Social Theory, Power and Practice

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Social Theory, Power and Practice Jerry Tew

Social Theory, Power and Practice

Social Theory, Power and Practice Jerry Tew Senior Lecturer School of Social Work University of Central England

© Jerry Tew 2002 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2002 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 0–333–80306–X This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tew, Jerry, 1955– Social theory, power and practice / Jerry Tew. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0–333–80306–X 1. Power (Social sciences) 2. Social change. 3. Social sciences– –Philosophy. I. Title. HN49.P6 T49 2002 303.3—dc21 2002025243 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To Stella, James and Alasdair

v

Contents List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgements

x

1

Introduction

1

2

Everything in its Proper Place? Modernism and Postmodernism Modernism and modernity Critical theory Postmodernism Modernist practice Postmodern practice

3

4

Exposing Conflict: Structural Approaches to Power and Inequality Objective, material and real: unpicking ontologies Structural theory Theories of class and capital Theories of gender, age, sexuality and (dis)ability: extending concepts of patriarchy Theories of imperialism, colonialism and racism Integrating structural theories Structural theory and social activism What’s the Story? Poststructuralism, Discourse and Narrative Ideology and culture Discourse and narrative Poststructuralism and language Approaches to deconstruction Psychoanalysis and language Foucault and the archaeology of the modern The politics of knowledge: social constructionism and standpoint epistemologies Poststructural practice: working with language and narrative

vii

10 10 17 19 24 29 33 33 37 39 45 53 58 60 65 65 68 71 75 80 82 85 88

viii Contents

5

Hidden Depths: Reclaiming Emotionality Emotionality under modernism Shifts within modernism: emotion in psychology and sociology The question of desire Critical perspectives: power relations and emotionality Theorising emotionality as a distinct level of social experience Witnessing and mobilising emotions: issues for practice

97 98 104 108 110 114 116

6

Stepping out: (De)constructing Identities Decentring the subject Performing identities Opening up the psyche The art of projection Conscripting ‘the body’ Reflexive identities ‘Cutting up and remoulding’: working with identities

121 122 126 129 138 140 143 146

7

Relations of Power Power and modernism Theories of oppression and discrimination Foucault and the dispersal of power Reclaiming productive aspects of power A matrix of power relations Reconceptualising empowerment Power in practice

152 152 156 159 162 165 167 170

8

Systems, Instabilities and Change Systems, harmony and change Agency and subjectivity Generative tensions: power and contradiction Power relations and the dynamics of change Crisis and resolution Strategies for emancipatory change: towards a critical practice

177 177 180 182 184 186

Conclusions for Theory and Practice

203

9

194

Bibliography

207

Index

227

List of Figures 7.1 Matrix of power relations

166

8.1 Schematic history of crisis formation from a systems perspective

187

8.2 Schematic history of crisis formation from a psychodynamic perspective

189

8.3 Schematic history of crisis formation from a power relations perspective

191

ix

Acknowledgements I would like to thank those whose research supervision, feedback and support have been influential in the genesis and writing of this book – particularly Peter Leonard and Marian Barnes. I have also derived inspiration and ideas from a wide range of current and former colleagues, students and service users with whom I have had the privilege to work. Finally, I would like to acknowledge a particular debt of gratitude to Jo Campling for her wisdom and guidance in the execution of this project.

x

1 Introduction

The aim of this book is to integrate various strands of contemporary social theory in order to develop a critical framework for analysing social relations and the operation of power. Elements of this framework are then applied to examine specific aspects of practice within the human services and, in particular, to questions of how to bring about change in ways that empower those who experience distress, abuse or social exclusion. By bridging theory and practice, I seek to avoid the potential abstraction of ‘pure’ theorising, and the potential ineffectiveness of a practice that is unaware of the importance of power in influencing how human difficulties may arise and be resolved. Drawing on both the structural analyses of Marxism, feminism and anti-racism, and more recent poststructuralist understandings of the operation of power and subjectivity, I aim to bring together those concepts that may be most incisive in exposing inequalities in social relations and indicating potentiality for empowering change. While being cautious of re-creating ‘grand theory’, I will argue for the importance of establishing frameworks to analyse how power is structured, contested and renegotiated, and the interplay between the various ‘levels’ at which social relations take place – including hitherto neglected aspects of social experience such as emotionality. Such concepts and frameworks are crucial if we are to be able to identify both the potential commonality and the particularity of people’s social experience – whether of oppression or exclusion, or of solidarity and social influence. They may be deployed to review and relocate current notions of anti-oppressive and empowering models of practice within a more comprehensive analysis of power relations, social structuring and personal identity. In exploring the application of these frameworks to particular aspects of practice, the book aims to 1

2 Social Theory, Power and Practice

provide a sounder basis for identifying strategies for bringing about emancipatory change within the work of the human services. This book is driven explicitly by notions of theory having a part to play in social change, in moving, however slowly and inconsistently, towards goals of ‘social justice’. It seeks to drive a practice that is emancipatory in that it is ‘concerned above all with liberating individuals and groups from constraints which adversely affect their life chances’ (Giddens 1991: p. 210). It is difficult to be precise or definite about what exactly these concepts may mean: they serve more as indicators of a direction than any specification of some final destination. Thus an emancipatory politics may best be understood as aiming ‘towards the creation of conditions for ongoing dialogue and contestation’ rather than any once-and-for-all overcoming of domination (Healy 2000: p. 6). As Ernesto Laclau (1988) argues, it is important not to abandon any notion of emancipatory ‘meta-narratives’, but to be cautious about letting them take on some fixed or pre-ordained status. They imply challenging processes of social exclusion, oppression and restriction of opportunity – but they do not prescribe some simple notion of equality, liberation or social participation as an all-encompassing end-point which, once reached, constitutes a utopian vision of untroubled happiness for all. Perhaps, most fundamentally, they may be understood as the principles of an ‘ethical’ relationship or respect towards those who, by whatever myriad of social, cultural and inter-personal processes, come to be defined as ‘other’, ‘inferior’ or ‘outside’ (see Derrida 1994). I will use the term ‘critical’ to denote theory that has such an emancipatory intent. Its value relates to its ability to inform social practice in its many forms: the everyday actions and strategies of people in positions of relative power and powerlessness, political activity in its broadest sense, and – the particular focus of this book – the professional practice of those working in the field of human services. It is not any claim to intellectual superiority that marks out this territory of critical theory; its legitimacy stands or falls by its unmasking of the oppressive operation of power and its ability to open up opportunities for those currently experiencing themselves in positions of distress and powerlessness. In this way, critical theory and critical practice may be seen to be inextricably interconnected: neither has meaning or significance without its relation to the other. As will be explored in more depth in later chapters, the very process of writing may be seen to be charged with political significance: it is not some neutral act of representing something already ‘out there’, but a process whereby certain meanings and connections are constructed

Introduction 3

and, to some extent, fixed. In taking on the position of a critical theorist, I place myself at the margins of the modernist project: a subversive position that seeks to open up and challenge some of the oppressive and marginalising processes that may lie at the heart of modernity, while at the same time remaining in dialogue with those elements of modernist thinking and practice that may have potential value for an emancipatory project. Within the text of this book, I will be seeking to fix the meanings of sets of terms and concepts in relation to one another, fixing them in ways that may sometimes differ subtly, or radically, from how they may be fixed in other texts. Such a fixing provides for a degree of coherence and narrative flow within the text. However, it is a process of ‘making sense’ that is necessarily temporary and somewhat uneasy: conflicts and contradictions may remain within the text – and particular chains of meaning and relationships to other terms may only be partially explored. I hope that this process remains reasonably transparent, allowing the possibility for others to react to dissonant elements within the text and hence take forward the process of exploration and enquiry. As Derrida has argued, any process of taking a position for ‘justice’ paradoxically involves some of the same processes of violence and violation that characterise the ‘power play’ of modernist discourse. In covering a broad scope of inherently complex theories, ideas and arguments, it is my intention to pull out themes that connect across and help to build up an overall framework for analysis, to cut across much of the compartmentalisation of ‘knowledge’ that has characterised modernism and, as will be discussed later, served to underpin a social order characterised by inequality and oppression. This project is both integrative and disruptive – introducing some new intellectual discourses and seeking to break up some existing ways of thinking and experiencing. I am aware that, through my particular ‘take’ on certain approaches, I may do some violence to the integrity of particular perspectives: they may not be described in their entirety, and some discussion of their inner subtleties and complexities may be sacrificed. Instead, my work may highlight elements that may not conventionally be foregrounded in order to make connections with ideas external to particular bodies of thought. If one is seeking to achieve any form of break with modernism, conventional notions of logic and order may become inappropriate as they may serve to bind the text to particular ways of compartmentalising and separating out theory and ‘knowledge’. There is no natural logic or


order to this text. Each section grapples with some aspect of the power relations of modernity, but as these may be inextricably interrelated, the full meaning or significance of any part of the text can only become apparent through its connection with what appears both before and after. For the purposes of narrative, I have tended, somewhat arbitrarily, to place theory before practice, and general conceptions before particularisations. This may imply false dichotomies and an illusory linearity of argument. This would be a misrepresentation of more complex processes that may be both simultaneous and recursive: developments in theory and practice, and explorations of the general and the specific, may arise out of and inform one another. The recent history of developments within the field of human services shows how practice may be both behind and ahead of innovations in theory. Within the British context, much practical work has been done in challenging racism and sexism embedded in personal attitudes and institutional and professional practices. While such work may have been inspired by somewhat sketchy notions of structural oppression, the pushing forward of practice has often been driven much more by intuitive or ‘gut’ feelings of outrage at manifestations of unfairness, and a sensitivity to the complex damage that may be done to people, individually and collectively, when they are subject to discrimination or social exclusion. Similarly there have been very significant moves in deconstructing notions of professional or expert power, and in striving towards creating relationships of ‘partnership’ between workers and service users. At a policy level, these developments have become linked to new discourses around social inclusion. Such approaches have been influential in the development of ‘antioppressive’ or ‘values-based’ practice across various professional groups involved in health and social care. To some extent, there is a need for theory to catch up with practice, and learn from the emotional as well as the rational understandings of power relations as they operate in practice. At the same time, developments in poststructural understandings of power relations – with potentially great significance – have so far had relatively little impact on practice in the human services, partly due to the inaccessibility of some of the language and conceptual structures in which they have been articulated. In particular, this body of theory may be very helpful in unpicking some of the complexities as to why ‘the revolution’ has not taken place, and why some people have felt oppressed by aspects of what has been done in the name of ‘antidiscriminatory practice’. It is therefore the intention of this book to

Introduction 5

build new bridges between progressive and emancipatory developments in both theory and practice. This book is written out of my (gendered, classed, racialised) experience of theory and practice within a British context, although it draws on ideas and orientations that have emerged in other formations of modernity, principally Europe, North America and Australasia, and also from locations colonised by the West, but seeking to overthrow elements of this legacy. It reflects the different voices of those who have sought to make sense of, and transform, their experiences of oppression. This sampling is clearly partial and selective, and the juxtaposing of approaches from different geographical and other contexts may not do justice to the diversity of theory and practice traditions that exist internationally, despite (or in resistance to) the homogenising tendencies of globalisation. Nevertheless, ideas may have the potential to speak to more than one context and, by putting together perspectives with different points of origin, it may be possible to generate new and creative forms of common ground. In seeking to define concepts of modernity, I will start to unpick some of the contradictions between its claims towards enhancing social justice and opportunity, and some of the realities of entrenched privilege and inequality that would seem to have lain at its heart. In Chapter 2, the emergence of social theory is contextualised in relation to the dominant strands of modernist thought and their relationships with the various shifts in class, gender and ‘race’ relations that have emerged since the Enlightenment. I will argue that modernist thought has tended to hide or diffuse awareness of social tensions by privileging certain strategies for ‘knowing’ over others. In particular, it has devised conceptual structures that, by separating out raw and discordant experiences into apparently neat and inoffensive categories, have made it harder for people to make sense of their distresses and discontents, and to join with others in bringing about change. It is important not to characterise the social relations of modernity – or the products of modernist thought – as entirely smooth or untroubled. There may be found to be tensions between emancipatory intentions and discriminatory practices. Underlying social and economic contradictions may fuel instabilities and transformations, while out of modernist social theory may emerge disruptive elements that may threaten previous strategies for managing and controlling social relations. Instances of this, such as psychoanalysis and systems theory, are discussed in more detail in later chapters. Following on from this analysis of modernism, there is a brief excursion into postmodernism: a set of perspectives that, on the one hand,


seek to expose and overturn some of the tenets and certainties of modernism, while, on the other hand, may prove somewhat ambiguous in terms of any ability to penetrate the workings of relations of social power and inequality. Again there may be possibilities for a selective and critical appropriation of such perspectives within an emancipatory project. However, in order to maintain clarity within the discussion, I seek to retain a distinction between postmodernism and the more specific developments of poststructuralist theory that are explored in Chapters 4 and 6. Chapter 2 closes with an exploration of how modernism has been highly influential in human services practice, providing some apparently secure foundations in terms of knowledge, understanding and technique – but ones which tend to exclude any engagement with issues of power and oppression. While postmodern perspectives may provide valuable elements of critique in relation to such approaches and the premises upon which they are founded, they may also be found lacking when it comes to any clear strategies for identifying or addressing questions of power. As well as disrupting the certainties and generalisations of modernist social theory, postmodernism also sought to discredit, as part and parcel of outdated ‘meta-narratives’, structural analyses, such as those of capitalism, patriarchy and imperialism, that have explicitly sought to expose and question the operations of power within modernity. In Chapter 3, I seek to reclaim this ground and revisit the critical potential of traditions that have sought to identify how social oppression might be patterned in relatively consistent ways, and how these might give rise to certain commonalities of experience on the basis of class, gender, ‘race’ or other social categorisations. The value and potential limitations of these approaches are then explored in terms of how they may promote forms of practice that may be empowering for service users. Whereas structural theories have tended to emphasise the material and the generalised aspects of experience, poststructural approaches have opened up an analysis of the more local operations of power that may be embedded within relations of discourse and language. These are discussed in Chapter 4, which starts with their origins in the analyses of the operation of ideology of Althusser and Gramsci, and in the development of French linguistic structuralism and deconstruction from Saussure to Derrida. In turn, this may be seen to link with the highly influential approach to history and discourse developed by Foucault.

