“Foucault continually
submits interiority to a radical critique…the inside…is merely the fold of the
outside” (Muckelbauer 76).
I think our exploratory is, in many ways, an attempt to
perform this sort of “radical critique,” this inside as a folding of the
outside. Foucault identifies external and internal factors that influence,
constrain, and reinforce discourse. (And, reciprocally, discourse influences,
constrains, and reinforces reality.) From the outside, in, we attempted to show
the layers of discourse as they operate through—and are operated on by—language
and culture/ideology. Working through the exploratory, using Bella Abzug’s
plenary speech as a grounding, revealed, at least for me, a number of
connections and nuances that I am still struggling to grasp:
Power as Multiple
Muckelbauer’s unpacking of Foucault’s work on resistance
helped me see that “because power is multiple, one must pay precise attention
to the specificity of actions and practices in order to delineate their forces
and effects” (Muckelbauer 78). I now see “action” as a connecting thread that
works with, through, and between discourse/language and the powers of
culture/ideology. Building a flow from language to action to culture (and back
again, as I will go into more detail in a moment) forced me to look more
closely at specific “actions and practices” as we deconstructed and
reconstructed our understanding of Abzug’s speech. By tracing patterns of her
words, we were able to see the tension between the actions and culture she (and
the women of the conference) were pushing against, and the actions they were
taking to manifest a new culture. I could see the tension between Abzug’s
description of dominant ideological and cultural forces that created
restriction and the power that she and the other women were exercising in
resistance. Through these tensions, I could better grasp that “Resistance,
then, is simply the convergence of multiple and conflicting powers”
(Muckelbauer 79). I’m not sure about “simply,” but I can see the way multiple
powers are building, clashing, restricting, and resisting across and through
our visualization.
Reading Foucault, I got the sense that there is a reciprocal
relationship between discourse and reality, but it wasn’t until we conceived of
the exploratory as a triangle (I suppose it could also be a circle) that I was
able to conceptualize this relationship of influence and reinforcement between
language and culture. Additionally, Gates made this relationship more concrete
by moving through a circular pattern of considering tropes and their
connections to multiple cultures (in his case, black English and standard
English). I saw a similar “concrete” example of Foucault’s theories in Abzug’s
speech. Like Gates, Abzug uses discourse as a way to connect ideas within the
text, through contexts, and across texts.
Signifyin(g) across
Layers
To build on the “loop” quality of the exploratory, I’d like
to point to how we represented Gates and “signifyin(g).” Although we included
Gates mostly in the language layer of the exploratory, we attempted to indicate
the operations of his theories moving into action and culture. I don’t think
the effect was wholly successful, as I see the integration of language as a much
messier and encompassing component of action and culture. Gates creates a much
more fluid movement between language—particularly tropes—and the actions,
effects, meaning, and reality created. We best captured this movement by
connecting, across all three layers, Signifcation, Signifyin(g), and subversive
resistance. By subversive resistance, we mean that, in using the discourse of
dominant ideologies and shifting its meaning, we can engage in an act of
resistance and new meaning making. On the “outside” of the exploratory, this
progression is exemplified by Abzug’s use of gendered verbs (gendered as
“woman”), putting them into action in unexpected contexts (such as “Women are
not wedded to policies of the past”
rather than wedding and marriage), and pointing at shifts that need to be made
in the dominant society/culture.
Towards a Cultural
Dis/Identification
For better or worse, at the beginning of the week, I saw
dis/identification as a binary. In the “culture” layer of the exploratory,
disidentification lives at one side, and identification at the other: not to
indicate a binary, put perhaps a sort of spectrum. I would argue that there are
multiple cultures in play, in a similar way to the multiple powers I describe
(via Muckelbauer), that converge in Abzug’s speech. She describes a dominant
culture that is inherently restrictive (to many), and she advocates resistance
as a means of reshaping that culture into a new vision. I would argue that
Abzug and the women at the conference would feel a disidentification with the
dominant culture: “Women are not wedded to policies of the past. We didn’t
craft them. They didn’t let us.” Part of the act of resistance is a
rearticulation of the dominant ideologies and power structures.
Although—following Foucault’s explanation of discourse and power—these women
still have to work within the existing power structures, they can resist and
subvert power within the system to enact change. The examples Abzug supplies
regarding governments that did or did not respond to the global survey, did or
did not redirect funding, and did or did not fulfill commitments shows how
working within the system requires acknowledgement of the system itself and a
drive to restructure, re-envision, and reshape. Being able to “read” the system
of power, culture, and ideology in a productive rather than a programmatic way
allows these moments of change (Muckelbauer). But, as Muckelbauer explains,
“productive power is precisely what makes transformation possible and yet
extremely difficult” (78). Abzug’s optimism suggests that she is willing to
forge on with “productive power” despite the challenges, the restrictions, and
the extreme difficulties.
Thoughts on Slippage
and Convergence
To bring together the connections I have begun to see, I
would like to point out that I’m not wholly sure that I know how to define
“culture.” It seems to be a convergence, an amalgamation, of ideologies,
institutions, practices, actions, and discourses, and I think that, as I noted
above, that multiple cultures are certainly in play, simultaneously. As we
tried to identify which aspects of Abzug’s speech were revealing restrictions
and which showed resistance, any boundary between the two very quickly became
blurred. There was a slippage between what an action was accomplishing, what it
was in reaction to, how it was articulated through language, and how it played
out on a cultural level. Trying to make these concepts and movements concrete
made it very clear that culture and power exist in constant flux, converging
and diverging, a folding and unfolding, inventing and reinventing,
in/through/between discourse, action, and cultural identifications.
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