie screen as a gigantic mirror in which we watch idealized versions of ourselves, you will begin to understand the impact Lacan’s thought has had on cinematic analysis.

Lacan’s conception of the “fort-da-game” surrounds the “alienating split between being and meaning; before language we had only being (a self-complete nature), after language we are both object and subject: this is made manifest every time I think (subject) about myself (object)”(Lemert, 103). Language becomes a symbolic way of representing the world and ourselves, and in turn, the way we lose and rediscover ourselves with every word we utter.

The Oedipus Complex, for Lacan, is a phase that solidifies the concept of otherness felt by an individual. Beginning with the separation from the mother and the impossibility of returning to her womb, we begin our endless search for something that is somehow equivalent to that ultimate desire, the closing of the gap between you and the other. And it will never be found. John Storey dashes the commonly held “ideology of romantic love – in which ‘love’ is the ultimate solution to all our problems”(Storey, 104). What a jerk.

Laura Mulvey is a seminal figure in the understanding of how women are portrayed and perceived in cinema. With her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” she hones in on “the male gaze,” which occurs in three ways: from the gaze of male characters looking at the women within a given movie, from the gaze of the camera filming the women, and finally the gaze of the audience watching the movie. “The inscription of the image of woman in this system is twofold: she is the object of male desire and she is the signifier of the threat of castration”(Storey, 105).

By way of her famous article, Mulvey seeks to destroy particular pleasures in the cinematic experience. “First, there is scopophilia, the pleasure of looking”(Storey, 105). Scopophilia has an inherent controlling and objectifying aspect to cinema that Mulvey considers addictive and dangerous. Another pleasure that Mulvey believes must be destroyed is the promotion of narcissism in the cinema. “Just as a child recognizes and misrecognizes itself in the mirror, the spectator recognizes and misrecognizes itself on the screen”(Storey, 105). When we identify with the main character of a movie, we are engaging narcissism. This kind of identification becomes dangerous when we enforce behavior in our lives by looking to these idealized and potentially misogynistic characters on the movie screen.

Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian theorist who believes that “fantasy is not the same as illusion; rather, fantasy organizes how we see and understand reality. It works as a frame through which we see and make sense of the world”(Storey, 107). In his “Passions of the Real, Passions of the Semblence,” Zizek writes about the events of September 11^th, 2001 and how most people experienced the event through television news coverage. We had been accustomed to experiencing fictionalized Hollywood movie versions of such a catastrophic event until that point. In effect, we fantasized about the very real terror that the collapsing towers created, until the reality presented itself to us and everything else seemed false in comparison. “The authentic twentieth-century passion for penetrating the Real Thing (ultimately, the destructive Void) through the cobweb of semblances which constitutes our reality thus culminates in the thrill of the Real as the ultimate ‘effect,’ sought after from digitalized special effects, through reality TV and amateur pornography, up to snuff movies”(Zizek, 12). In short, we prefer the fantasy and the desire that accompanies it. “Anxiety is the result of getting too close to what we desire, thus threatening to eliminate ‘lack’ itself and end desire”(Storey, 109).

Additional citation besides two textbooks:

Zizek, Slavoj. Welcome to the Desert of the Real! Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates. London: Verso. 2002.

Questions:

How does a cultural super-ego compare or contrast to an organic intellectual?

How does Althusser’s conception of ideology connect to Lacan’s theories?

How would you locate Mulvey’s concept of the male gaze in a movie you saw recently?

--from your pals, Steve and David

The latest Chrysler Super Bowl ad.

Analyzing Commercials - Interpellation

I thought this last year commercial would be ripe for an analysis.

Ideology and Hegemony

Ideology

Definition One

Althusser explains that ideology is a “closed system,” a world constructed by the historical, political, religious, and economic institutions that determine the boundaries in which people can exist. Alhusser defines this existence as a practice, which “shapes an individual’s lived relations to the social formation” (Storey, p. 71). The system is closed because it allots the available options for an individual to work, study, and live. To me, it is similar to The Truman Show where Truman is given his existence in a simulated realm of reality, “offering false, but seemingly true, resolutions to real problems.” This idea of ideology “is profoundly unconscious in its mode of operation” (71). Truman’s interactions with his world and the relationship with his wife were both real and imaginary, real because they were the actual conditions that he interacted with, imaginary because of the representations of reality offered to him (e.g. the idea that everything had already been explored, the notion that he could not travel to Fiji).

The “problematic” emerges from this closed system in providing meaning to words and objects that come to life only within this world they live in. Perhaps ideas like war or famine had not been introduced to Truman’s world, and therefore would have no meaning in that system. Words take on meaning as they interact within the system that allows for them. Therefore, there are only a limited number of outcomes, solutions, or possibilities in the expression and interpretation of a text (as Scarlet Johansson’s character in The Island asked after breaking out of her false world, “What’s love?”). To recognize the problematic is to recognize unanswered “questions which threaten to take [ideology] beyond these boundaries” of a mythic reality (p. 72). Recognizing the problematic for Truman was when he smashed into the wall which presented itself as an eternal sky. He then saw the limitations of his world and the imaginary interactions in which he unconsciously engaged. Not only did he recognize the imaginary, but he questioned the reality of the closed system itself by asking, “Was nothing real?” Leaving the dome he lived in, he was then able to see a host of new possibilities, conditions, and systems of existence beyond what had been previously appointed and presented to him.