Introduction 7

These themes may be seen to be reflected in a developing arena of therapeutic practice in which strategies of deconstruction and reconstruction are used in working with people’s narratives – the ways in which people may situate themselves in the stories they tell about themselves and their lives, or how they may be situated in the stories of powerful others. This may offer more subtle and less confrontational modes of bringing about emancipatory change. Having opened up an understanding of how power may be embedded in material and discursive levels of social relations, Chapter 5 extends this to an analysis of the operation of power within emotional relations and interactions. This has tended to be a somewhat hidden area within modernist thought, as it has been seen as threatening to notions of rational order. However, particularly through psychoanalysis and developments in feminist sociology, the radical importance of emotion has emerged – as a carrier of messages about injustice and solidarity, and as an arena in which inequalities in human relationships may be acted out. While the reclaiming of emotion for emancipatory theory can appear a relatively new project, working with the power of emotion is not new to therapeutic practice. Where elements of psychodynamic or humanistic approaches may be harnessed to anti-oppressive perspectives, it may be possible to develop more effective ways of hearing or receiving emotion as a witness of past and present instances of abuse or discrimination, and channelling the energy or outrage and hurt towards bringing about emancipatory change. Much of modernist theory and much of current human services practice may be seen to rest on the notion of ‘the individual’: an essentially consistent and intentional subject who may be held accountable for their actions and who is seen to be defined very much in isolation from others. In Chapter 6, I deploy the tools of psychoanalysis and poststructuralism in exploring how personalities and identities may be socially constructed within the context of potentially unequal power relations. In this way, subjectivity may be seen to be an ongoing performance, a holding together of a fractured and conflicting amalgam of identities that have been brought to life through people’s insertion into, and interaction with, a particular array of discursive, emotional and material relations. Viewed in this way, the individual subject may no longer be seen as a source of power and agency, but as a location through which power flows and is enacted. This poses difficult questions for traditions of practice that have worked towards the restoration of personal


autonomy, coherence and integrity as a basis for re-establishing social inclusion. Instead, it raises the possibility of an emancipatory practice that might deconstruct modernist notions of unitary identity, and open up opportunities for living more fluid forms of subjectivity. Relations of power may be seen to have been a theme running through each chapter. In Chapter 7, I attempt to grasp and define concepts of power in more explicit ways, reviewing diverse understandings of power, discrimination and oppression from mainstream sociology, structural theory and poststructural approaches, before converging on more specific definitions of power and conceptualising a matrix of the different ways in which power may operate: as productive or oppressive and as hierarchical or cooperative. This links into a review of how an explicit focus on power differentials has impacted on human services practice, particularly in terms of anti-discriminatory or anti-oppressive practice, and in moves towards breaking down hierarchical relations between workers and service users. As well as challenging oppressive manifestations of power, practice has sought to develop notions of ‘empowerment’, denoting the productive deployment of power, although the usage of this term has been somewhat confusing and contested. I seek to define a critical concept of empowerment that reclaims it from the territory of the New Right and liberal humanism. Critical theory would be ineffective as a basis of emancipatory practice if it were not able to supplement its analysis of power relations with some theoretical understanding of how processes of change may be enabled and supported. This provides the theme for Chapter 8. Different models of social transformation are considered in relation to the understandings of power derived in the previous chapter. While systems theory has provided concepts of conservative regulation, it may also offer a model of transformation in which existing rule structures may break down under certain circumstances. Dialectical materialism focuses on an historical dynamic of inherent conflict and contradiction, and this is contrasted with an exploration of how change may come about in less confrontational ways within the context of cooperative power relations. Out of this emerge theoretical ‘maps’ both for free-flowing, incremental forms of transformation, and for processes in which underlying tension and contradiction may build up to a point of crisis or rupture, a point which may offer significant possibilities for some form of emancipatory transformation. It is argued that many of the scenarios in which human services practitioners may become involved may be

Introduction 9

understood using one or other model. Empowerment may potentially be brought about through preventative, developmental or capacitybuilding strategies, and through models of crisis resolution that support the emergence of previously suppressed issues, and the consequent renegotiation of structures and relationships. In the final chapter, I seek to draw together some of the themes that have been developed throughout the book, not in the sense of some final and definitive conclusion, but as a point of departure for further work.

2 Everything in its Proper Place? Modernism and Postmodernism

Major strands of social theory have arisen out of, and in relation to, their historical and social context. Ideas and formulations may be seen to be of their time and not some form of neutral and disconnected process of ‘knowledge’ production. In this chapter, I will discuss how the split and separate traditions of positivism and humanism may relate to the emergence of modernity as a social formation. This leads in to a consideration of how modernism has been contested – from both the perspective of postmodernism and that of critical theory – and an evaluation of the ways in which both modernism and postmodernism have influenced human services practice.

Modernism and modernity From the seventeenth century onwards, Europe witnessed a massive transition in terms of dominant forms of social and economic organisation, culture and thought. Through the processes of the Enlightenment, traditional or feudal forms of society were replaced by a social formation that has subsequently come to be known as ‘modernity’, and the emergent ideas, cultural forms and intellectual understandings associated with this have formed the basis of what has been termed ‘modernism’. Although the notion of a ‘modern’ era in history is not new, conceptualisations of modernity as a particular social order emerged only when attention became focused on its possible demise – as part of a new historical break or ‘turn’ in the late twentieth century. Concepts of modernity drew together aspects of a social order that could not all be subsumed within more particular notions, such as capitalism, industrialisation, scientific progress or secularisation. Whereas some commentators focused more on the technical aspects of 10

Modernism and Postmodernism 11

economic, scientific and industrial transformation, others have emphasised the political and cultural aspects of shifts within the social order, regarding modernity as ‘a structure of historical consciousness’ (Osborne 1992: p. 84). Within certain conventional historical and sociological accounts, modernity can be seen as some natural consequence of industrialisation, economic advancement and the (early) globalisation of trade. However, from a more critical perspective, it may be argued that the particular forms taken by western modernity were by no means inevitable and arose out of specific processes of struggle, in which newly emergent groups forged new forms of power base through the systematic subordination and exclusion of other social groups. One crucial shift that occurred was the transition from feudal to capitalist economic relations, moving from localised economies based primarily around formal and hierarchical obligations, to larger-scale – and apparently open and fair – markets for goods, labour and capital. With this came new configurations of social classes and the social relations between them: the landed aristocracy became superseded as the dominant class by industrial capitalists (the ‘bourgeoisie’), and rural peasants became incorporated within the growing ranks of the ‘working classes’. In parallel with these developments, the dominant mode of imperialist struggle may be seen to have shifted from in-fighting between the feudal fiefdoms within Europe to the racialisation and subordination of non-European cultures (Van Loon 1997). New modes of European domination of ‘black’ people emerged, moving through institutionalised slavery to more subtle forms of colonial rule and exploitation (Hall and Gieben 1992; Said 1978; 1993). Within the new ‘social contract’ of the Enlightenment, feudal relations of patronage, duty and obligation, were superseded by more universalist – and apparently egalitarian – notions of citizenship, with its particular balance of individual liberty and responsibility. In one sense, this transition may be seen as liberatory, offering unprecedented opportunities for social mobility and a gradual unfolding of representative democracy and other apparently inclusive social arrangements. However, it may also be argued that the success of modernity for some might, to a large degree, be dependent on the oppression and subordination of a variety of ‘others’ who were effectively denied full membership of the modernist ‘club’ – such as women, working-class people, colonised peoples, and so on. Thus, it may be seen to mark the substitution of a rigid and overt system of inequalities with one that could be more subtle, but which nevertheless tended to privilege the interests of certain groups and marginalise or subordinate others.


To some degree, members of the newly emergent dominant groupings would seem to have forged their identities through devaluing the identities of others (and suppressing those parts of their own experience that did not fit their assumed self-image): The idea of the ‘West’ as white, Christian, rational, civilised, modern, sexually disciplined and indeed masculine was put into place in a protracted process in which the colonised others were defined in opposition to these virtues. It was in constructing the ‘natives’ as black, pagan, irrational, uncivilised, pre-modern, libidinous, effeminate and child-like that the self-conception of the European as superior, and as not only fit to govern but as having the positive duty to govern and ‘civilise’ came into being… . The processes which led to the formation of Western modernity also involved an inferiorisation and government or regulation and disciplining of internal Others such as women, children and the rapidly growing urban working class. (Rattansi 1997: p. 482) These changes in social relations were paralleled by changes in thought – as the newly emergent social groups were involved in struggles to gain and hold on to their power positions at the level of discursive as well as economic relations. Whereas the previous social order had been legitimated through relationships of duty and obligation to unquestionable sources of authority (God, king, lord and father), this authority had been challenged by new ruling groups such as the bourgeoisie. In unseating the traditional ruling aristocracy, they had also unseated the authority of traditional forms of thought and ‘knowledge’ – for example, the world could no longer be seen as flat simply because the Church (or the king) ruled that this was the case. Appeal could no longer be to traditional modes of authority, but was replaced by an appeal to ‘reason’ as the source of all legitimacy. Instead of social organisation being seen as determined by (and reducible to) some wider teleological purpose, the new social order was made to appear as if it were natural and based on the principles of rationality. It is important not to underestimate the influence of a commitment to reason in achieving certain principles of justice and social emancipation unheard of within feudal societies – and it may be seen to serve as an effective antidote to the authoritarian tendencies that have reemerged within modernity at various points (Habermas 1984; 1987). However, alongside this, differentials, in terms of who may have access to and be able to deploy reason, may also be seen to have served as a


sophisticated legitimation of social divisions between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’: The possession of reason determines the possession of other things; property can then appear as the metonym of reason, the natural result of its proper exercise… . It is difficult to see the join since the differential distribution of power and of property appears to correspond neatly to the (assumed to be natural) distribution of rationality; each instance validates the ‘truth’ of the other… . It naturalises inequality and difference without having to refer to divine providence… . Reason is made to support all forms of oppressive relations and exploitation – colonial, ‘patriarchal’, class. (Venn 1997: pp. 14–15) Within the intellectual project of modernism, social and economic changes were located within discourses of ‘progress’, in which the direction of change was seen as inevitable, and as desirable in terms of providing unprecedented possibilities of freedom, justice and prosperity for all citizens. The guarantor of such progress was the new discourse of ‘reason’ which opened up social relations to scientific and philosophical enquiry – but only within particular and circumscribed ways of understanding. Crucially, intellectual enquiry was compartmentalised around a dualistic ontology: paired categories that are kept separate and not allowed to influence or transform one another. Characterising the complexities of human experiences as belonging within the opposed categories of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ may be seen as the foundation of this project – a schema that was first elaborated by Immanuel Kant. This gave rise to the two key intellectual traditions of modernist thought, positivism and humanism, which, in their separation, rendered the ‘objective’ social world an unchanging given, and the ‘subjective’ world as private and ineffectual in terms of bringing about any generalised form of social transformation. In turn, this core dualism may be seen to be paralleled by a set of other key analytical dualisms that have been central to modernist thought, such as the polarised categories of society and the individual, public and private, culture and nature, and rationality and emotion. Such a ‘carving up’ of human experience and social relations may be seen to preclude certain matters from analysis – those issues whose scope transcends the limitations of such arbitrary categories: Many of the most pressing problems we face, both practically and intellectually, require us to investigate connections, intersections,


interpenetrations between domains which are treated as separate and incommensurable by the dualist traditions. (Benton 1997: pp. 87–8) In particular, that which is excluded from analysis – or is conveniently sectioned off and separated from its context – may be seen to comprise issues such as the operation of power and experiences of oppression. In constructing the concept of an ‘objective’ social world, lay the possibility of recasting social reality as if it mirrored the natural world, so that it could be precisely described, measured and (potentially) controlled. Although technically distinct, the overlapping traditions of positivism and empiricism served to construct a discourse of ‘social science’ that saw the social world as one that was essentially stable and potentially governed by social laws and regularities. ‘Knowledge’ was to be based on a process of classification or compartmentalisation of social phenomena, so that each entity could then be understood in its proper relation to others – all presumed to be part of a ‘natural’ and functional social order. In general, the properties of any entity were to be seen as internally determined and fixed – as a ‘thing-in-itself’. Economics was to be understood on the basis of the actions of Rational Economic Man [sic] who had a pre-given and ‘natural’ propensity to maximise his financial advantage. Such entities would then be seen to interact with other entities in consistent and predictable ways – constituting a distinct domain of analysis. A dualistic separation could therefore be maintained within the analysis between the inherently predictable categories of entities-in-themselves and relations-between-entities, with no confusing possibilities allowed of mutual interpenetration or reciprocal determination between the categories. Thus, Economic Man would be assumed to remain just as rational irrespective of the relational context into which he was inserted, so any analysis of economic interaction could take this for granted. It may be helpful to examine how such a methodology could be applied in practice to social phenomena. One such project was the ‘scientific’ study of ‘race’, in which a racist social order was taken as pre-given, and then people were to be divided into a hierarchy of racial groups, each with their own ‘natural’ characteristics: [This project] set up whites as absolute and distinct, and considered all non-white races only in terms of how much they deviated from the illustrious Caucasian standard. (Young 1994: p. 160)


‘White’ Europeans were located at the top of the hierarchy, with ascribed attributes of rationality, intelligence, morality and ‘civilisation’. ‘Black’ people of African origin were located at the base as (at best) ‘noble savages’ with primarily animal characteristics of physical strength and sensuality. People of intermediate skin coloration originating from South Asia or the Far East were placed somewhere in between in the hierarchy of ‘civilised’ attributes. Once these categories had been established, it was then up to social science to devise the instruments whereby to produce the ‘facts’ that supported this system of classification and the hierarchical relations within this – such as tests of ‘intelligence’ that took the attributes of ‘white’ culture as normative. Thus a particular historically occurring form of oppressive social organisation and relationships was to be fixed as ‘natural’, ‘scientific’ and unchangeable. And, as a consequence of the dualistic separation of entities-in-themselves from relations-between-entities, there was no possibility of rereading the scenario in terms of social relations of racism having a determining effect on how these characteristics could be projected on to and constructed around particular peoples. By developing an all-encompassing range of such positivist ‘knowledges’, many forms of social injustice could be justified as somehow ‘natural’, inevitable and necessary for the healthy functioning of the social whole. Human actions were to be seen as governed by ‘scientific’ rules and regularities which both described and prescribed people’s social roles and responsibilities. Such a worldview would allow no place for dissidence, resistance or social transformation – for the breaking or renegotiation of rules or regularities by those who might feel oppressed or disadvantaged by them. While positivism sought to produce knowledges and techniques by which to manage the objective aspect of social existence, the different traditions of humanism have offered a variety of strategies whereby to render the subjective aspect less threatening or potentially out of control. Despite their apparent differences, the constituent strands of the humanist project, such as rationalism, idealism, hermeneutics, interpretavism and existentialism all serve to construct a person as ‘subject’ in a particular way: Traditional humanism … is in effect part of patriarchal ideology. At its centre is the seamlessly unified self – either individual or collective – which is commonly called ‘Man’… . Gloriously autonomous, it banishes from itself all conflict, contradiction and


ambiguity. In the humanist ideology, the self is the sole author of history. (Moi 1985: p. 8) In parallel with its construction of ‘pure’ subjectivity, humanism also provided strategies whereby the functioning and expression of the subject could be constrained by disciplines of logic and rationality, or by canons of aesthetics. The breaching of such codes could lead to intellectual banishment, social exclusion or charges of madness, thereby regulating the irruption into discourse of ‘difficult’ issues – such as experiences of oppression, vulnerability or unpredictability – which might be destabilising for the modernist project. Instead, living by the codes could provide an unproblematic basis for intersubjective understandings and consensus viewpoints that were politically safe (and academically respectable). Thus the subjective, too, could be rendered predictable and non-threatening to the existing social order, with only those accepting such self-disciplines being allowed to take on roles of active citizenship, as the ‘movers and shapers’ of the modern world: ‘the “Man of Reason” is installed [as] the free, autonomous agent of History’ (Venn 1997: p. 15). Despite the apparent coherence and consistency of modernity, there have always been undercurrents of dissent and revolt, and issues of economic, social or political conflict. The edifice has not remained entirely stable, as different imperatives have had to be accommodated. Through processes of struggle and social reconfiguration, the delineation of the boundaries of civil and political citizenship became extended during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – slavery was abolished, and women and working-class people gained the vote (Turner 1986; Mann 1987). However, more apparently inclusive definitions of citizenship did not, in any sense, mark an end to the social divisions within modernity. For many working-class people, such citizenship remained illusory in any real sense, since they lacked the economic and educational means whereby to exercise it (see Barbalet 1988). Similar arguments apply to the position of women, ‘black’ people and other subordinated groups, whose experiences of subordination and exclusion have continued in less stark and easy-tochallenge ways (Lister 1997). Just as such social groups could be marginalised in the discourse of ‘citizenship’, so they have often been excluded from the active production of modernist knowledge. They have tended to be defined as ‘other’, with no right to make sense of their experience in their own terms. Often, their life experience could be overlooked and subsumed


within the worldview of the dominant group: within much of social science, visions of ‘normality’ have often been based on the social life and self-definition of middle/upper-class ‘white’ men. Where the discourses of ‘other’ groups could be more overtly challenging to the social order, they may have been more actively denied and suppressed, perhaps being trivialised as minority viewpoints or constructed as irrational or child-like. Alternatively, members of such groups could be captured as passive objects of study within disciplines such as anthropology, in which their practices and forms of expression could potentially be romanticised as strange or exotic. It is against this backdrop of the dominant themes of modernism that there have emerged certain dissident ideas and various possibilities for evolutionary and (perhaps) revolutionary shifts in ideas. Such challenges to dominant understandings may be seen to have been fuelled by the inherent tensions and instabilities within modernity. Both on a theoretical level, and in terms of lived experience, everything could not be maintained within its ‘proper place’ without a degree of ongoing violence, which could become unsustainable as the forces of resistance and discontent built up. As they probed deeper into pressing issues, some modernist social theorists have thrown up ideas and concepts that have been troubling and potentially provocative to previously maintained orthodoxies – and some of these will be discussed in more detail in later chapters. In parallel with this, there have been approaches that have sought explicitly to dismantle consistencies and open up possibilities for more radical change: From the very beginning, the belief in science and reason has been accompanied by critical theories … which … emphasise cultural differences and historical discontinuities. (Larrain 1994: p. 6)

