Week 7, Power and Poststructuralism Flashcards
Poststructuralism
Rejects the idea of an underlying structure upon which meaning is imposed, there is no final moment of absolute truth.
Meaning is fluid, it is always in process.
Signifiers produce more signifiers.
Discourse works in 3 ways:
Enable
Constrain
Constitute
Panopticon
A prison in which prisoners moderated their own behaviour as if they were always being watched.
Meaning is constructed in
discourse.
___ circulates.
Power circulates.
According to Oullette and Hay reality shows disregard
economic circumstances.
Discourse
Production of knowledge through language.
Emphasis on historical particularity.
Produces meaning and is historically situated.
Systems of thoughts composed of ideas, attitudes, courses of action, beliefs, and practices that systematically construct the subjects and the worlds of which they speak. -Broader than just language.
According to Foucault discourse is about the ______ ___ _______ through language.
According to Foucault discourse in about the production of knowledge through language.
Power Knowledge
Connected with the production of new knowledges.
Runs through society.
Power as dispersed, impersonal, and productive.
What are the main distinctions between ideology and discourse?
Ideology: Power is easily located. Power is repressive. Binary between falsehood and “truth”. Emphasis on economics.
Discourse: Power is circulated and hard to pin down. Power is productive. No definitive truth, power produces a regime of truth. Emphasis beyond economics to the body itself.
If power circulates how is social control maintained?
Foucault –> Self Discipline –> The Panopticon
In the Panopticon subjects are ___ and placed as objects of ___ _____.
In the Panopticon subjects are individualized and placed as objects of permanent visibility.
Self-discipline
Guarantees the function of power even if there’s no one there to actually assert it.
Governmentality
Contextual, geographic, and historical.
Everyday practices individuals are encouraged to adopt.
Processed through which individuals shape their own conduct.
How does governmentality works in reality TV according to Ouellette and Hay?
Reality shows encourage individuals to govern themselves through freedom, not control, not so much by dissemination of ideology but more so through enactment of participatory games and tutorials that encourage the individual to take control over uncertain outcomes in life.
