Power and Resistance

The Subject and Power (Foucault 1982)

-modern (liberal) state: at once objectifying and individualizing

-power consists of ability to modify the actions of others

-only exists when put into action, exists as a relation, an action upon actions (past and present)

-government: the conduct of conduct

-struggle (resistance) good diagnostic of power, can be no relationship of power without the potential for a strategy of struggle

-unstable relationship between forces of power and struggles against them

Normal exploitation, normal resistance (Scott 1985)

-everyday forms of peasant resistance usually far short of collective outright defiance

-incl foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, pilfering, etc

-require little to no coordination or planning, form of individual self-help, avoid direct confrontation with authority

-not limited to peasantry: commonly used by officials and landlords against the state

-action of peasantry changes or narrows policy options available to the state

Oppressive nature of Italian Immigration System (Maculan 2021)

-process for applying for asylum lengthy and depersonalizing

-social and spatial segregation inside various reception centers dotted around the country

-can make asylum seekers feel inert, disempowered, infantilized, and subjugated through cramped living conditions, constant surveillance

-legal system treats asylum seekers as liars because unable to meet standards of credibility

Resistance as diagnostic of power (Abu-Lughod 1990)

-tendency to romanticise resistance as signs of the ineffectiveness of systems of power and resiliency and creativity of human spirit in refusal to be dominated

-instead argues for using resistance as a diagnostic of power

-will improve understanding of how intersecting and often conflicting structures of power work together in communities that are becoming less local

Bedouin women’s resistance (Abu-Lughod 1990)

1. sexually-segregated women’s world where women use secrets and silences to their advantage, hide knowledge from men, smoke in secret, cover for each other, etc

2. resistance to marriages: while arranged involve many people including mothers and female relatives, mothers sometimes successfully block marriages their daughters do not want

3. sexually irreverent discourse: instances where women make fun of men and manhood, joke about certain men and men in general behind their backs

4. oral lyric poetry (ghinnawas), recited mostly by women and young men between intimates in ordinary conversation that violate codes of honor and modesty

Lingerie, Egyptian weddings, and the romance of resistance (Abu-Lughod 1990)

-lingerie: form of resistance that has pit young women against older women

-older women consider them a waste of money, immodest, representative of sexualized femininity

-young women aspire to be housewives in a way their mothers never were

-older Bedouin women scandalized by Egyptian-style weddings

-young women who want lingerie, Egyptian weddings, private romance enmeshing themselves in complex set of new power relations that bind them to the Egyptian economy, state, forces of westernisation, etc.