Critical theory The term ‘critical theory’ has been used in a variety of contexts with different meanings, but always indicating an approach which seeks not to take things at face value, but to probe beneath the surface in order to find what may lie hidden there. It has been used to denote a mode of enquiry into literary texts that employs theories of aesthetics, culture and history in order to access deeper levels of meaning, understanding and appreciation. Within the context of social theory, it has been used to describe approaches that ‘attempt to grapple seriously with the historical embeddedness of all theory’, where a full under-


standing demands an appreciation of the ‘historical and cultural conditions … on which the theorist’s own intellectual activity depends’ (Calhoun 2000: p. 537). In a very specific sense, it has been used to describe the work of the Frankfurt School of social theorists who were the first to attempt a radical synthesis of Marxian and Freudian ideas. The founders of the School, including Adorno and Horkheimer, sought to develop a theoretical basis whereby to understand the contemporary rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s, and to inform an alternative political and cultural practice whose goal was emancipatory, rather than authoritarian. I will employ the term ‘critical theory’ in a broader (but still political) sense, encompassing all approaches to social theory that seek to penetrate beneath appearances of fairness, naturalness and consistency and explore underlying relations of power, conflict, connection and exclusion. These may include both ‘macro’ analyses of social relations at a societal level and examinations of the ‘micro’ operation of power within particular settings or in particular forms of representation – approaches that will be discussed in greater depth in subsequent chapters. As will be discussed in the next chapter, such a critical approach is predicated on the ontological assumption that the reality of much of social relations is not self-evident, and that making sense of human experience involves probing more deeply into what actually may be going on. This implies a caution towards the categories and explanatory models upon which modernist ‘knowledges’ have been constructed – although not a dismissal of all the perspectives and understandings that have been generated within these traditions. There are many instances in which modernist theory has, intentionally or otherwise, provided material that may be employed to reveal rather than obfuscate relations of dominance and subordination (Fraser 1987). In order to deconstruct the world of appearances and representations, critical theory has, in some way or another, to challenge and transcend the limitations of the various dualisms of modernist thought: each and every ‘thing’ must be taken out of its ‘proper place’ and re-viewed as an entity in dynamic and potentially conflictual relationship to other entities, and whose supposedly essential qualities may, in fact, be seen to be constructed out of these very interrelationships. Key modernist concepts, such as ‘man’, ‘society’ or ‘civilisation’, may no longer be taken at face-value, secure and unassailable as poles of fixed dualities. Most fundamentally, critical theory cannot accept the division of social experience into a predictable world of people as ‘objects’, and a separate world of people as pure, autonomous and


unitary ‘subjects’ with inner-driven volitions and propensities for action. Instead, it seeks to grapple with a fluid and ever-changing world of interpenetrating social relations, potentially characterised by conflicts and inequalities: Critical theory … requires a dialectical perspective which suggests that it is from the tensions between these apparent contradictions that creative change can emerge. (Ife 1999: p. 221) The final defining characteristic of critical theory is that it should be able to contribute, in however small a way, to processes of social emancipation and transformation. The fundamental purpose of a critical approach is not only to challenge positivism and humanism by bringing injustice and oppression into visibility (Parker 1992), but also to do so in such a way as to open up possibilities for social action to address these issues: The link between social theory and political practice is perhaps the defining characteristic of critical theory. (Leonard 1990: p. 3) By rejecting the fixities of modernism, critical theory has the potential to examine the dynamics of social change at both ‘grand’ and ‘local’ scales. It is a project that is inherently political, in the sense of starting to provide the tools whereby those who experience injustice or oppression within current forms of social organisation may seek to challenge and renegotiate aspects of the dominant social order: the basis of any form of emancipatory practice (see Giddens 1991; Spears 1997).

Postmodernism Postmodernism represents itself as a decisive break with modernist thought, but in some senses may be seen as an extension or re-presentation of some of its fundamental tenets. Similarly, it may be seen to have an ambivalent relationship with critical theory: on the one hand, it draws on certain developments of structuralist ideas, while, on the other hand, it seeks to reject any form of generalised theory or perspective, adopting a position of ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives’, whether emancipatory or otherwise (Lyotard 1994: p. 27), and regarding them all as part of the redundant baggage of modernism. Central to postmodernist thought is the assertion that, in the late twentieth century, there has occurred a radical shift in the constitution of the social order, paralleling the significance of the


Enlightenment and the birth of modernity. This new socio-cultural formation has been termed ‘postmodernity’ and is seen to be characterised by increasing diversity and the loosening or collapse of any coherent organising principles. Dominant cultural forms, all-embracing moralities, the means of economic regulation and even the nature of the nation-state were all seen as under threat from wider trends of liberalisation and globalisation, and new opportunities emerging through the use of the media and information technology (see Boyne and Rattansi 1990; Hall et al. 1992; Thompson 1995; Albrow 1996). Within the economic sphere, it is suggested that the centralisation of economic activity into mass industrial production (‘Fordism’) had become superseded by dispersion and specialisation in response to more sophisticated and diverse consumer tastes (‘Post-Fordism’). There is seen to be a transition from an economy structured around material goods, and the exercise of power through capital accumulation, to one where services and conspicuous consumption predominate. This implies a radical shift in emphasis from the material value of consumer goods (for example, clothes as functional artefacts) to a system of value based on representation (clothes as cultural signifiers – as in the cult of ‘designer labels’). Through revolutions in areas such as advertising, information technology, media and retailing, the focus is seen increasingly to be on goods whose only value is as cultural objects located within a ‘hyper-reality’ of systems of representation, such as videos or computer games (see Baudrillard 1988). Within this ‘virtual’ world, power may be exercised via a ‘regime of signification’, in which style and presentation become all-important. Nevertheless, despite the excited claims of pioneers such as Baudrillard, it is not yet clear that these trends mark anything other than an evolutionary process within modernity – a phase that has been termed ‘high’ or ‘late’ modernity (see Giddens 1990; Fornas 1995). A capitalism centred on the production and consumption of representations may not be fundamentally different from one based on the production and consumption of material goods: it may still reproduce similar patterns of exploitation and inequality, although there may be a slight shift in the composition and orientation of dominant groups with the ascendance of a ‘new, “Yuppified”, post-industrial bourgeoisie’ (Lash 1990: p. 21). Indeed, the idea that society was dominated by the power of images and representations may be seen to have been as much a feature of evolving forms of modernity as anything specifically postmodern. It was Ludwig Feuerbach who argued in the


nineteenth century that ‘the present age prefers the image to the thing, the copy to the original’ (quoted in Debord 1977: p. 1). As the ‘postmodernity’ thesis remains questionable, it may be necessary to separate this out from the other strands of ‘postmodernism’. As Terry Lovell argues, it is also important for ‘the postmodernist/ poststructuralist couplet [to] be deconstructed, since it contains a very diverse set of intellectual positions’ (1996: p. 331) – although in practice the two have tended to become conflated, as postmodernism has sought to absorb poststructuralism within its wider project. Whereas poststructuralism was essentially a development of (and break with) the ideas of structural versions of critical theory – particularly Marxism and feminism – postmodernism may be seen primarily as a revolt against the certainties, rigidities and limitations of the positivist strand of modernism within social theory. However, particularly through its appropriation of poststructural ideas, its implications go far wider: [It] is characterised by a loss of certainty and a ‘God’s eye view’ in the sphere of knowledge, a loss of a central, organising principle governing society and a unitary standard of cultural excellence or morality, and a decline in the belief in a unitary, coherent self. (Seidman 1994: p. 5) In many ways, this revolt has been remarkably successful: positivism no longer holds the position of hegemonic dominance that it once held (see Bryant 1995). No longer must human experience and social relations always be shoehorned into the ‘objective’ entities and alien categories that formed the basis of the project of modernist social science. A greater methodological pluralism has replaced the insistence on the discovery of law-like regularities in social life. The narrow obsession with measurable ‘things-in-themselves’ has been superseded by a greater acknowledgement of the fluidity and interpenetration of the various domains of social existence, and a recognition of the importance of complex processes of representation. All forms of meaning and ‘knowledge’ are rendered problematic and no longer to be taken for granted, as the myth of scientific objectivity is debunked. There also emerges a significant blurring of some of the core modernist dualisms. Issues of diversity are to be embraced and celebrated, and no longer to be located within implicit or explicit binaries of superiority/inferiority. Instead, this is to be replaced by a more fluid and respectful curiosity, taking nothing for granted in terms of the constructions of ‘self’ and ‘other’, and conceptualising both according to a


‘non-hierarchical principle of “difference”’ (Lash 1990: p. 37). In this way, both the categories of ‘society’ and ‘the individual’ are rendered less certain or bounded, and the researcher (‘subject’) and researched (‘object’) are no longer so clearly separated into different analytical compartments. However, rather than see critical theory as a natural ally in overturning (elements of) modernism – and specifically its avoidance of issues of power and oppression – postmodernism casts both into the same mould, characterising structural theories of oppression as claiming exactly the same forms of certainty, universalism and rigidity that were seen as the deficiencies of positivism. Their emphasis on the importance of material aspects of social relations and inequalities has been conflated with the positivist obsession with an objective social world that was to be scientifically knowable. Although the political bases of these two traditions were diametrically opposed, they are treated as one. Postmodernism’s break with modernism starts to look somewhat less decisive, when we compare some of its positions with the humanist tradition of enquiry. The shift from an examination of ‘things’, to an exploration of the fluidity of meanings and how these are ‘presented’, may be seen, not so much as an overthrow of modernism, but more as a shift from positivist objectification to humanist ideation within modernism – a switch from the ‘objective’ to the ‘subjective’ pole within the core dualism of modernist thought. An emphasis on the importance of the diversity of meaning is no stranger to humanist traditions such as existentialism or ethnography. Postmodernism may be seen only to constitute a break with humanism in the sense of a reversal of the conventional notion of human subjects creating representations, to a more radical notion of representations constructing the possibilities for human subjects (a notion that is, in fact, borrowed from structural and poststructural theorists, such as Althusser and Derrida). However, questions of power may tend to be removed from the analysis – as with the conventional understandings of humanism. As there is deemed to be no underlying reality, all representations are to be seen as equally valid, whatever their implications to the life experience of particular social groups. In fact, it may be argued that there is a remarkable degree of congruence between the ideas and ideologies of postmodernism and those of neo-liberalism. Both thrive on principles of decentring and deregulation, on the dispersal and individualisation of power and initiative. Thus, in certain respects, postmodernism rep-


resents a new body of ideas that actually fit rather well with the interests of modernity’s currently dominant social groups: Ultimately, postmodernist conceptions … help to mask the real contradictions … and … seek to deflect people’s attention away from them into the rarified world of simulacra and hyper-reality… . Postmodernism … becomes a convenient ideology of the status quo. (Larrain 1994: p. 118) To the extent that it throws out the (critical) baby with the (modernist) bathwater, postmodernism may be seen to constitute a shift that leaves crucial elements of the modernist edifice (and power relations) still intact. While dissident viewpoints and experiences may be opened up for expression, they are simultaneously undermined and depoliticised as being only one of a potentially infinite range of possible positions that are all of potentially equal ‘truth’ or significance. Even its insistence on a non-hierarchical approach to ‘difference’ cannot, of itself, shift the reality of, say, racist oppression in any decisive way – although it may nevertheless offer some significant positions and opportunities within the process of struggle. Similarly a politics of feminisms may, in some ways, be more empowering for many women than a monolithic feminism, but there still remains a crucial need for a feminist ‘meta-narrative’: Whilst feminism has to guard against the dangers of generalisation, it nevertheless rests on the fundamental assumption that the inequality between the sexes is indefensible and unjust. Such an assumption informs feminist analysis of the position of women in society. (McNay 1992: p. 197) In seeking to throw off the intellectual straitjacket of (mainly positivist) modernist thought, with its emphasis on social laws, predictability and objectification of social experience, postmodernism went somewhat overboard on fluidity, diversity and the study of the particular rather than the general. It became obsessed with appearances and representations at the expense of theorising the social relations and power relations that may underlie and influence these. In doing so, it lost the overarching models and frameworks that may be necessary in order to put the particular into a wider context of social action and social change. Postmodernism (inadvertently?) threw away the tools by which to conduct a critical analysis of the reality of social oppression –


and the potential commonality between groups of people in terms of their experiences of oppression.

Modernist practice Following on from the work of Foucault (1967; 1977; 1981), Donzelot (1980) and others, it may be seen that integral to the modernist project has been the role of professional practices and discourses (medical, legal, educational, social, and so on) in maintaining and inserting people into their appropriate slots in the social order, in repairing or concealing the human ‘casualties’ of modernity, and in suppressing or channelling dissidence. This was a crucial element in the regulation of a civil society in which conformity was not generally to be enforced with overtly coercive measures – although the fall-back position of naked force or compulsion was always retained. Instead, most ‘disciplinary’ processes – the inducing of conformity – were to be much less transparent: the interests of ruling groups were to be served, not so much by ‘imposing constraints on citizens as of “making up” citizens capable of bearing a kind of regulated freedom’ (Rose and Miller 1992: p. 174). Modernity required a new discourse of ‘governmentality’ which comprised the ‘ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and the tactics, that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power’ (Foucault 1989: p. 20). Central to the social contract of modernity was the ‘con’ of fairness in exchange and competition, under which it had to be made to appear, as far as possible, that individuals were selecting, seemingly of their own volition, the very options that fitted with the interests of dominant groups; in effect, people ‘choosing’ to discipline themselves. Thus the precondition for the flourishing of modernity had to be the production and reproduction ‘of regimented, isolated and self-policing subjects’ (Sarup 1989: p. 92). Where such self-discipline was not forthcoming, professional practice was located in the space between the dissident individual and the social order: as far as possible, concealing the reality of conflicting interests by simultaneously appearing to be acting in the best interests both of service recipients and of the community as a whole. From a historical perspective, this may be seen as effectively providing a substitute for the much more overt ties of duty and obligation which had effectively bound the members of subordinated groups within the social fabric of feudal or traditional societies.


