Could you aply these ideas to explain the Turkish conflict about private
prisoncells?
How far reaches the discipline in the present Turkish prison?
Why is the left movement in Turkey so afraid of a prison western style?
If they're afraid for torture, why not make that the issue?
erik
Nathan Goralnik wrote:
> Hi~
>
> Today as I was pondering gay rights in the context of the construction
> of identity, I suddenly came to a new, more animated understanding of the
> position of post-structuralism in the privacy/rights debate. All of the
> fragmented understanding that I had previously had came together in a
> rhetorically connected and animated "bigger picture understanding.
> Because of this, I now see why many are more optimistic about the
> potential of performative political action than I have been in the past.
> What is so crucial about post-structuralist understandings of political
> agency is not so much that they provide us with an FYI on how subjectivity
> works as it is that
> these understandings operate like a new knowledge that produces new sites
> for political agency.
> Here's what happened. I had always understood (separately!):
>
> 1) That disciplinary power extends into the "private" sphere;
> 2) That things like identity aren't predetermined;
> 3) That (roughly speaking) restive actions produce restive subjects;
> 4) That rights were deployed as resistance to monarchical tyranny;
> 5) That juridical understandings of power aren't satisfactory.
>
> But I figured, "Ok, so disciplinary power extends into the 'private'
> sphere," and privacy/rights can challenge that. What is the implication
> here? I implicitly understood the implications of the performativity for
> understandings of political agency, but I never consciously thought of them,
> and never connected my understanding of these implications to the fact that
> disciplinary power pervades the "private." I began to understand how the
> explosion of the public/private distinction and the performativity of
> identity come together to animate the statement "restive actions produce
> restive subjects" when I connected these ideas and set them against the
> liberal discourse of
> "rights" (#4 on my list) in the context of the methodological conflict
> between Foucauldian and juridical analyses of the operations of power. I
> suddenly became actively aware of the big picture--the way the juridical
> discourse of right draws potentially meaningless sociopolitical lines
> between public and
> private that are totally uninformed by an understanding of the operations of
> disciplinary power. This tends to produce a juridical ideology of "civil
> privatism" whose picture of political subjectivity is both over-inclusive
> and under-inclusive. It is over-inclusive in that it assumes a degree of
> autonomy over one's personal affairs that simply doesn't exist; it is
> under-inclusive in that it assumes that potentials for individual political
> action are co-extensive with (and thus limited by) the degree of formal
> freedom that the government is willing to grant via "rights."
>
> This is why the new understanding of subjectivity that the
> post-structuralists offer is so crucial, because, in pointing out new sites
> for political contest, it, as Kulynych says, "ensures resistability." A
> performative understanding of political agency, (when coupled with a
> Foucauldian understanding of power) politicizes the private, opening up new
> spaces for political action. Individuals can thus engage strategies
> disciplinary power at their capillary points and thus become restive NOT
> because they "have" new rights, but because they are engaged in acts of
> resistance. Only this understanding of power and agency provides any degree
> of "liberation" (however small) of the private from the coercive effects of
> disciplinary power that formal rights TOTALLY fail to engage.
>
> Thoughts and citations on this topic would be MUCH appreciated :)
>
> ~Nate
>
> --
>
> "Thought is no longer theoretical. As soon as it functions it
> offends or reconciles, attracts or repels, breaks, dissociates,
> unites, or re-unites; it cannot help but liberate and enslave.
> Even before prescribing, suggesting a future, saying what must
> be done, even before exhorting or merely sounding an alarm,
> thought, at the level of its existence, in its very dawning, is
> in itself an action--a perilous act."
> -Michel Foucault
>
>
>
prisoncells?
How far reaches the discipline in the present Turkish prison?
Why is the left movement in Turkey so afraid of a prison western style?
If they're afraid for torture, why not make that the issue?
erik
Nathan Goralnik wrote:
> Hi~
>
> Today as I was pondering gay rights in the context of the construction
> of identity, I suddenly came to a new, more animated understanding of the
> position of post-structuralism in the privacy/rights debate. All of the
> fragmented understanding that I had previously had came together in a
> rhetorically connected and animated "bigger picture understanding.
> Because of this, I now see why many are more optimistic about the
> potential of performative political action than I have been in the past.
> What is so crucial about post-structuralist understandings of political
> agency is not so much that they provide us with an FYI on how subjectivity
> works as it is that
> these understandings operate like a new knowledge that produces new sites
> for political agency.
> Here's what happened. I had always understood (separately!):
>
> 1) That disciplinary power extends into the "private" sphere;
> 2) That things like identity aren't predetermined;
> 3) That (roughly speaking) restive actions produce restive subjects;
> 4) That rights were deployed as resistance to monarchical tyranny;
> 5) That juridical understandings of power aren't satisfactory.
>
> But I figured, "Ok, so disciplinary power extends into the 'private'
> sphere," and privacy/rights can challenge that. What is the implication
> here? I implicitly understood the implications of the performativity for
> understandings of political agency, but I never consciously thought of them,
> and never connected my understanding of these implications to the fact that
> disciplinary power pervades the "private." I began to understand how the
> explosion of the public/private distinction and the performativity of
> identity come together to animate the statement "restive actions produce
> restive subjects" when I connected these ideas and set them against the
> liberal discourse of
> "rights" (#4 on my list) in the context of the methodological conflict
> between Foucauldian and juridical analyses of the operations of power. I
> suddenly became actively aware of the big picture--the way the juridical
> discourse of right draws potentially meaningless sociopolitical lines
> between public and
> private that are totally uninformed by an understanding of the operations of
> disciplinary power. This tends to produce a juridical ideology of "civil
> privatism" whose picture of political subjectivity is both over-inclusive
> and under-inclusive. It is over-inclusive in that it assumes a degree of
> autonomy over one's personal affairs that simply doesn't exist; it is
> under-inclusive in that it assumes that potentials for individual political
> action are co-extensive with (and thus limited by) the degree of formal
> freedom that the government is willing to grant via "rights."
>
> This is why the new understanding of subjectivity that the
> post-structuralists offer is so crucial, because, in pointing out new sites
> for political contest, it, as Kulynych says, "ensures resistability." A
> performative understanding of political agency, (when coupled with a
> Foucauldian understanding of power) politicizes the private, opening up new
> spaces for political action. Individuals can thus engage strategies
> disciplinary power at their capillary points and thus become restive NOT
> because they "have" new rights, but because they are engaged in acts of
> resistance. Only this understanding of power and agency provides any degree
> of "liberation" (however small) of the private from the coercive effects of
> disciplinary power that formal rights TOTALLY fail to engage.
>
> Thoughts and citations on this topic would be MUCH appreciated :)
>
> ~Nate
>
> --
>
> "Thought is no longer theoretical. As soon as it functions it
> offends or reconciles, attracts or repels, breaks, dissociates,
> unites, or re-unites; it cannot help but liberate and enslave.
> Even before prescribing, suggesting a future, saying what must
> be done, even before exhorting or merely sounding an alarm,
> thought, at the level of its existence, in its very dawning, is
> in itself an action--a perilous act."
> -Michel Foucault
>
>
>