The application of power

This category, the application of power, is assembled from the themes searching for cause and effect, either/or thinking, searching for the truth, conforming to hegemonic ideas, resisting hegemonic ideas, structural analysis, power as sovereign and power as dispersed. The subject is fashioned within relationships of power existing within both

traditional, ideological notions of power and more postmodern disciplinary notions of power. Within this category the subject examines problems and issues within a framework of cause and effect. If the cause can be identified, then a solution can be reached. The subject is constructed within a discourse of rationality.

The subject is influenced by centralised institutions and systems that produce material obstructions to freedom. Ideological barriers are realised and acknowledged to be challenged and overcome. Power is seen as repressive and monolithic. It is a force that the subject stands in opposition to. Power exists in an external relationship to the subject, an object of power’s oppression and force. The subject is also constructed through an alternative understanding of power. Power is perceived as a capacity to produce certain forms of knowledge that construct normative standards and expectations. These relations of force dictate what is considered as acceptable, reasonable or normal behavior (Danaher et al. 2000).

Power is distinguished as being held in centralised structures or ideologies such as ‘patriarchy’, ‘sexism’ and ‘capitalism’. The phrase, ‘power that exists in men simply by way of their caste and gender’, structures power as a tangible force that is held by some groups, but not others. Men are understood as having a ‘socialised need and expectation for power and authority’. This ‘socialised’ need and expectation is constructed as the cause for men’s abuse of their power and authority. The act of rape is considered as an outcome of patriarchal power that will not be stopped ‘without ending patriarchy itself’. Patriarchy is the cause of rape. In the quote from the journal text, ‘The same men and systems of power who victimise women are involved in the act of raping Vietnam, raping black people and the very earth we live upon’, power is established as repressive and monolithic. It is a force that is mobilised within some bodies and is directed against other bodies that are less powerful. The capacity for resistance by the less powerful is limited. Another example of how power is seen as a force that stands external to the subject is in the phrase ‘sexist chauvinist homophobic male that I despise’. The ‘homophobic’ male has all the power. The subject exists in an oppositional relationship to the homophobic male. Being less powerful, it is oppressed by the homophobic male. In the phrase, ‘I root around. I seek sex simply for its physical gratification. I perv, ogle and check out men constantly’, power is a negative force that limits and constrains equality. Power is constructed as a force in which one person has control and domination over another person. Centralised structures such as ‘heterosexuality’, ‘homophobia’ and ‘patriarchy’ cause ‘discrimination, oppression and injustice’. These structures create a world where there is no ‘choice’ for some groups, creating ‘false accusations and media lies’. These

power structures need to be resisted. They have to be ‘changed’ through a process of ‘politicisation’. People are required to ‘learn to transcend the very terms’ of these powerful structures. Another example of an institution that is constructed as oppressive is ‘marriage’, with its ‘heterosexist values’ where discriminatory ‘roles are played out’.

The subject is also comprehended by this category as a capacity to produce certain forms of knowledge that construct normative standards and expectations. These relations of force dictate what is considered as acceptable, reasonable or normal behavior.

In the phrase, ‘You say I am unfit for parenthood’, the idea that only heterosexual people can become parents is constructed as a social norm that prevents gay people from being parents. Power is involved in producing an expectation that prevents the subject from taking agency. Power is seen as having a material and tangible base. Society and its dominant thinking is the cause, the reason why the subject can not take up a position of becoming a gay parent. In the phrase, ‘you prevent me, you despise me’, society’s ideas are given a material effect in that they restrain the subject from taking up his preferred subject position.

In the statement, ‘I am alone as a man. Some would say more like a woman’, the subject is understood within the boundaries of expectations and ideas of what it is to be a man or a woman. Being man or woman is constructed in relation to biologically essentialist ideas of each person having ‘both masculine and feminine’ characteristics. The idea of being more like a woman is positioned as other or inferior to being a man. The subject is comprehended as ‘being different’, but this difference is not valorised.

The subject exists within ideas that relate to a particular body shape and size. A fat body is not acceptable, as evidenced in the phrase, ‘I really think if I was thin a lot of my problems would be solved’. In the phrase, ‘Don’t eat and exercise properly’, standards are enforced which the body has to measure itself against. In the phrase, ‘is my being overweight just a cover, a protection for some deeper underlying insecurity’, being fat is a manifestation of some underlying, as yet to be realised cause. These ideas establish a right or normal standard that has power over alternate forms of knowledge.

In the phase, ‘Beats for me are like being a user, addicted’, homosexual beats are construed within a medicalised discourse that constructs sexual behaviour as being out of control and being sick. These ideas limit and constrain the possibility for other ways of

knowing. These ideas therefore have a relationship of power in the construction of the subject.

In the phrases, ‘a typical male’, ‘a true person’, ‘a real person and a true man’, this category constructs significance in the ambivalence in the ideas that lay behind ‘typical’, ‘true’ and ‘real. The meaning of these words is not clear, yet they contain standards and expectations that promote a picture of what the subject is supposed to look like. These words and their meanings therefore carry power in the way that they validate certain ideas and subjugate others.