There has existed an implicit professional contract under modernity in which dominant groups delegated power to professionals, on condition that they did not use it ‘dangerously’ and put this in the hands of service recipients – those at the margins of respectable citizenship. The power was made available to construct or reconstruct conformity, not to give weight to expressions of dissidence or unrest arising from those in positions of social exclusion (see Philp 1979). Practice discourses situated the professional as the ‘expert’ – the active, rational subject – whose job it was to ‘do unto’ the patient/criminal/client/service user, who, to a greater or lesser degree, was invited to take on the role of the passive recipient – the object of the professional intervention. In this way, any possibility for opening up some form of dialogue with dissident experiences is necessarily excluded. Such practice discourses tend to be founded on some process of assessment or diagnosis, as in Foucault’s notion of ‘the examination’ that is carried out by professionals in positions of hierarchical power over the person: ‘It is a normalising gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify’ (Foucault 1977: p. 184). Although modernist professional practice has typically started with the objectification of the recipient, the most prized outcome would be for the recipient so effectively to internalise the disciplinary process that they slot in, apparently of their own accord, as a ‘ruly’ – rather than an ‘unruly’ – subject within modernity; as a ‘competent’ member of society (see Rose 1990). These principles may be seen to underlie a subtler version of modernist practice: the grooming of particular modes of subjectivity. Integral to this is to privilege particular ways of seeing over others (see Berger 1972) and, in particular, to situate the current social order as natural, necessary and inevitable. Once inducted into particular systems of perception and understanding, service recipients could be permitted to move beyond their object status, and reintegrate within the mainstream – where they could be relied on to take on as subjects that which would be expected of them within the social order. In this way, processes of assessment could either lead on to such ‘rehabilitative’ discourses, within which subjectivity may be restored, or, where this is deemed too difficult to achieve, strategies may be put in place to suppress dissident subjectivities in the longer term, perhaps through incarceration or longer-term medical treatment. However, there may be seen to be inherent tensions between the terms of these two strands of discourse, as may be seen within the sphere of criminal justice. On the one hand, certain practices may be designed to remould deviant impulses and restore a ‘ruly’ subjectivity,


‘to deliver a person who does not offend and who is contributing positively to the community’, as part of discourses of ‘correction’ (Chapman and Hough 1998: p. 5; see also Harland 1996). However, these may sit uneasily with other practices that seek to suppress, marginalise or control subjectivity, as part of discourses of ‘punishment’ and ‘supervision’, through processes of segregating, degrading, or monitoring the criminal. In parallel with the criminal justice discourse of ‘correction’, modernist social and psychological practice had tended to be undertaken under the dominant image of the medical discourse of ‘treatment’. Typically, this had involved a process of diagnosis or assessment, followed by the selection and application of technical interventions – on the person or their situation – that would tend not to be sensitive to the complex meanings and power relations of particular contexts (McBeath and Webb 1991). However, within childcare services, there has been a tendency for medico-therapeutic discourses around the causes and treatment of ‘child abuse’ to be superseded by socio-legal ‘child protection’ discourses predicated upon the assessment and prediction of ‘risk’. Such assessments may then be used to justify legally enforceable interventions, either in terms of level and duration of surveillance, or in terms of forcibly breaking up ‘dangerous’ family units (see Parton 1991). Similar professional practices centring on risk assessment have become increasingly influential in the arenas of criminal justice and mental health, particularly in relation to questions of discharge or release into the community, and setting up procedures for surveillance. Parallel discourses have also been established around the assessment of health and social ‘needs’. Within the British context, there has been a shift in much social and health practice from discourses around diagnostic assessment (where is the fault to be remedied?) to ones seeking simply to quantify observable deficits in performance as a basis of planning schemes of professional ‘care’ (what input is required in order for a person to be maintained in an acceptable role within the ‘community’?). The outcome of such a process is a ‘care plan’ by which to organise the provision of care and support services (Department of Health 1991). Such discourses fit more with neo-liberal discourses of welfare entitlement: what may be seen to be the minimum requirements for ‘civilised’ living; how can the modernist social order maintain people within positions of citizenship at minimum cost to the state? Within this, it becomes the professional role to ‘allocate scarce resources in an individualised way, particularly with the dangerous, isolated and neglected’ (Parton 1994: p. 25).


What these various discursive contexts for assessment, intervention, surveillance and care all tend to have in common is that they place the recipient in the position of a passive object – someone to be questioned, planned for, worked on, monitored, or administered to. This form of professional discourse involves: The introduction of two poles… . The first is implicitly passive, the second active; the first known, the second a knower; the first incapable, the second capable… The client is controlled by the imperial values and acts of the provider, the professional. (Kirkwood 1990: pp. 160–1) Given the nature of this working relationship, such discourses may preclude the possibility of any real dialogue or exchange: the agenda would tend to be one-sided and deriving from the priorities of the dominant social order. However, as an alternative strand of the modernist project has been to restore ‘appropriate’ subjectivity, practice may also involve encouraging people to ‘choose’ to work towards the very outcomes that would enable them to fit back as active subjects within the prevailing social order. Thus, within the more sophisticated versions of modernist practice, an apparent ‘partnership’ between professional and recipient may be established in which deviant thoughts and behaviours may be reviewed and reconstructed within the context of the dominant discourses of rationality and normality, thereby forging ‘alignments between the personal projects of citizens and the images of the social order’ (Miller and Rose 1988: p. 172). This process may effectively ‘dress up’ corrective or self-disciplinary processes as solutions to personal or social difficulties that the service recipient may embrace as their own. However, behind this apparently benign and philanthropic assistance have lain more powerful medical or legal discourses that could be employed either to invalidate or regulate dissidence. Failure to opt in to the terms of the particular ‘rehabilitative’ discourses on offer could lead to the application of sanctions designed to suppress continued expression of dissidence. Unconventional thoughts or behaviours could be invalidated and treated as symptoms of ‘mental illnesses’. Unacceptable acts or standards of conduct could be controlled and monitored through legally sanctioned processes of ‘care’ or ‘supervision’ – for example, in relation to issues around parenting standards or children’s behaviour.


The most explicitly modernist forms of practice have been either those which closely allied themselves with the positivist project of an ‘objective social science’ (Bakan 1976), or those that have grown out of the humanist tradition (Sollod 1982). The former have explicitly used ‘science’ to break down the totality of experience into supposedly ‘objective’ entities, which – it is proposed – may be described, measured and controlled (Allyon and Azrin 1965; Hudson 1982). Psychiatry and behavioural psychology have been at the forefront of such approaches, and they share a common thread in terms of taking issues of distress or dissidence out of any personal or social context, and recategorising them as constellations of behaviours or ‘symptoms’. Equally part of modernist practice may be seen to be the humanist tradition that has been influential in much of conventional counselling and psychotherapy. Drawing upon academic approaches such as phenomenology and existentialism, person-centred practice emphasises a purely subjective encounter between professional and recipient (Lietaer et al. 1990; Scott 1989). The solution to difficulties is seen to lie in actualising the ‘human potential’ inherent within each individual, thereby effectively bracketing out issues of power and social connection (Pilgrim 1992). The social order is seen as essentially unproblematic, with professional practice resting on a ‘commitment to humanist endeavour and [an] emphasis on the idea of respect for the client, optimism for the future, and faith in the essential … unity of society’ (Davies 1985: p. 4). Thus, although employing a completely different methodology, such approaches can also have the effect of decontextualising distress or dissidence and thus effectively viewing a situation purely in terms of ‘managing people in positions of severe weakness, stress or vulnerability’ (ibid.; my emphasis). However, just as pressure for social change has emerged from within modernism in the form of critical theory, so it has also surfaced in some of the tensions and contentions within modernist practice. Inherent in the core of the modernist project – the grooming of the ‘right’ sort of active participatory citizens – are potentially contradictory processes of simultaneously closing down and opening up opportunities for subjectivity and expression. Thus, however well they may be steeped in the modernist world-view, professionals may become influenced by and take on some aspects of the challenging and destabilising issues that may be raised by service recipients. Relationships of apparent ‘partnership’ – however unequally they may be constituted – may nevertheless open up subject positions from which recipients may start to articulate some part of their own agendas.


Given the inherent contradictions within modernist practice, particular approaches and techniques may be deployed (intentionally or otherwise) to achieve emancipatory outcomes. Within the field of research, positivist methods may be used to measure issues of discrimination and inequality of opportunity (Oakley 2000). Although grounded on a somewhat naïve understanding of social power relations, a humanist approach that seeks to mobilise untapped ‘potential’ within people may have the effect of enhancing their ability to develop and express dissident positions: ‘These new persons have a trust in their own experience and a profound distrust of all external authority’ (Rogers 1978: p. 274). Of even greater significance are the various strands of psychoanalysis, whose relationship with modernism is particularly complex. Although initially flirting with appeals to scientific respectability, Freud’s legacy fits more with humanist ideas of personal encounter and search for meaning: Freud … invoked a totally new principle of explanation. This principle of explanation, which ran counter to the tenor of thought prevalent in medicine … was that the symptom could have meaning. (Home 1966: p. 42) While, ostensibly, psychoanalysis accepted a repressive social order as given, it also provided some of the critical tools whereby to deconstruct its impact upon the structures of personality and social interaction. Freud himself agonised over both what he saw as the inevitability of modernity (‘civilisation’), and the degree of psychic repression and human unhappiness that it entailed. And, in the theorisation of the unconscious, he took a radical and subversive step in decentring the rational subject of modernist social contract.

Postmodern practice In terms of approach and technique, it has been poststructuralism, rather than postmodernism, that may be seen to have had the most significant impact on much of the arena of social practice, particularly in relation to the understanding of narrative; this will be discussed in Chapter 4. Nevertheless, postmodernism’s overturning of positivist certainties, and its emphasis on diversity and plurality of meaning, has been influential in starting to deconstruct monolithic notions of ‘normality’, ‘objectivity’ and ‘rationality’ – although the potential implications of this may be seen to be somewhat double-edged.


On the one hand, postmodernism may be seen to have emancipatory potential in disturbing the narrow focus of positivist practice and replacing it with a more ‘critical, self-reflexive and deconstructive state of mind’ (Howe 1994: p. 523; see also Pease and Fook 1999). It may start to move beyond the deceits, vested interests and implicit oppressions that may have been central to much of modernist practice: The views, experiences and interests of white, middle class, able bodied males have invariably been embedded in ideas, theories and approaches, but presented as if they were universal, objective and neutral. (Parton and O’Byrne 2000: p. 21) Instead of working according to the straitjacket of such ‘received wisdom’, postmodern practice may employ a multiplicity of unconventional perspectives in teasing out new ways of constructing meaning in particular situations. This may be of particular significance in opening up areas of practice that have been closed to new perspectives, such as the domination of the ‘scientific’ medical model in psychiatric and general medical practice. Even within the modernist paradigm, conventional medical practices have come under greater scrutiny: all interventions may be called to account in terms of their ‘evidence base’, although what counts as evidence may be defined narrowly in terms of ‘scientifically valid’ randomised controlled trials (Trinder 2000). However, postmodern critiques are beginning to chip away at how the terms of this discourse are defined, opening up the possibility of privileging new evidences based on how people perceive their own ‘recovery’ and how medical interventions may or may not have changed their lives (Gray 1999). It involves a shift from a focus on external ‘knowledges’ that may be imposed on people, to a valuing of people’s own particular ‘knowhow’: expertise based on their unique life experiences. Such approaches move beyond the confines of traditional therapeutic dialogues, in which any user contribution is located within a discourse whose terms are already fixed by the dominant ‘professional’ way of seeing. Instead, they seek to enable users of services to construct their own narratives and meanings around their experiences. Once it is taken out from dominant medical discourses, ‘recovery’ may be viewed not just in terms of being ‘able-bodied’ or ‘symptom-free’, but as feeling empowered to start living again and enabled to take


control over the impact of any ‘symptoms’ or ‘impairments’ (see Corker and French 1999b; Coleman 1999). Similarly, in promoting a plurality of perspectives, postmodernism offers a basis for validating cultural diversity and lifestyle choices that might have been treated as deviant or abnormal under a more traditional modernist perspective. It may significantly undermine both the hierarchical superiority and the ‘normalising gaze’ of the modernist process of professional ‘examination’, as identified by Foucault, thereby starting to problematise the professional role: The growing emphasis on the participation of clients in matters which fundamentally affect their lives … de-centres the locus of power and disperses the site of exclusive control traditionally held by the practitioner. (Howe 1994: p. 525; see also Dominelli 1996) Within such an approach, service users may not just be consulted within a professionally defined framework of understanding and options, but be invited to develop their own interpretive frameworks, which may lead to a very different identification of strategies and definition of desired outcomes (Pardeck et al. 1994). On the other hand, postmodernism may also serve to mask, beneath its celebration of diversity, the importance of issues of social inequality, poverty and discrimination, and the ‘extent to which power is still controlled and administered by specific and identifiable agents in positions of economic and political power’ (Best and Kellner 1991: p. 70). It may be seen that postmodern ideas fit well with the neo-liberal critique of ‘welfarism’ – both undermine universalism as a principle of social provision (see Parton 1994). In this way, postmodern practice may well – intentionally or unintentionally – ‘serve the interest of powerful forces and result in further marginalisation and fragmentation of the interests of the powerless’ (Peile and McCouat 1997: p. 354; see also Taylor-Gooby 1994). Just as postmodern theory sets itself against both positivism and any attempt to build a coherent edifice of critical or emancipatory theory, so postmodern practice may be equally undermining of any commitment to anti-oppressive or empowering practice: A postmodern analysis is more than analytically flawed, it is ethically problematic… . The often grim, lived realities of oppressed groups may be reduced to ‘difference’ and, in the process, pressing (emancipatory) social imperatives may become obscured. (Smith and White 1997: pp. 293–4)


Of particular concern is that postmodernism may fuel an ethical and theoretical relativism in which any mode of practice or understanding is seen as equally valid – which may be particularly damaging to those seeking to promote and establish the criteria for emancipatory practice, ‘as ultimately nothing can be considered more worthy than anything else’ (Peile and McCouat 1997: p. 355).

3 Exposing Conflict: Structural Approaches to Power and Inequality

In exploring critical theory and its potential application to emancipatory practice, one starting point is with the structural approaches of Marxism, feminism and anti-colonialism/anti-racism, together with a consideration of their interconnection with understandings of other equally important dimensions of oppression, such as ageism, disablism and heterosexism. It is these approaches that have provided the first set of tools whereby to unpick patterns of discrimination and inequality within the social organisation of modernity. Before examining these bodies of work in detail, I will locate them within the broader context of structuralist thought. However, I start with a consideration of some fundamental questions of ontology: what is it within human experience and social relations that we may be seeking to understand? The chapter ends with an overview of how structural theory has informed practice traditions.