This closed system is similar to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in which a certain reality is presented to men chained in a cave, an initial manifestation of what the world looks like and offers. The chained men only see the shadows cast on the walls which constrains their understanding of reality in terms of silhouettes. They are unaware of the world outside of the cave. It is important to understand Pierre Macherey’s ideas concerning symptomatic reading, not only because it provides valuable insight into the notion of Althusserian thought, but because it allows new ways for students to approach text and media. “For [Macherey] the text is not a puzzle that conceals a meaning; it is a construction with a multiplicity of meanings” (p. 74). This provides a practical approach to critically analyzing artifacts like film narratives, sermons, and political rhetoric in new ways.

Similar to the Truman Show, George Orwell’s 1984 presents a dystopia where an environment is controlled, regulating the interaction individuals have within their world and their perception of reality. A Macintosh commercial plays on 1984’s notion of “bad faith,” causing an “innovative revolution”—a computer that overthrows the “limited” awareness of what a computer is and what technology “Big-Brother”-corporations provide/allow.

Definition Two

The second definition of ideology focuses on the institutions themselves that produce beliefs and ideas. Althusser calls these institutions Ideological State Apparatuses or ISAs. The act of taking tests in university, praying in church, going on family vacations, and voting are actions called interpellation. Individuals who are interpellated allow themselves to be shaped by the ISAs, producing for the individual a confined outcome of beliefs, values, and behaviors. Althusser’s example of interpellation is helpful. He explains that a police officer hails an individual—“Hey, you there!” “When the individual hailed turns in response, he or she has been interpellated, has become a subject of the police officer’s discourse” (p. 78). Responding to the institutions that “hail” us or present material practices, rituals, and customs that we engage in subjects us to their particular value system.

Just as Pierre Macherey utilized Althusser’s ideology in critical approaches to literature, Judith Williamson looked at advertising using the second definition of ideology. She moved her focus from what commodities are produced to what commodities we consume. An advertisement can “call” or interpellate us by drawing upon how we identify ourselves. As it identifies us, it simultaneously adds to the construction of our identity, thus we see ourselves in the product. An individual may think that he or she is the only audience of the product because of the unique identity the individual assumes, seeing the product as “special-made” for him or her. I’ve observed that competition ensues as people claim the product is most unique to them. Have you have heard someone claim, “I was listening to this band long before they were on the radio.

Following interpellation, why do some styles of clothes ever see the light of day?

Does every product we buy interpellate us?

Why did I use to look so much like Minkus from "Boy Meets World"?

Giving presents is an interesting custom in regards to product interpellation. In searching for Christmas gifts, for example, I believe I am buying something in which I can see the identity of the receiver of the gift. I look for things that has the other person’s name “written all over it.” Not only do I strive to select a gift “tailor-made” for the receiver, but oftentimes I am pulled to items that I can also identify myself partly in the gift as well. Much of the gifts I end up buying for others is usually stuff I like. Perhaps it’s the unique relationship between me and the receiver that is bound within the identity of the gift. Also, some gifts I receive from others I don’t appreciate as much like gift certificates because they aren’t as personal to me. I don’t see myself in a plate of sea food, for example.

I wonder about this second definition of ideology because of the certain practices, ideas, and values that I have not absorbed from constant interpellation. Perhaps part of that is because interpellation demonstrates that it is the act of the person responding to the “hail” of the product or ISA that the person then becomes interpellated. Throughout my life, people have done everything they could to get me to like country music—radio, dances, restaurants. But I continue to loathe it. Is this an exception to the rule of ideology, or has interpellation actually taken place?

Hegemony

The word that perhaps best defines Gramsci’s hegemony is “consensus.” Basically, hegemony refers to a social group that is willing to be led by particular interests, regardless of oppression or injustices. It is “a society in which subordinate groups and classes appear to actively support and subscribe to values, ideals, objectives, cultural and political meanings, which bind them to, and ‘incorporate’ them into, the prevailing structures of power” (Storey, p. 80). My understanding of hegemony is that it’s similar to ideology in that it demonstrates a limited palette of options for individual freedom on a society, and it influences a society because of ruling institutions or the bourgeoisie. The difference is that ideology is an unconscious submission to societal oppression, hegemony is consciously participating in these cultural influences and oppressive “norms.”

In my example of ideology, once Truman recognized the problematic, he left the closed system and ventured to other possibilities. As one discovers other possible meanings of a text after the surface-level meaning emerges, one rejects the idea that the surface-level meaning is the true nature of that text. However, in hegemony, one could recognize further meanings or realities but continue in the closed system or initial interpretation of the text. Had Truman stayed in the dome after Cristof invited him, he would partake in a hegemonic society, consciously subjected to the control of that realm by Cristof who manipulated the conditions of that society.

Storey discusses capitalism’s hegemony, a system acquired over many years as the result of social, cultural, and economic influences. Regardless of the injustices this system maintains, the U.S. and other capitalist nations continue in the system. However, a non-capitalist nation like North Korea is also a clear example of hegemony. In a documentary by National Geographic, North Koreans are conscious (although perhaps not in full) to poor conditions and injustices rampant in the country. Yet they worship their leader, Kim Jong Il who recently died. On a global level, North Korea wants to be as independent as possible from the rest of the world and has rejected the “hegemonic” society of the global community. This detachment (although extreme) is understandable given powerful nations like the U.S. and England with their hegemonic cultures and efforts to take advantage of globalization. Some nations in the past have resisted interaction from the United States (like Brazil and Argentina) but have more recently become “allies” to them.

Discussion Questions

1. How do you recognize a “closed system” in your day-to-day life?

2. How do you reinforce the idea of hegemony by acting as an interpellator, not as one being “hailed” by the officer but one who “hails”?

3. Give an example of identifying the problematic in the media, literature, or every-day life.