Contemporary Cultural Theory

När jag läste engelska skrev jag en liten uppsats om maktstrukturer och hur dem fungerar. Jag utgick från teorier från Louis Althusser(som jag postade om i ett annat inlägg) och Michel Foucault. Jag går in på teorier om hur vi föds in i underkastelse och hur vi kontrolleras via mekanismer inom olika makstrukturer. Jag använde Foucault's teorier om hur kyrkan kontrollerade människans sexualitet. Vet ej hur mycket av texten som blir förståelig om man ej läst teorierna men jag hoppas de går att läsa.

Contemporary Cultural Theory

The notion of the subject has been of great importance for theorists understanding of society. In different academic fields the notion of the subject has been used to analyze and problematize power-structures in society. By looking at how people (subjects) work in relation to mechanisms in society, authors such as Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser have analyzed and raised awareness of what makes it possible for certain group to remain in power. Being able to understand the terms "individual" and "subject" is crucial since individuality is discussed in their works.

An individual according to theorists such as the aforementioned does not mean being someone with own ideas and a free will. An individual is rather a subject that adapts to certain existing practices in society to fit in. The different practices in society are extensions of what is called ideology. Ideology is the creation of individuals/subjects, which means that ideology creates or interpellates people into believe that they have a certain place in the world in relation to other subjects. Althusser writes in his essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses that “Ideology is a ‘representation’ of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (1498). The Althusserian view argues that ideology gives people an imaginary belief that the world works in a certain way for a reason and that they have a place in this world for different reasons. Ideology works in various practices such as the church, the educational system or within cultural practices. The church or religion for example teaches people to believe that they have different purposes in life such as believing in a God and dedicate their lives to a God. This leads to that a person is able to recognize himself as an righteous individual that goes to church, but by recognizing himself he is really recognizing ideology, since the church is ideology in a physical form. Ideology exists because people recognize themselves through many different practices and the fact that people have names makes it possible for a person to recognize himself as an “individual”. By recognizing yourself, people accept that ideology exists and therefore ideology has an existence. Subjects and Ideology are dependent on each other, for without each other people would not be able to see themselves as self-conscious individuals, and Ideology would not be able to subject individuals and hide the real existing conditions that they are part of. The subjection of people to ideology is the reason why theorists address people as subjects rather than individuals.

So when people recognizes themselves as individuals rather than subjects they fail to see that what they see is just a false representation of their reality. Althusser explains this when he writes: “But to recognize that we are subjects and that we function in the practical rituals of the most elementary everyday life this recognition only gives us the ‘consciousness’ of our incessant (eternal) practice of ideological recognition-its consciousness, i.e. its recognition- but in no sense does it give us the (scientific) knowledge of the mechanism of this recognition” (1503). This statement explains how subjects only recognizes themselves as individuals but that subjects do not have the understanding of why and which practices that allows them to recognize themselves.

The fact that subjects do not understand the practices or apparatuses that affect their self-recognition makes it possible for a small powerful elite to identify people as if they are belonging to different classes. Therefore the people belonging to a higher class have the opportunity to rule the lower class which is the fact all over the world where people identify themselves with regards to which class they belong to. The elite will remain the ruling class with the help of ideological practices that indoctrinate people to recognize themselves in a specific way. In the educational system, students from an early age learn to understand that certain things are expected from them if they want to be accepted in society. They have to study so that they can get a job that pays well, but if they do not study they will have to find themselves in a weaker economical position, which ultimately makes the students/subjects identify themselves within the class structure. This type of education “contributes to the maintenance and nourishment of this ideological representation of the School, which makes the School today as ‘natural’” (1495) as the church was centuries ago. That means that the educational system makes it seem natural that humans are divided into groups depending on their class. You could say that the educational system is one of the practices that naturalize the way in which subjects see themselves as either inferior or superior, but they “accept” these facts as natural because of their recognition through practices. Therefore the people that is in control of the practices (the elite) has the power to remain their position by creating discourses of how people understand and talk about different things.

Michel Foucault have analyzed how these practices have been able to maintain ideology through practices by creating discourses which makes subjects able to recognize themselves in ways favorable for the elite. One of the practices Foucault discusses is the one of the church which he analyzes in his work The History of Sexuality. In which he analyzes how the church in the seventeenth century through discourses controlled the sexuality of individuals/subjects. By ordering people to confess their sexual activities in church, the church could tell people to change their habits in order to be in accordance with the existing Victorian Puritanism. Foucault writes: “Not only will you confess to acts contravening the law, but you will seek to transform your desire, your every desire, into discourse” (1650). An ideological practice like the church therefore had to operate through discourses that created subjects that recognized themselves as proper Christians. To be accepted as normal the subjects had to accept the ruling ideas which were of the Victorian elite. By repressing sexual urges of subjects the church had a way of controlling the majority of the population. This is another manifestation of how “individuals” fall into the role of subjects that have to obey the ideologies governed by the elite.

Both Althusser and Foucault understand that the subject is a construction created by ideology to control the people. While Althusser elaborates on how individuals are interpellated as subjects, Foucault looks how it has occurred throughout history. Their works analyzes how the notion of the subject is constructed in order to control the lower class and maintaining the power of the higher class.