Objective, material and real: unpicking ontologies Within the various intellectual traditions of modernism, postmodernism and critical theory, many different concepts have been deployed to denote that which is there – the potential raw material for enquiry and theorisation. Within modernism, there has sometimes been a tendency to study surfaces or appearances: pure empiricism does not delve beyond a search for regularities between phenomena that can be directly observed and measured. In a very different sense, postmodernism also becomes fixed at the level of appearances: it settles for representations as the ‘be all and end all’ of study. However, within critical – and many modernist – approaches to theory, there has been a dissatisfaction with appearances, leading to a search for underlying 33


logics, meanings, connections or contradictions. What distinguishes critical from modernist analyses are particular perspectives on the nature of what may lie beneath surface appearances. Different approaches may seek to define this, using concepts such as ‘objective’, ‘material’ or ‘real’ – often in ways that can be overlapping and confusing. It may therefore be helpful to start by disentangling these terms. The term ‘objective’ implies a social world akin to the scientifically defined understanding of the natural world – a world of things-inthemselves that may be defined in terms of their essential qualities. These qualities may be directly or indirectly measurable, and may relate to each other in consistent law-like ways. This is the positivist world of ‘facts’ that, once discovered, can be trusted to remain ‘true’. It is a world that lends itself to human mastery and control – or, more precisely, control by the social groupings (male, bourgeois, ‘white’) that possess the means to exert that control. As a corollary of this, members of other less powerful social groupings may then be relegated to the world of things-to-be-controlled – the world of supposedly predictable social objects. The tradition of (historical) materialism shifts the focus from essential qualities of social entities to the changing and contradictory relations within and between them – the forces, pressures and dynamics that may structure social life. With Marx, this specifically emerged as a revolt against Hegelian humanism – the notion that historical development could be driven by a struggle of ideas. Instead, Marx proposed that it was issues relating to the basic conditions of existence – such as the inequality of the wage-labour contract and differential access to and control over resources – that provided the underlying dynamic for social change. Thus, the concept of ‘material’ emerges in distinction to both ‘essential’ and ‘ideological’: the legacies of positivism and humanism respectively. In this context, ‘material’ suggests not only some connection with entities that are, in some sense, physical and tangible – ‘matter’ in a static sense – but also that these entities are constituted in particular ways that ‘matter’ (make a difference) within the context of social relations. The concept of materiality implies a social process of coming-to-be, rather than some pre-given form – an embodiment of specific operations of power: ‘matter itself is founded through a set of violations’ (Butler 1993: p. 29). It may be helpful to ground these distinctions in relation to Marx’s theory of capital. Money – in the sense of a collection of coins and banknotes that may be hidden away somewhere – may be seen to be ‘objective’, in that it can be counted and measured, but may have little social

Structural Approaches to Power and Inequality 35

significance as long as it remains a private hoard. However, when put to dynamic use as industrial capital in order to secure ownership of the means of production, it takes on a particular meaning as part of specific social relations: it becomes a bargaining counter in potentially very unequal negotiations between individuals, and between collectivities of individuals (Marx 1970). Money thus becomes constituted as part of a set of material relations between social classes, which can both have a highly determining effect on people’s lives, and also stoke up conflicts and collective resentments which may ultimately have a determining effect on oppressed people’s propensity for emancipatory or transformative action. In this way, material relations may be seen as integrating what had been separated under modernism: the ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ aspects of a social formation. It opens up the interrelationship between, on the one hand, the specific location and deployment of money and, on the other, how ordinary working-class people may see themselves and their future. Thus, in seeing contradictions within social relations as irrevocably intertwined with people’s dissatisfactions and aspirations (thereby providing a motive force for historical change and transformation), the concept of ‘material’ may be seen to transcend the subject/object dualism. Feminism has argued that definitions of what may constitute the material aspects of social relations may usefully be extended beyond the ‘public’ economic sphere to include the exploitation of domestic labour and reproductive capacities, and other physical or embodied aspects of social interaction such as violence and sexual behaviour. Here may also be found evidence of systematic enactment of inequalities between individuals and social groups. However, notions of the ‘material’ have sometimes been stretched further to include processes of discursive production (representations and signifying practices), in order to stress their real impact on people’s lives and the structuring of power relations within a social order. However, I would suggest that it is unhelpful and confusing to conflate ‘material’ with ‘real’, since this then blurs potentially useful analytic distinctions. Instead, both the ‘material’ and the ‘discursive’ spheres may be seen as distinct, but as potentially important in their own right. Thus, if ‘material’ refers to physical and economic aspects, and ‘discourse’ refers to those aspects of experience that are primarily constructed through language or systems of representation (such as thought, knowledge, text, ‘common sense’ and ideas), then there is the potential for complementary and intersecting analyses.


Having clarified the terms ‘objective’ and ‘material’, it becomes easier to derive a definition of ‘real’. Although the term ‘critical realism’ has sometimes been used in a very specific sense to denote a focus on issues of ecology and the precarious interconnections between the categories of the social and the natural, I will be using it in a much more general ontological sense to denote the possibility that ‘what is’ may extend further and deeper than what may be directly observed or experienced (see Keat and Urry 1975). Theories and models may be seen as better or worse metaphors – as partial guides ‘to the structures of the real’ (Lovell 1980: p. 22). They may seek to provide ways of opening up a fuller appreciation of ‘what is’ without ever being able to claim an exact or total understanding. Following Rorty (1989), it is important to distinguish a realist ontology from the notion that some metaphysical concept of self-evident ‘truth’ is also out there waiting to be discovered. ‘Truths’ may be understood as strategies to give some particular set of meanings and explanations an air of universality or naturalness – a tactic that may be seen to be integral to modernism. While the ‘real’ may be seen to exist independently of any attempts to make sense of it, ‘truths’ may be seen to be narratives, constructed and reconstructed to serve particular interests. Unlike those who tend to subsume any notion of the ‘real’ within the category of an objective world of things-to-be-discovered (see Sayers 1985; Bhaskar 1989), I would argue for a more critical reading of ‘real’ that would see subjective experience as just as much part of social reality as objective indices such as income or occupation. Neither the objective nor subjective surfaces of experience may be seen to make (complete) sense in their own terms, but each may be interpreted and understood as reflections of (or defences against) some deeper sets of relations, connections or contradictions. Politically, this opens up the possibility of appreciating that personal experiences of oppression – which may be suppressed, concealed or internalised within a given social order – may nevertheless be acknowledged as real. Following on from the materialist critique of an objective world of things-in-themselves, a critical realist ontology can privilege systems of interconnecting relationships as the fundamental building blocks of social life and human identity. It is essentially at odds with a modernism in which ‘it is much easier to see and think in terms of objects than in terms of relations’, leading to a ‘tendency to constitute entities which can only exist … as independent ontological categories and to represent ourselves in the form of objects when, in reality, we are a framework of relations’ (Ibanez 1997: p. 33; my emphasis).


Through its fascination with the surfaces of representation, postmodernist thought has come (almost) to deny the possibility of any underlying ‘real’ – as this becomes conflated with its revolt against any notion of ‘objectivity’. Although debunking the possibility of valuefree scientific knowledge, it thus can offer no criteria whereby to unpick the competing claims of a multiplicity of value systems: issues of oppression may be presented, but only in a way that denies them any underlying substance: It’s very important to say the Holocaust happened … the slave trade happened, and an incestuous act happened. And it wasn’t just someone’s interpretation… . I think it’s extremely dangerous when women are talking about what happened – ‘He hit me’; ‘He beat me up’; ‘He raped me’ … to say … ‘There’s only stories, nothing really happens’. (Gilligan 1994: p. 412) It is then for critical theory to probe beneath the surfaces of the experiences being represented: to analyse the real social relations, conflicts and connections that might start to make sense of how such horror and suffering could come about, of people’s capacities for survival and resistance, and of how such experiences may intertwine with and become embedded within the organisation of people’s personal subjectivity.

Structural theory The first wave of critical perspectives that started to examine issues of power and inequality undertook structural analyses of collective issues faced by specific social groups within the modernist social order. It is important to see these as separate from other traditions of structural theory. From the functionalist perspective of Talcott Parsons, the structuring of the modernist social order was seen as not only inevitable, but also acting to the collective advantage of all participants, in terms of the functional efficiency of the social order as a whole. In his vision of ‘structure’, he acted as an unashamed apologist for the American Dream of the 1950s – constructing this particular phase and location of modernity as ‘the best of all possible worlds’. He proposed that there was a ‘consensus of values relating to the societal importance of particular functions’ which justified the basis of social divisions, so that differentials in prestige and reward were seen just to reflect people’s intrinsic merit (Crompton 1993: p. 7). For example, he was able to characterise the different ‘expressive’ and ‘instrumental’ positions occupied by women and men within this social order as complemen-


tary, building on the ‘natural’ propensities of each – not as evidencing any profound inequality in opportunity between gender groups. A very different application of structural concepts may be seen in the analyses of cultural and linguistic practices undertaken by Ferdinand de Saussure and Claude Lévi-Strauss, and in the models of unconscious psychic functioning proposed by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. While these did not seek to provide a critical analysis of modern (or pre-modern) social orders, they nevertheless established a set of ideas whereby to start to deconstruct modernist notions of personality, text and communication. These structural concepts provided some of the foundations which, as will be discussed in the next chapter, have been most influential in the formation of poststructuralism. Within critical structuralist analyses, differences in (collective) experiences may be examined in terms of people’s access to the resources that are necessary for survival, prosperity and fulfilment. In any historically occurring social formation, certain social groups may be identified as being in a position to have influence over the way resources and responsibilities are distributed. In this way, the opportunities open to people, in terms of the way they live, work and make intimate relationships, may depend on membership or non-membership of categories such as ‘race’, gender or social class. While, under modernism, these categories, and their hierarchical arrangement, have often been constructed so as to appear to reflect the innate characteristics of those occupying superior or inferior positions, they may actually be seen to connote who does and does not have power within a particular social formation. In each case, social relations may be understood in terms of how a dominant group is able to exploit or oppress the daily life of subordinate groups by a variety of economic, ideological, political and emotional means. Iris Young identifies five key forms of oppression resulting in the ‘systematic and unreciprocated transfer of powers’ between social groupings (1990: p. 30). These comprise: exploitation of labour, nurturing or sexuality; marginalisation; cultural imperialism (the systematic ‘othering’ and inferiorising of difference); powerlessness in relation to ‘experts’ and institutions; and outright violence or the threatened use of force. In turn, oppressed groups may, over time, organise to mount more or less successful resistance against their subordination or exclusion. To use Antonio Gramsci’s phrase (1971), this constant ‘war of position’ between forces of oppression and of resistance may be seen as providing a motive force for historical change.


It is important to recognise that, unlike in other structuralist traditions, these forms of social structuring are seen as fluid, conflictual and subject to continual historical change. In order to emphasise this point, Harriet Bradley has proposed that the term ‘structure’ be replaced by the term ‘dynamic’ so as to convey the sense that social relationships are constantly evolving and subject to transformation (1996: p. 7). Not only may there be struggles over power and resources between dominant and subordinate social groups, but there may also be conflicts between different elements within the dominant groups, and their composition may be seen to have changed over time: The ruling elite, while it does often have some interests in common with all of its members, does not have all interests in common with all of its members. In other words, the ruling elite – or, more correctly, ruling elites – is not monolithic. Indeed the battles among them are often vicious. (Hodge et al. 1975: p. 34) Postmodernism criticises structural theories for subsuming the particularity of experience within grandiose categories such as ‘class’, ‘gender’ or ‘race’. However, postmodernism may equally be criticised for covering up deep-rooted and systematic inequalities in its overemphasis on diversity and superficial representation. Both positions may be seen to have some validity, but it may be seen as important to revisit and reclaim those structural perspectives that were effectively washed away in the first wave of postmodernist fervour: While the social relations involved in gender, ‘race’ and class have indeed changed, and while the notion of ‘new times’ does have some purchase on the world and the concept of ‘flexibility’ does have some uses, the postmodernist argument has been taken too far in the attempt to disintegrate the concepts of gender and ‘race’ and to see capitalism as disorganised… . Patriarchy and racism remain potent social forces, and capitalism has not withered away despite its new form. (Walby 1992: pp. 32–3)

Theories of class and capital The concept of social class has been used very differently within modernist and critical approaches. Within the former – the ‘orthodox’ consensus of post-war sociology (Giddens 1982) – class is used as a descriptor of measurable social position within a system of hierarchical classification, generally related to occupational status. Such


systems of social differentiation may be seen as fitting well with meritocratic notions of the social order, and not implying any form of structured oppression or unfairness. Although the categories remain static, individuals are permitted a degree of social mobility between them – reflecting their personal endeavour and worth. Such individualist perspectives tend to overlook the possibility of various forms of ‘glass ceiling’ and other generalised barriers to opportunity and advancement – or see these as incidental, rather than fundamental, to class structuring. By contrast, Marx’s examination of some of the fundamental inequalities and conflicts between social classes within modernity may be seen as a ground-breaking critical analysis of social structure. Instead of simply describing differences in wealth, earning power or status, he sought to situate social groups in dynamic relationships to one another, developing the concept of ‘capital’ to denote the mobilisation and organisation of resources by one social group in order to systematically oppress other groups. He was most rigorous in his analysis of the economic exploitation of the ‘working class’, showing how the ‘ruling class’ had gained monopoly control over the material resources necessary for industrial production (factories and machinery), so that working people had typically no independent means of support – and were thereby forced to survive by selling their labour power on an individual basis at well below its use-value to the capitalist. This mode of organisation was in contrast to the earlier feudal social formation in which the former ruling class, the aristocracy, was in a position to expropriate the labour power of the peasant class through their monopoly ownership of land. Whereas ‘orthodox’ sociology may treat class as an objective category, the Marxist notion of class, as an underlying real relationship between social groups, sought to transcend the modernist dualism and embrace the possibility of a class having an identity not just ‘of itself’, but also ‘for itself’ – as a collective subject of history which may potentially act, self-consciously or otherwise, on the basis of the material interests of its members. Over recent years there has been much debate as to the continued relevance of a Marxian concept of ‘class’ within social analysis. Even within economic and materialist analyses, traditional Marxist perspectives have been criticised for overemphasising relations of production, at the expense of analysing inequalities and power relations within the sphere of consumption, in an era in which ‘lifestyle’ is seen as having greater prominence in identifying social difference – whether these


‘New Times’ are understood as high- or postmodernity (see Hall and Jacques 1989). As Marx had predicted, the progress of capitalism and industrialisation has not been entirely stable and the constitution of the class structure would appear to be shifting – however, not generally in the specific directions that he anticipated. A simplistic picture of a cohesive and self-conscious working class in struggle with a similarly organised capitalist class does not seem helpful in unpicking the very significant changes in class configuration that may be seen to have taken place in Europe over recent decades, such as the fall in membership of the unionised manual working class (the most obvious manifestation of an organised and politicised class ‘of itself’), and the apparently increasing separation of an underclass whose exclusion from social and economic participation may appear more total than ever before (see Therborn 1989; Wilson 1991; Roberts 1997). Such shifts have not, in any sense, marked the end of issues of collective inequalities of opportunity, of economic exploitation, and of raw poverty – or excessive riches (Rentoul 1987; Oppenheim and Harker 1996). Nor has there been evidence of any threat to the level of economic control vested in the hands of a relatively small dominant group – and their potential for accumulation of wealth: Britain is ruled by a capitalist class whose economic dominance is sustained by the operations of the state and whose members are disproportionately represented in the power elite which rules the state apparatus. That is to say, Britain does have a ruling class. (Scott 1991: p. 151) Despite this, even within the more radical political discourses of the 1990s, traditional notions of ‘class’ disappeared behind the new agenda of identifying and seeking to combat ‘social exclusion’. The emphasis shifted from how a small and powerful minority might be in a position to exploit the majority, to how minority groups may be excluded from mainstream economic participation. This can be seen as marking a resurgence of the modernist notion of citizenship to denote a supposedly ‘level playing field’ in which the majority of the economically active population may interact with equality of opportunity – leaving, as the only outstanding political issue, how to incorporate those currently excluded within the ranks of such a citizenship (see Andrews 1991). Such notions of inclusivity have been shown to mask the


