Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts

Another interesting work from Scott about what mostly powerless people do to resist domination. The key argument: you can’t necessarily tell what people believe by what they say, especially in public/in front of more powerful people. If noblesse oblige is the duty the elites owe to maintain face before peasants, paysan oblige is the public duty that peasants owe to make elites feel superior; that doesn’t mean they’re committed to it in private. But it’s full of interesting insights from this starting point. Scott argues that the very justifications for domination (divine right to rule or otherwise) supply the rhetoric that people can use to object that the currently powerful have lost the plot (or mandate of heaven). Thus, “if show more the czar only knew!” is not necessarily an actual claim about the benevolence of the czar, but rather an attack on local powers—and a reason for the czar to allow at least some local rebellions to succeed, as long as they stop quietly once the immediate pain stops. He also suggests that it’s the members of oppressed classes who believed the dominant ideology but were then betrayed by it who make the most likely revolutionaries/terrorists/etc. Likewise, the carnivalesque—per Bakhtin—may be a safety valve to bleed off resentment, but the history of powerful elites’ attempts to suppress it also suggests that it teaches the tools of resistance; the mobs who wear masks when they tar and feather people are taking instruction from carnival. This can of course just increase injustice—Scott is well aware that people who are disrespected may hurt anyone they can, which often means people even weaker than them. Likewise, gender and age hierarchies can be extra sticky because they hold out the promise of higher status to people who survive them long enough (and, in the case of gender, become a mother of a powerful enough son). show less

In their conclusion to Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Dreyfus & Rabinow posed the question: 'Is there any way to resist the disciplinary society other than to understand how it works....? Is there a way to make resistance positive...?
This book offers insight into how that resistance has (and can still) manifest itself.

This is what piqued my interest: http://www.annleckie.com/2013/07/11/92/

Con base en un conocimiento profundo de la historia y la literatura, James C. Scott ofrece una propuesta original para el estudio de las relaciones de poder. Parte de un hecho incuestionable: que los actores de la vida social y la política no reducen sus intervenciones al escenario público. Por el contrario, los temas de mayor importancia se dirimen fuera del alcance del adversario, y los mecanismos con que los dominados ocultan o disimulan sus propósitos resultan vitales, aun en situaciones de relativa estabilidad. Esta obra ha suscitado el replanteamiento de las nociones de subordinación y resistencia, hegemonía, cultura popular y movimientos sociales. Está considerada como una de las mayores contribuciones teóricas al debate show more contemporáneo sobre las relaciones de poder. show less