UNIT 2: What is Power

Question 1

Gramsci tasks of the political party

Answer 1

1. Formulate national popular collective will
2. Realize intellectual and moreal reforms
3. formulate and guide a collective will

Question 2

Gramsci on relation of force

Answer 2

1. Relation of social forces independent of human will i.e social classes which have specific functions in the production process
2. relations of political forces (dependent on consciousness and politicization of classes)
3. Relation of military forces (the repressive apparatus of the state)

Question 3

Gramsci philosophy of praxis

Answer 3

1. The merging of the philosophical and empirical traditions
2. extension of ML tradition of considering socialism in a non-utopian, materialist basis
3. a unity of theory and practice realised in the sphere of ideologies
4. practicable only in the sphere of relations of political forces i.e with the condition of an advanced political consciousness

Question 4

Gramsci on hegemony (description)

Answer 4

Ideology constructed by ruling class and taken to be common sense; the manner through which the masses consent to their subjugation; accepted even by contradictory members of society bc it is the discourse that follows in ‘normal times’; legitimating norms and ideas

Question 5

Ideology

Answer 5

ideas in service of power; systematized conceptions of the world and it’s structuring in service of the legitimation of a ruling class.

Question 6

Gramsci on ideology and civil society

Answer 6

politics and power operate in civil society through ideology in service of maintaining structural hegemony; civil society distinct from state mechanism but operates under the superstructure of the state, defined by it’s law and is in service of constructing the conditions necessary for the state’s continuation; exerts a collective pressure

Question 7

Gramsci theory of the state

Answer 7

the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules

Question 8

Althusser materialist conception of ideology

Answer 8

1. “not sufficient to renew the means of production, social formation must in the first instance create the conditions of reproduction a)the forces of production and b)the relations of production”
2. ideology determines the way a human being acts, thinks and produces
3. rejects notion of an independent human will that can function outside of the superstructural (ideological) determinants

Question 9

Gramsci up down and down up mobility of power

Answer 9

1. ideology and hegemony function from top down to instill common sense and manufacture consent of subjugated classes
2. through class conscientization (the realisation of a collective end and subsequent generation of collective will) and praxis, organic intellectuals can arise
3. organic intellectuals challenge hegemonic ideology, generating a new revolutionary ideological power that allows social group to modify power relations and reconstruct society in accordance with the new collective will

Question 10

Michel Foucault

Answer 10

1. French post structuralist
2. studied under Althusser
3. theorized power and society through discourse analysis and genealogy
4. power is ubiquitous; omnipresent; diffused to the “very grains of individuals” rather than strictly structuralist in the marxist paradigm
5. looked at the political technology of the body; how power operates on the physical, material person

Question 11

Foucault and objectification/subjection

Answer 11

1. power arises through discursive norms that categorize man into subjects
2. subjects may be political/economic (proletariat/producing), sexual (gay, straight), gendered (man, woman), pathologized (mad, sane) etc
3. domination and social/political hierarchies function through the process of subjection
4. identities are not intrinsic and are gained through socialization, these identities then ensure forms of discrimination and marginalisation

Question 12

Foucault on power and subjects (quote)

Answer 12

“this form of power applies itself to immediate everyday life which catergorizes the individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own identity, imposes a law of truth on him which he must recognize and which others must recognize in him. It is a form of power which makes individuals subjects”

Question 13

Foucault and the state

Answer 13

1. centrality of the state over emphasized in political analysis
2. state has both totalizing and individualising power
3. wrong to equate power with law and repression of the state apparatus
4. state has power in disciplinary normalization

Question 14

foucault on power

Answer 14

1. the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society: power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength that we are endowed with. Power is omnipresent, it comes from everywhere and is produced at every moment
2. no binary opposition between rulers and ruled
3. power relations are both intentional and non subjective, no power without aim and objective but there are no headquarters of power either
4. diffused

Question 15

Foucault and governmentality general

Answer 15

1. concerning how to govern oneself and how to govern others
2. speaks of governance not simple in the context of government over a polity
3. establish a continuity in both an upward and downward direction, transmitting to individual behaviour and the ruling of the state
4. discipline and the management of a population not only in terms of an aggregate but of the individual

Question 16

Foucault on governmentality definition

Answer 16

the ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflection, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target population, and its principal from of knowledge political economy and as its essential technical means the apparatuses of security (police)

Question 17

Gramsci and Foucault on Power (critical analysis)

Answer 17

• Power is not simpl the control of the legitimate means of violence
• it operates through ideology and discourse

Question 18

Examples of ideological control in contemporary politics

Answer 18

1. ANC and apartheid state use of media and repssion for ideological warfare
2. shut down of internet during Arab Spring to control dissemination of media
3. Israeli propaganda “hasbara”

Question 19

Definition of ideology (from lecture)

Answer 19

ideology is a system of influence: a means of power outside the realm of repressive state force (law and regulation, police) yjay can be executed by the public and political spheres to allow coercion and consensus within the masses

Question 20

Foucault use of genealogy and discourse analysis

Answer 20

1. how power is consolidated through a process of governmentality/biopolitics
2. culture is produced at a specific moment before it becomes a belief; it has a historical genesis
3. Genealogy allows us to understand historical foundations of discourse and their operation or application across space and time
4. power resides in the operation of discourse

Question 21

Resistance and power

Answer 21

1. Power itself, in the same moment it is applied to the individual in the process of subjection also creates the conditions of resistance
2. power does not solely resude in the institutions of government/state
3. the subject must be conscious of how power relations are applied and operated (gramsci’s organic intellectuals)
4. creates a force from the position of the masses who are compelled to create strategies of resistance

Question 22

Example of counter hegemonic movements in politics

Answer 22

1. Black Consciousness
2. BRICS

Question 23

Foucault on discourse analysis specifically

Answer 23

1. Power operates through language, the construction and dissemination of truth
2. discourse operates through technologies of power (surveillance, classification, normalization)