operation of structural factors which prevent whole sections of the population, who are supposedly included, exercising their notional rights of citizenship (Lister 1997). The debates around concepts of ‘social exclusion’ may be seen to originate from more of a Weberian than a Marxist notion of class. While Weber sought to distance himself from the more deterministic notions of historical materialism, he also located people within class or status groupings characterised by similar ‘economic interests’ or ‘life chances’, in terms of ‘the possession of goods and the opportunities for income’ and hence their positioning within a capitalist market economy, in relation to both production and consumption (Gerth and Mills 1948: p. 181). Although Weber’s notion of class was primarily descriptive and located within the humanist tradition of modernism, it may nevertheless be seen as having critical possibilities in terms of exposing the distribution of power within a community, and how class position may underpin ‘possible forms of class action’ (ibid.: p. 184). The question of a majority closing ranks against an underclass may be just one instance of more pervasive processes of ‘social closure’ in which certain social groups may seek to keep hold of specific social resources by processes that limit access, while excluded groups may discover a solidarity of purpose in struggling to usurp such privileges (see Parkin 1974). Within such an analysis, many middle-class groups may be seen to occupy ‘contradictory class locations’ (Wright 1985), in that they may be simultaneously engaging in processes of exclusion in order to protect their somewhat elevated position, and in forms of struggle to break through the various ‘glass ceilings’ above them. What would seem to be required is a more sophisticated analysis of social structuring, using concepts such as that of ‘class fraction’ (Gramsci 1971) to describe the matrix of power and alliance that may define the shifting positions of the various elements of the middle classes, the working and non-working poor, and so on. In the late twentieth century, it has been the various middle-class fractions that have been most obviously successful in advancing their structural positions economically – and also politically and culturally. Although the apparently straightforward Marxist linkage between collective material interests, class consciousness and political action has shown itself to be seriously flawed, it may make sense to see the solidarity and common purpose of particular middle-class fractions as constituting them as the most effective collective subjects of recent history. The apparently fractured and diverse single-issue politics that


has been identified as an indicator of postmodernity (see Laclau and Mouffe 1985) may instead be seen as the complex articulation of a variety of aspirations of those groups in intermediate positions within the overall class structure. In addition to an overemphasis on the social relations of production rather than consumption, traditional Marxist approaches have been seen as overly focusing on the role of the economic per se, in relation to cultural and ideological factors, in the constitution of class and class relations. Whereas Weber provided a basis for analysing some of the power implications of class cultures – in understanding processes of ‘social closure’ – it was Marx, despite his emphasis on material relations, who more clearly set out the foundations for a critical analysis of class-based struggle at the level of ideological or political activity: The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas… . The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production… . They … regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age… . The dominant idea … is expressed as an eternal law. (Marx 1965: p. 65) Later Marxist theorists took this analysis further in terms of the connections between ideology and material relations. Gramsci proposed that ruling groups could maintain their domination only by promulgating certain sets of ideas, ‘knowledges’, world-views and institutionalised practices that made an unequal social order appear fair, natural or inevitable. Louis Althusser makes a complex but fundamental point about the ‘dual’ character of ideology: it may be seen as being simultaneously both ‘imaginary’ and ‘real’. It may be imaginary in the sense that sets of ‘received ideas’ and ‘common-sense’ understandings may distort and misrepresent the real relationship of individuals to the material relations of their existence. Workers, who have no control over the means of production, may, in reality, be forced to accept a job on the terms that they will be paid a wage that does not reflect the true value of the work done (and hence provide profit for the capitalist). However, in capitalist-dominated ideologies, this unfair transaction may be constructed as a free exchange between individuals of ‘a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay’. This ‘imaginary’ vision of the relationship becomes real in the sense that it is lived as if it were real by the participants. When going after work, workers are situated, and must actively situate themselves, as free subjects who actually want to work,


and who can therefore be held individually responsible for the quality and execution of that work. Ideology thus becomes enshrined in real customs, institutions and practices – and the possibilities for change become less straightforward, requiring no longer just an unveiling of people’s ‘true’ material interests, but a strategic ‘war of position’ in order to open up and secure alternative perspectives. Gramsci proposed that in order to achieve their ideological domination, or ‘hegemony’, ruling groups had to secure alliances with key class fractions, such as professional groups and those working in the media, in order to ‘win the active consensus of those over whom it rules’ (1971: p. 244). Conversely, effective struggle to enhance the position of those subject to economic domination and exploitation could involve complex alliances between the working class and allied class fractions to achieve an alternative hegemony – a radical consensus for social change. Combining elements of both Marxian and Weberian notions of class, Pierre Bourdieu (1987; 1989) proposes a model of the unequal distribution, movement and availability of different forms of social ‘capital’, leading to differential access to positions of power over others. He views class as being embedded in the micro-scale interactions and ‘trajectories’ of everyday life, and as being continually subject to constant small-scale shifts and realignments. While incorporating a Marxian view of economic capital, he develops a broader understanding of the constitution of various other forms of ‘capital’. Social capital is seen as deriving from being connected and identified with groups, collectivities or other allies. Cultural capital may become embodied in the form of acquired identities, orientations or ‘dispositions’ of the mind and body. Alternatively, it may exist as cultural ‘goods’ that may be possessed or accessed, or in institutionalised forms such as educational qualifications. His separate concept of symbolic capital connects with previous notions of ideology, and concerns access to systems of representation and legitimation, which may be seen as essential in mobilising and reproducing other forms of capital in order to achieve and maintain power. The coming together of these various ‘capitals’ may be seen in the operation of notions, such as ‘respectability’, in dividing the ‘haves’ from the ‘have-nots’, and delineating gradations in between (Skeggs 1997). Respectability may be seen to depend on the possession of economic capital (income, consumption goods, property), cultural capital (taste, manners, clothes, cultural objects, qualifications), social capital (connections in ‘the right places’) and, perhaps most crucially, sym-


bolic capital. It is this that may be seen to legitimate the bracketing together of wealth and status, to establish the hierarchical signification of dress codes and etiquette, and to distinguish ‘high’ from ‘low’ forms of culture. Such more sophisticated understandings of forms of capital have been helpful in establishing that, theoretically as well as empirically, class is still an issue. At a local level, it may be acted out in differential abilities to mobilise personal dispositions, networks of support and validation, and systems of symbolic or institutional legitimation. However, the underpinning of these inequalities may be seen to depend on structural codes that delineate wider class positionings.

Theories of gender, age, sexuality and (dis)ability: extending concepts of patriarchy A second body of structural theory has developed, initially examining issues of gender inequality, whose primary concepts may also have the potential to open up perspectives on a range of other discriminations. It could be argued that each basis for discrimination requires to be theorised in its own right – and ultimately this may be the most appropriate way forward (see, for example, Jeffreys 1990; Bytheway 1995). However, there is a danger that this may lead to a multiplicity of disconnected analyses that may tend to confuse, rather than elucidate, the dynamics of power within the current social order. As Connel warns: ‘Any number of dimensions can be added… . Yet the more sophisticated the cross-classification becomes, the more firmly is the analysis embedded in a static logic of categories’ (1987: p. 59). Therefore, given the potential degree of interconnection, I have chosen to deal with sexism, heterosexism, ageism and disablism together, in order to explore the degree of linkage at a theoretical level. Feminist and gender studies have identified possible terms to describe the structural relations that may be seen to define categories such as ‘masculinity’, ‘femininity’, ‘heterosexuality’, and so on. Most straightforward in its definition is the term ‘androcracy’, or Rule-byMen (see Eisler 1987; Remy 1990). However, such a concept, describing a simple binary relation of male domination over women, has been little used in practice. Instead, the relations that define ‘male’ and ‘female’ have generally been seen to be more complex, with not all men, or all women, being situated in quite the same ways in relation to each category. More specific terms, such as patriarchy and fratriarchy, interconnected with notions of institutionalised heterosexuality, have been deployed to denote how certain male collectivities, organised in


particular ways, may be seen to have achieved historical positions of domination over subordinated ‘other’ categories. By invoking notions of age, status and sexual orientation as part of the overall picture, the metaphor of patriarchy, or Rule-of-the-Father, suggests a more complex set of social relations that have wider ramifications than just a binary analysis of all men subjugating all women (see Hearn 1987). Instead, it suggests power being vested in certain positions of ‘seniority’, which may be signified by attributes such as physical strength, potency, heterosexual orientation or position within a generational hierarchy. In this way, certain men as well as women may be located as subject to ‘the power of the father’ (Barrett 1980: p. 250) – those ‘whose situations are related in different ways to the overall logic of the subordination of women to men’, such as children, gay or disabled men (Carrigan et al. 1987: p. 86). Indeed, ‘any kind of powerlessness, or refusal to compete’ may tend to be defined in terms of effeminacy or ‘the imagery of homosexuality’ (ibid.). Alternatively, turning this around, it may be argued that it is the reiterative practice and privileging of heterosexual relations that continues to define hegemonic constructions of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ (Butler 1990; Wittig 1992). Further complexity may arise where, in circumscribed instances, individual women may take on positions of patriarchal power as if they were men – whether as heads of households, business leaders, monarchs or prime ministers – without fundamentally challenging patriarchal power relations. Within the feudal organisation of many monarchies, a woman has been able to ‘slot in’ to a position of full authority and status while she reigns as queen, while still presiding over a system in which sons would take precedence over daughters in determining inheritance. Similarly, within different political systems, women such as Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi have become prime minister without fundamentally challenging the patriarchal organisation within their respective countries or opening the doors for women in general to have access to membership of the ruling elite. It is a matter of some debate as to what extent modernity has been marked by a perpetuation of neo-feudalistic forms of patriarchal relations. Within the public sphere, as part of the ‘social contract’ of the Enlightenment, it is suggested that the mode of organisation among men may be seen to have shifted more radically towards a ‘fratriarchy’ that gave more power and opportunity to younger men, as the capitalist class superseded the aristocracy as the ruling group in class terms. Notions of some ‘natural’ authority, giving a special status of seniority


to men ‘of a certain age’, may be seen to have fitted well with the wider social structures and ideologies of feudalism. However, as more wealth was created through industrial expansion than was to be acquired through inheritance, the relative economic power base of older people declined. A parallel shift may be seen in the decline in respect for notions of wisdom and judgement associated with older age (Bytheway 1995). Thus, a transition in patriarchal relations may be seen to mark the birth of ageist discrimination against older people within modern societies – and one way of understanding ‘modernity’ would be to see it as representing ‘a change from a traditional (paternal) form of patriarchy to a new specifically modern (or fraternal) form: patriarchal civil society’ (Pateman 1989: p. 35). Such ‘modern’ patriarchy in the public sphere may be seen to have coexisted with continued variations of the Rule-of-the-Father within the domestic sphere. Sylvia Walby (1990) suggests that, in the early phases of modernity, ‘private patriarchy’ was the dominant mode of oppression, as women were effectively excluded from public life. However, later modernity saw some loosening of such barriers, accompanied by a simultaneous emergence of ‘public patriarchy’ under which women faced forms of segregation and subordination within economic and political life (for example, relegation to low-paid and part-time work). Thus, despite the apparent legislative enfranchisement of women in the West, ‘women’s formal admission to citizenship has been on different terms to those enjoyed by men’, due to factors such as unequal expectations in the domestic sphere, resulting in ‘at best partial and precarious inclusion into substantive citizenship’ (Lister 1997: pp. 71–2). The starting point of the ‘second wave’ of feminism, was a focus on the generalities of women’s experience of inequality and oppression. Although, initially, the concept of ‘patriarchy’ was seen, in somewhat monolithic terms, as a single, overarching structure of oppression, more sophisticated structural analyses sought to break this down into ‘a system of social structures and practices’, each of which may be seen to operate and change to some degree autonomously from one another (Walby 1990: p. 20). These comprised the different processes whereby women may be systematically disadvantaged in the public sphere of wage labour and political participation, and exploited, both economically and sexually, within the private sphere of domestic relations. These processes may comprise both material aspects, in terms of access to resources and victimisation within patterns of violence, and cultural aspects in terms of how gender may be represented. Although analyti-


cally separate, each of these processes of structuring social relations could be seen as interpenetrating and interdetermining of one another. Initial attempts to examine the economic operation of patriarchy involved developing a historical materialist analysis separate from, but potentially interlinking with, analyses of class: Patriarchy … is a structure … whereby property, the means of production and exchange values, is appropriated by men, and whereby this property relation informs household and family relations in such a way that men may appropriate the labour and the actual persons of women. (Kuhn and Wolpe 1978: p. 65) Defined in this way, patriarchy was seen to operate within a separate economic base, that of the ‘domestic’ mode of production. Women (and sometimes children or other household members) may be required to undertake whatever ‘housework’ or physical caring is needed within the family, without any right to material or other recognition for the services they provide (Finch and Groves 1983; Delphy 1984). Due to their continued involvement in the domestic mode of production, women may not find liberation from oppression within familial organisation just through their participation in the capitalist wage labour process. Instead, they may typically have to ‘juggle’ employment with their domestic ‘responsibilities’. Thus, not only may women face systematic discrimination in the wage labour market, but, on top of this, their work opportunities may be defined by what they can fit around their ‘obligations’ to husband and children (see Close and Collins 1985). Although, as Oakley (1974) showed, women have tended to work for longer hours overall than men (paid employment and housework), their disposable wealth or rights of consumption tend not to reflect this. While it has often been considered legitimate for men to retain a part of their wages for personal consumption, a woman’s earnings have often been considered as part of the ‘housekeeping’, to be spent on herself only when (or if) the rest of the family is properly provided for (see Barrett and McIntosh 1982; Land 1983). Within working-class families, there may often be differential rights in terms of the consumption of food, depending on gender and age, that are continually reproduced in day-to-day family rituals and are underpinned by an elaborate system of beliefs and sanctions (Charles and Kerr 1987). Much research on family poverty has shown how it is women who consistently go without, in order that men and children (usually in


that order) can have the greater share of whatever resources are to be distributed (Pahl 1983; Graham 1984; Brannen and Wilson 1987). For the wealthier social classes, it is argued that forms of patriarchal domestic organisation have tended to be governed by the rules of inheritance, ‘patrimonial transmission’, which ‘creates possessors and non-possessors within each family’ (Delphy 1984: p. 19). Thus, in addition to exploiting their domestic labour, patriarchy may also exercise ‘control of women’s fertility and sexuality in monogamous marriage’ as a means of guaranteeing the path of inheritance (McDonough and Harrison 1978: p. 40). In both feudal and modern societies, the ‘family’ has typically been organised around a set of ideological concepts, such as legitimacy, lineage and racial ‘purity’, that have enabled wealth and power to be passed from one generation of ‘white’ bourgeois men to another. Feminist and gender analyses have generated a wider perspective on what may constitute the material aspects of oppression – starting to theorise the structural domination of women also on the basis of relations of physical force and coercion. As with other aspects of modern ‘civil society’, this may be somewhat concealed and ‘behind the scenes’: We are not accustomed to associate patriarchy with force… . Customarily, we view its brutalities … as the product of individual deviance, confined to pathological or exceptional behaviour, and without general import. And yet … control in patriarchal society would be imperfect, even inoperable, unless it has the rule of force to rely upon, both in emergencies and as an ever-present instrument of intimidation. (Millett 1977: p. 43; see also Dobash and Dobash 1977) Thus, from a materialist perspective, patriarchy may be seen, not just as a mode of economic exploitation, but also as a systematic organisation of social relations on the basis of the potential for violence – both between men and women and between dominant and subordinated groups of men (Connel 1987). Such an approach links in with other perspectives within social theory which have identified the importance of physical coercion as a basis for social structuring: ‘The monopolisation of violence … plays no less a part as a source of power than the monopolisation of the means of production’ (Elias 1987: p. 230). Historical analysis reveals that men have achieved positions of domination through the organisation of military action or policing, and also through the oppressive use of physical strength in domestic or street violence. In many contexts, men’s competitive relations with


other men may be mediated by the potential for systematic violence (as in school bullying, or in the role of the police and armed forces). This may also be seen to underpin their structural domination of women and children (although, in these instances, such violence may more frequently be sexualised). Furthermore, men who suffer abuse and domination at the hands of other men may displace their aggression on to ‘softer’ targets such as female partners or children: Violent actions may be available as part of men’s repertoire at all times, but are most used at times of particular threat… . Frustration and anger at possible or potential loss of power in one sphere may be acted upon in another sphere of relationship, where there may be less resistance. (Hearn 1990: p. 70) Feminism was probably rather quicker than Marxism to appreciate the relative importance of discursive and ideological structures in terms of developing a fuller understanding of the operation of oppression. Patriarchal discourses may serve to legitimate (and make appear ‘natural’) the exploitation and intimidation of women. However, they may also be seen to contain points of tension and contradiction, giving space for continual possibilities of instability or resistance. Assumptions about the ‘natural-and-proper organisation’ of gendered social relations may be seen to be ‘subject to constant renegotiation’ (Harris 1985: p. 122). Women can be subjected to representations of their domestic roles and responsibilities: as caring, hard-working and loyal. Simultaneously, within patriarchal relations, women may also be defined, particularly through discourses such as pornography, as the objects of male sexual desire: as sensual, spontaneous, exciting and longing for ‘it’ (where ‘it’ is the satisfaction of a masculine rather than any feminine mode of sexuality). This results in the split and conflicting construction of ‘femininity’ in relation to the twin images of women as, on the one hand, the sexual property of men and, on the other, the chaste mothers of their children. The madonna/whore dichotomy runs through western patriarchal culture as the means whereby men have sought to ensure both the sanctity and inheritance of their families and their extra-familial sexual pleasure. (Barrett 1980: p. 45) However, it is not just the more extreme forms of representation that may be seen as crucial in the subordination of women. Everyday media images may be shown to support and reproduce


codes of representation of how women should see themselves and be seen by men as ‘feminine’ – in terms of the significations of dress (dressing for, and in relation to, a masculine ‘gaze’), location (representing women within the confines of conventional zones such as the ‘ideal home’), activity (privileging the representation of women undertaking conventionally female tasks), and so on (see, for example, Coward 1978). There is a danger that some of the clarity (and outrage) to be found in these feminist analyses has been lost in subsequent more complex formulations. Poststructuralists have criticised such theories as being too deterministic, casting women in the role of perpetual victims, helpless to negotiate and achieve power for themselves – and also for masking the degree to which women may act oppressively towards other women (Aziz 1993). There has been a rejection of the unitary category ‘women’ as reinforcing aspects of the same biological essentialism that has been used to justify women’s subordination over the years. Through its dominant articulation by relatively privileged groups of women living in the Western world, feminism has been seen as repressive of the diversity of ‘minority’ experiences: ‘The description of what we have in common “as women” has almost always been a description of white, middle-class women’ (Spelman 1988: p. 4; see also Bhavani 1993; Lovell 1996). Subsequent feminisms have sought to emphasise a more complex and fractured picture of women’s experience across class, culture and geography, sexual orientation, age and (dis)ability. Nevertheless, there is a feeling that this process of reaction may have gone too far: ‘It is not necessary to abandon categories such as women … in order to recognise that they are internally differentiated’ (Maynard 1994: p. 22). Within modernism, notions of ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’, whether as part of ‘common sense’ or within the academic literature, have tended to take for granted certain assumptions about the appropriateness, inevitability and biological basis for differentiating social roles. A major achievement of second-wave feminism was to decouple social constructions of gender from biological notions of sex. Following on from this, once the supposedly ‘natural’ basis for defining ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ started to become deconstructed, the way was opened for other sets of stereotypes to be deconstructed as oppressive and anything but inevitable. Through the developing genre of Queer Studies, gay and lesbian people have started to probe beneath the discriminatory attitudes and practices that privileged heterosexual over homosexual relationships,


characterising the former as ‘normal’ and the latter as a ‘sin against nature’. Women who choose not to make themselves sexually available to men may face particular experiences of oppression. By patriarchal definition, women must always be ready to subject themselves as sexual objects for men (inside or outside marriage), so the very possibility of lesbian orientation may be denied, or it may be constructed as ‘deviant’, a joke or as a subject for male sexual gratification (Barrett 1980). Male homosexuality would seem to have posed a more direct threat to many modern forms of patriarchy – as something that could not just be ignored or marginalised – and became subject to medical regimes of definition and ‘treatment’, and legal proscription (Foucault 1981; Weeks 1990; 1991). Perhaps the most bizarre extension of the dualistic separation of ‘normal’ and ‘against nature’ may be seen in the systematic social degradation of people with physical impairments or learning difficulties; in their construction as a category of difference that is somehow painful or disturbing to behold, and one that requires subordination within the dominant order of patriarchal relations. It is seen as profoundly disruptive to dominant constructions of both ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ (Campling 1981; Meekosha 1998), and to the modernist ‘valorisation of the notion of autonomy from others in Western society’ (Corker and French 1999a: p. 5). It is no coincidence that, in order to occupy the patriarchal position of authority as US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a wheelchair user, had to be ‘packaged’ as if he were able bodied, and was only to be photographed and presented to the public at large from the waist up, often seated behind the grandeur of the presidential desk. Through the articulation of the social model by disability movements, people have argued that their greatest experiences of restriction and distress are not due to anything inherent in their biology, but to the stigmatising and exclusionary practices that determine how they are treated by dominant able-bodied groups within the current social order (Oliver 1996). The attitudes and practices both of the community in general and of professional services have tended to promote systematic social exclusion through the establishment of segregated services and by failing to open access to mainstream facilities. People may be dehumanised as a problem or a ‘burden’ on those who are more able, or as a ‘tragedy’ requiring endless sympathy, or they may be patronised by able-bodied people talking over them and treating them as if they were children unable to indicate preferences or make decisions (Corker and French 1999b).


Just as forms of sexist, disablist and heterosexist oppression have been legitimated by spurious recourse to biology, so too have systematic forms of discrimination against children and older people. In this way, it may come to be seen as ‘natural’ for people of certain chronological ages to be constructed as inherently ‘stupid’, incapable and of lesser importance (Bytheway 1995). It may also be seen as ‘natural’ to accord children an almost pre-human or animal-like status, legitimating systematic forms of physical or verbal assault as part of their disciplining or ‘training’ (Miller 1983). Research evidence suggests that forms of physical punishment are in most widespread use in relation to young and very young children – those who are least able to defend themselves or articulate any effective form of protest (see Hotaling et al. 1988). Just as nineteenth-century English law used the commonsense ‘rule of thumb’ to judge as excessive only those wife-beatings where the husband used a stick of a greater diameter than his thumb, so the current English legal system maintains an arbitrary distinction between ‘normal’ and ‘abusive’ use of force against children – thereby sanctioning the continued subordination of younger people by means of the systematic deployment of physical violence.

Theories of imperialism, colonialism and racism A third body of structural theory has addressed how, as part of the modernist project, ‘white’ westerners have systematically secured their domination over other peoples, both those denied equality within the West because of their ‘race’ or ethnicity, and those living elsewhere who, under the social relations of colonialism, have been subjected within unequal economic, social and cultural relationships. As was discussed earlier, the transition to modernity involved fundamental shifts in the ways in which the principal western powers secured and organised their domination over other peoples. This coincided with new conceptions of nationhood. For the first time, concepts of ‘race’ (defined in terms of ethnic descent) emerged as a crucial component of the reciprocal definitions of ‘us’ – who were to belong to and constitute the nation-state – and ‘them’ – who were to be excluded and potentially exploited as ‘other’. Rather than see racist exclusion as some incidental ‘blip’ that was ‘antithetical to the universalist aspirations inherent in modernity’ (Van Loon 1997: p. 158), such patterns of exclusion and exploitation may be seen as central to the construction of modern prosperity and the establishment of social privilege within this new order of society (Miles 1989).


Just as women were excluded from entry into the Enlightenment social contract because they were deemed incapable of full rationality, so too were non-Europeans and colonised European peoples, such as the Irish. This exclusion was organised on the basis of unexamined constructions of ‘race’ and ancestry that were produced and reproduced as ‘common sense’ in everyday discourse, and underpinned by the writings of modernist intellectuals. For example, Kant was able to propose that ‘the reason for assuming the Negroes and the Whites to be fundamental races is self-evident’ (1950: p. 19), without even having to provide any evidence or argument in support of such a proposition. Similarly, for Hegel, the supposed ‘irrationality’ of the ‘African character’ placed African people beyond the pale of modernist citizenship: The peculiarly African character is difficult to comprehend, for the very reason that in reference to it, we must give up the principle that naturally accompanies all our ideas – the category of universality. (1900: p. 93) Although such differences were constructed as ‘natural’, ‘the otherness of colonised persons was neither inherent nor stable; his or her difference had to be defined and maintained’ (Stoler and Cooper 1997: p. 7). Furthermore, concepts of ‘difference’ were to be inextricably linked with an understanding that difference denoted ‘inferiority’. Thus, despite the universalist rhetoric of modernity, its ‘new political codes’ may be seen to have been ‘endowed … with a deadly exclusionary force’ (Gilroy 1999: p. 187). As with patriarchy, ideological assumptions around ‘difference’ and ‘inferiority’ were also underpinned by an appeal to a spuriously scientific biological essentialism that claimed to render the difference ‘natural’ and inevitable. Difference could be specified in terms of geography, culture, ethnicity or ‘race’ – but each of these modernist categories requires to be deconstructed to reveal their ongoing social constitution through processes of oppression and resistance. As part of the project of biological taxonomy undertaken by Linnaeus, Cuvier and others, a hierarchical system of ‘racial’ classification was established which offered a gradation from animallike ‘savages’ (African peoples) to superior White/Aryan racial types who alone were seen as capable of the sophisticated sensibilities that characterised ‘civilised’ Europeans. Although the basis for the scientific categorisation of ‘race’ has been systematically discredited (see Banton and Harwood 1975), it still leaves a legacy which underpins notions of essential superiority within the everyday discourses of ‘white’ people – and occasionally resurfaces


in more academic texts, such as The Bell-Curve (Herrnstein and Murray 1994). However, while ‘race’ as a biological construct has a dubious reality, ‘race’ as an ideological concept, and racism as an oppressive and exclusionary practice, may be seen to be all too real (Husband 1986). Thus, as Tariq Modood (1992) argues, it is much more helpful to redefine the term ‘race’ as a political category that signifies a ‘mode of oppression’, in a similar way as does the concept of ‘class’. Within modernity, imperialist domination has comprised various modes of economic exploitation, both internally through structures of discrimination, and also externally through the colonial and postcolonial domination of Third World economies by the West. Materialist perspectives have opened up an analysis of issues such as the exploitation of the labour of subordinated ‘races’ through practices such as slavery, in which ‘the slave system defined Black people as chattel’ (Davis 1982: p. 5). Not only was the value of their labour power appropriated, but their very persons were subject to being bought and sold in the marketplace. Legal and military means were employed to underpin the slavemasters’ domination. However, at a more local level, power was exercised through the systematic use of violence, through routine physical abuse and ‘the virtual institutionalisation of rape’ (ibid.: p. 175). Intersecting with forms of material oppression were structures of ideological domination, legitimation and resistance. Within classical civilisations, slavery had never been linked to any ‘racial’ identification – only the misfortune to be conquered by a militarily superior power (Miles 1989). However, early modern slavery, which was driven by opportunities for rapid economic expansion in the New World, required legitimation of its dehumanising practices through a new and ‘distinct regime of truths’ which presented ‘race’ ‘as a permanent, inevitable and extra-historical principle of differentiation’ (Gilroy 1999: p. 185). Slavery fitted uneasily with the overall ethos of modernity: its stark use of brute force and coercion undermined the appearances of fairness and consent which characterised its preferred forms of oppression and exploitation. Only an extreme distortion of biological ‘science’ could hope to provide a sufficient legitimation for such an inherently barbaric (but economically lucrative) practice as slavery – one that would effectively separate off this reality from corrupting the belief in a rational social order that underpinned other aspects of the new social order of the Enlightenment (see Young 1994). As living with such contradiction threatened to undermine the project of modernity, the dominant mode of imperialism switched to more subtle forms of material exploitation: colonialism, postcolonialism and


racism. Colonialism involved the systematic exploitation of the material and human resources of non-western peoples as a subjugated nation under the direct political administration of a western power (but often coopting a local administrative class to undertake much of the work required in maintaining this control). Postcolonialism (or postcoloniality) involves nominal political independence, but within a global economy that dictates a continuation of unequal terms of trade, underpinned by a variety of mechanisms of western control from bank lending to military ‘protection’. (For a discussion of the various meanings of the term ‘postcolonialism’, see Dirlik 1994; Rattansi 1997). Racism within the West subjects ‘black’ or ethnic minority peoples to systematic forms of economic exclusion and exploitation through discrimination in access to employment, housing, education and other forms of opportunity. Intersecting with these new economic and political forms came new variants of racial and cultural ideologies that constructed ‘an irrevocable otherness’ for non-western peoples (Gilroy 1999: p. 185). There was a significant shift from a sole reliance on ‘scientific’ racism, to the promulgation of new and more subtle discourses of cultural superiority. For example, faced with the reality of complex and sophisticated eastern civilisations, imperialist discourses sought to redefine these as of unequal status: Oriental cultures were compartmentalised as ‘exotic’ and strange (although dangerously seductive), and eastern people became seen as wily and untrustworthy (Said 1978). Western imperialist rulers were able to justify their presence on the basis that even ‘civilised’ non-Europeans were incapable of modernist rationality and hence had to be subordinated and excluded from entry into the post-Enlightenment social contract: The mind of the Oriental … like his picturesque streets, is eminently wanting in symmetry. His reasoning is of the most slipshod description … and wanting in lucidity. He will probably contradict himself half-a-dozen times before he has finished his story. (Lord Cromer 1908, cited in Said 1978: p. 38) Thus empire was represented as being to the benefit of those colonised, who were defined as being inherently morally, culturally and intellectually backward or ‘primitive’, and who would therefore be in perpetual need of western leadership in maintaining at least a superficial veneer of ‘civilisation’ and economic prosperity: That the people of a culture should view themselves as culturally superior is certainly common… . But not so common is the feature contained in Western cultural thinking, that the superior should


control the inferior. It is this kind of thinking, which emphasises the value placed on control, that produces a missionary imperialism… . Western control over non-Western peoples is therefore considered morally defensible (Hodge et al. 1975: p. 3) Racism, as a structure for the subordination of ethnic minorities within the West, may be seen to be linked to further revisions and shifts in ideologies. More recently, overt expressions of ‘white’ supremacy or superiority have become displaced by what Barker (1981) has termed ‘the new racism’, which emphasises racial difference and the psychological and social stresses wrought upon the ‘host’ (‘white’) community, in terms of identity and culture, by the entry of ‘black’ outsiders into their midst. Implicit within this discourse is the notion that ‘white’ society is ‘normal’ and non-‘white’ cultures are ‘different’ and therefore problematic – thereby legitimating a variety of more subtle modes of oppression and exclusion: Ethnic hegemony involves … a distinct set of strategies whereby a particular power elite lays claim to represent an ethnic majority in such a way as to impose their own norms of language and culture on the rest of society as ideals or models to which all should aspire. (Cohen and Bains 1988: p. 26) To those on the receiving end of these colonial, postcolonial and racist discourses, the implications may be devastating. Not only are they placed in the position of an inferior ‘other’, but the discourses, and the colonial or racist languages within which they are inscribed, may be so pervasive that they may find themselves with little possibility for articulating their experience of oppression or assert any different identities (hooks 1992). Perhaps even more insidiously, codes of looking and seeing are also unequally structured, so that the ‘white gaze’ subjects ‘black’ people to an unremitting interrogation, while ‘black’ people have no reciprocal right to interrogate ‘whiteness’, since this is to be seen as ‘normal’ and unproblematic: In white supremacist society, white people can ‘safely’ imagine that they are invisible to black people since the power they have historically asserted, and even now collectively assert over black people, accorded them the right to control the black gaze. (hooks 1992: p. 168) ‘Black’ people may be placed in situations where they either have continually to deny their difference in order to fit in with the ‘white’ way


of seeing things, or have justify every detail of difference in the face of hostile and uncomprehending ‘white’ perspectives that often seem to lack any potential or willingness to empathise with the position of the ‘other’. Thus, through developing an analysis of the structures of western materialist and ideological domination over other peoples, it becomes possible to disconnect the concept of ‘race’ from any biologically based notions of difference or inferiority, and to see it instead as a category that signifies a mode of oppression. Just as class analyses have moved on from a simplistic binary opposition of ‘ruling’ and ‘working’ classes to explore the complex politics involving ‘class fractions’, so too there has emerged a need to move beyond the simplicity of the categories ‘white’ and ‘black’ to more sophisticated notions of ‘ethnicities’. An ethnicity may be understood as how people choose to identify themselves in terms of history, tradition, values, community and culture (Modood 1992). However, just as with the concept of ‘race’, ethnicity may used to signify some form of ‘essential’ difference that then may be used to legitimate processes of exclusion or inferiorisation of the ‘other’. Thus, any definition of an ethnicity may also be seen to be an intrinsically political category, historically constructed out of power struggles and alliances, and the ongoing division of ‘the world into “us” and “them”’ (Yuval-Davis 1994: p. 182). More recently there has been a tendency to subsume and secrete issues of ‘race’ and racism within postmodern discourses of ‘ethnic diversity’ and ‘multi-culturalism’, leading to the substitution of analyses of difference rather than inequality. This has rendered more problematic the political use of the term ‘black’ by groups subjected to experiences of racism, in the face of an emphasis on the particularities of ‘ethnic’ identity, culture and economic or educational opportunity – and perhaps suggests the need for new signifiers that can embrace political commonalities in experience, while no longer playing to imperialist discourses that may continue to merge and stereotype the different identities and experiences of those oppressed. ‘White’ people, perhaps somewhat threatened by owning up to the complicity in racist oppression that would be the focus of any analysis of ‘white’ identity or experience, may have too eagerly sought refuge in the complexity and dispersal of ‘white ethnicities’.

Integrating structural theories It has been a matter of some debate how the three sets of oppressive structures discussed above may constitute ‘interlocking categories of experience’ (Andersen and Hill Collins 1992: p. xii). Each experience of


oppression may suggest different definitions of who constitutes a ruling group and an oppressed group. In each case, a ruling group may seek to incorporate a different set of ‘allies’ in securing the oppression of subordinated groups. While it seems highly significant that most capitalists are ‘white’ and male (although not exclusively so), nevertheless working-class men may also be seen to act oppressively to women, and ‘white’ women may be in an oppressive position with respect to ‘black’ women. Such contradictions have led to fruitless debates among the theorists of different oppressed groups as to whether one mode of oppression is, in some way, more fundamental than any other (see, for example, Sargent 1981; Meulenbelt et al. 1984; Chow et al. 1996). I would see it as more productive to pursue (and, if necessary, extend) a ‘triple jeopardy’ analysis, in which the power relations of the social formation are understood in terms of ‘the simultaneous oppression of patriarchy, class and race’ (Carby 1982). The specific dynamics of each set of struggles may be seen to be, to some extent, autonomous from one another – but many people may find themselves subject to more than one mode of oppression. The impact is not simply additive. Sometimes the operation of different modes of oppression may act in contradictory ways, opening up unexpected possibilities for manoeuvrability and effective resistance. Alternatively, the impact of different aspects of oppression may compound one another, creating more extreme forms of social exclusion (see West and Fenstermaker 1996). It may be seen that, at various historical instances, changes in the forms of patriarchal and class oppression have given rise to particular contradictions. For example, in the early stages of the industrial revolution, the opportunities for women and children to sell their labour power individually to the factory owners, while satisfying the capitalists’ desire for plentiful cheap labour, undermined traditional aspects of patriarchal organisation in which the ‘man of the house’ had directly controlled the labour of his whole family unit. In the event, this tendency was countered, and patriarchy reasserted, through a variety of means, such as protective legislation regulating the employment of women and children, and the discourse of the ‘family wage’ which constituted the man as the principal ‘breadwinner’ (see Barrett 1980). Such moves, however, effectively reduced the possibilities for the capitalist exploitation of a larger workforce. Some theoretical work on imperialism and racism has interlinked this with an understanding of class or gender oppression (for example, Alexander 1987; Miles 1989). Sometimes these separate modes of oppression acted so as to reinforce one another, but at other times they


produced contradictions, as between the logic of global capitalism and particular modes of colonialist domination, when ‘the attempt to rule on the basis of native custom clashed with the process of domination that sought to incorporate the other into the same socio-economic sphere’ (Chan 2000: p. 381). Similarly, contradictions between the interests of racism and of patriarchy may be seen to have arisen in relation to the organisation of slavery: Since women, no less than men, were viewed as profitable labourunits, they might as well be genderless as far as the slave-holders were concerned… . Judged by the evolving nineteenth century ideology of femininity, which emphasised women’s roles as nurturing mothers and gentle companions and housekeepers for their husbands, Black women were practical anomalies. (Davis 1982: p. 5) Thus the material exploitation of ‘black’ women as slave labour prevented their being subjugated as women to ‘black’ men in terms of any ideology of femininity (and this potentially threatened to undermine the subjugation of all women in this way).

Structural theory and social activism Structural theories of social divisions have informed many aspects of practice, both political and social. Broadly speaking, the dominant modes of radical politics in the 1960s were informed by analyses based on class and a focus on mobilising groups of working-class people – workforces or local communities – in forms of mass action: strikes, protests, single-issue campaigns, and so on. However, following a number of significant ‘watershed’ defeats, such as the failure of the Paris uprisings of 1968 and the collapse of the British miners’ strike in 1984, the traditional left-wing radical consensus began to dissolve. In parallel with this, new radical political alignments began to emerge, representing the interests of those who had found that their particular experiences of structural discrimination and oppression were not being addressed, or being given sufficient significance in their own right, within the dominant socialist agenda. Women, black people, disabled people, lesbians, gay men and other subordinated groups began to articulate their own particular ‘identity’ politics, not only raising and prioritising different issues, but also pioneering new forms of organisation and action. The Women’s Movement shifted the focus from large-scale mass action to more intimate spheres, under its historic slogan that ‘the per-


sonal is political’. Women sought to disentangle their experiences of oppression within the context of small-scale consciousness-raising or support groups, and to use this as a basis for renegotiating attitudes and practices, and their roles and relationships, within domestic, workplace and other settings. ‘Black’ and ‘white’ activists formed alliances to fight together against racism. Alongside this, a political focus for many ‘black’ groups was struggles around redefining and reasserting aspects of cultural and ethnic identity. Pride in asserting alternative identities and cultures also formed a major part in the political activities of lesbian and gay people – particularly through festivals and cultural events. For disabled people, struggles have involved reclaiming their bodies and minds from medical control and definition – and hence from all of the various processes of social inferiorisation and social exclusion, of being constructed as a ‘problem’ or a ‘tragedy’, that follow on from being classified as somehow less than ‘normal’ (Oliver 1996). Shifts in the dominant directions of political action, and also in the theoretical sophistication of structural analyses, may be seen as setting the contexts for the various forms of professional practice that have been influenced by structural perspectives. Structural theory has been influential in the development of various strands of ‘radical’ professional practice in which workers have sought to use a professional role (social work, community work, nursing) in order to address collective issues of inequality, disadvantage and social exclusion. Such practice may be seen to have close links with other traditions of political and economic activism, such as working within pressure groups, political parties or trade unions (see, for example, Joyce et al. 1988). Informed by analyses of class, ‘race’ or gender relations – or, more recently, by attempts to integrate analyses of multiple dimensions of oppression – structural practice targets power structures external to the person: Since a power relations perspective assumes conflict in social relations based on inequality, then this framework proposes a mode of intervention to work with power, conflict and change, the overall objective of which is to transform power relations (McNay 1992: p. 58; see also Mullaly 1993) While some approaches have focused more on ideological issues, others have been underpinned by a predominantly materialist analysis, involving ‘an examination of the way in which power and economic resources are distributed, the characteristics of that distribution, the


interests it serves and the part played by welfare services in the processes of distribution’ (Davis 1991: p. 67). Particularly in the 1970s, a key location for structural practice was in community activism which sought to address powerlessness experienced by working-class and other disadvantaged sections of society (Curno 1978). This approach encouraged people to make links with others and collectively take action to address the oppressions or exclusions that they experienced in common (Craig et al. 1982; Taylor and Roberts 1985; Popple 1995). It could entail identifying local or sectional interests, and pursuing ‘single-issue campaigns’, around which participants may unite in common purpose, such as better housing or environmental conditions. However, such approaches were criticised for failing to engage specifically with race or gender issues (Hanmer and Rose 1980; Thorpe and Petruchenia 1985). Responding to such critiques, the principles of community activism were extended to working with women (Dominelli 1990; 1995), and people from black and minority ethnic communities (Ohri et al. 1982). In this way, the agenda widened to include issues such as more appropriate healthcare choices for women, or more effective protection against sexual or racial violence. In such activist approaches, the concept of community was developed within an adversarial frame of reference: geographical communities and social divisions were used as a basis for organising campaigning units against the state, the local authority, capitalist, patriarchal or racist interests. This radical discourse has stood in contradiction to the more liberal discourses of ‘community development’, in which goals have been specified in terms of social inclusion or economic and social regeneration – and where intervention has involved forming working alliances with a range of potential ‘stakeholders’ including statutory services and business interests. Sharing many of the same values and orientations, are structural approaches to working with individuals, families and groups, building on the tradition of ‘radical’ social work (Bailey and Brake 1975; Langan and Lee 1989; Moreau 1990). As with community work, there has been a gradual shift from an initial emphasis on class (Corrigan and Leonard 1978), to separate considerations of gender (Brook and Davis 1985; Dominelli and McLeod 1989) and ‘race’ (Dominelli 1988), and finally to more integrated perspectives addressing multiple and interlocking systems of oppression. Individually and collectively, people may be enabled to see their difficulties, not as due to some individual fault or pathology, but as located within local or structural dynamics of dis-


crimination or exploitation (Coates and McKay 1995). A structural approach offers an alternative to forms of modernist practice that work towards restoring social conformity and participation. Instead, it seeks to make connection between the personal and the political: Rather than looking within the individual or within one’s family, or within one’s subculture for the source of distress, the way in which the larger social order perpetrates and perpetuates people’s problems would be identified and communicated to the person or group experiencing the distress… . [This would] put their situation into its proper perspective (i.e. normalisation) thus reducing some of the internalised guilt and blame (i.e. internalised oppression) that many people experience as part of their troubled situations. (Mullaly 1993: pp. 141, 155) Such approaches have been influential in establishing mental health and therapy services for women or ‘black’ people that are explicitly informed by feminist or anti-racist perspectives (Kareem 1988; Francis et al. 1989; Fedele and Harrington 1990; Mills 1996). Different approaches to practice may focus on professionals intervening directly on behalf of oppressed groups with State or other bodies (for example, in advocacy and welfare rights work), or on developing the capacity of people from marginalised groups to undertake their struggles more effectively on their own behalf. The latter approach may be characterised by an understanding of social structures and an emphasis on networking, collaboration and solidarity among those who are disadvantaged (Griffin 1995; Arshad 1996). Enabling people to come together around shared experiences of oppression or powerlessness may involve the use of groupwork skills in the facilitation of support, ‘self-help’ or action groups (Mullender and Ward 1991; Adams 1996). Common to these various strategies for intervention tends to be ‘an adversarial view of practice which simultaneously seeks to alleviate and transform the conditions in which oppressed clients find themselves’ (Davis 1991: p. 71). Many structural approaches have tended to be limited by their focus on adversarial activities in relation to particular binaries of struggle, such as class or gender. These have tended to become less influential and be replaced by critical approaches informed by poststructuralist ideas of much more complex forms of political struggle and resistance against domination – where social change may be seen to come about through a myriad of intersecting small-scale campaigns and renegotiation of practices, discourses and personal relationships (Healy 2000).


Furthermore, as will be discussed in the following chapters, poststructural ideas around the construction of personal identity have profoundly influenced understandings of processes of, and resistance to, the transformation of social structures at a ‘micro’ as well as a ‘macro’ level. While it is perhaps easy to criticise some structural approaches for their lack of sophistication, and their failure to recognise the importance of difference within as well as between social groupings, it is also important not to lose the power and dynamism of their straightforward outrage at collective inequalities and injustices: an awareness of structural issues must remain a vital component of any truly emancipatory social practice.

4 What’s the Story? Poststructuralism, Discourse and Narrative

Partly as a reaction against an overemphasis on economic relations, and partly out of a desire to deconstruct monolithic categories, such as class, ‘race’ or gender, in order to understand the specificity of people’s experience, a new body of critical theory arose from the 1970s onwards which moved increasingly away from the structural approaches discussed in the previous chapter. Building on the work of later critical structuralists, and on the very different traditions of psychoanalysis and linguistic structuralism, it started to explore the operation and contestation of power within the realms of ideology, culture, discourse and language. It was argued that this was a level of social relations that needed to be theorised in its own right – not just as a reflection of processes of material exploitation. This chapter charts these developments, which have come to define the terrain of poststructuralism, with its particular focus on questions of representation. Just as structural approaches set out to expose macro-scale conflicts and inequalities beneath the surfaces of modernity, theorists such as Derrida and Foucault have sought to deconstruct the more local power relations that may be enacted within everyday discourses and narratives. These perspectives may be useful in deconstructing how bodies of ‘knowledge’ may interlink with the operation of power. They may also provide a basis for a practice that uses the principles of deconstruction to work with power relations embedded within particular narratives that may be influential in defining people’s situations.

Ideology and culture Within modernism, the concept of ideology has conventionally been understood ‘as the opposite of science or reason’ (Larrain 1994: p. 10). A similar dichotomy between ideology and reason – with the former 65


being seen as backward-looking and regressive, and the latter as forward-looking and emancipatory – may be seen to be mirrored in early Marxist tendencies to conflate ideology with the notion of ‘false consciousness’. Here, ideology appears as an organised ‘smokescreen’ that can effectively blind people to the material realities of their situation. It was seen that such a dishonest system of representation could potentially be swept away by historical materialist academic practice which would expose the realities of people’s economic exploitation and hence pave the way for a ‘true’ and potentially revolutionary class consciousness. This somewhat superficial vision of the processes of ideology presumed that the ‘truth’ (about material realities) would somehow, of itself, have the power to outwit and supplant the ‘false’ – and the real struggle would then be waged for control over the means of production. Subsequent theorists, building on the work of Gramsci and Althusser, moved the discussion beyond such a naïve acceptance of the emancipatory potential of rationalism and science. Constructions of rationality and knowledge were seen to have been embedded within modernist social relations, not as somehow separate from it. This suggests a conceptual shift from a political struggle against ideology to one conducted within ideology. In this way, ideology becomes characterised in a wider and more neutral sense – as the ‘level’ of social relations that comprises particular forms of knowledge, thought and ‘common-sense’ understandings. However, as with material relations, it may be far from a ‘level playing field’, containing its own mechanisms for domination and subordination: Conceiving of ideology as a level of struggle rather than an imposed ‘false consciousness’ does not imply that all ideas or representations are equally possible. Just as material relations may contain profound structural inequalities based on class position – as in the ‘bargaining’ around wage labour – so too may the field of ideology be similarly structured. (Poulantzas 1973: p. 223) Dominance at the level of ideology may be achieved through the control of strategic ‘sites’ of representation, thereby securing an internally consistent and self-reinforcing ‘spin’ on how social relations may be viewed. This control of ideological relations is termed ‘hegemony’, a form of organisation which ‘welds together a historical bloc around a number of basic articulatory principles’ (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: p. 67). However, such control may never be complete: subordinated

Poststructuralism, Discourse and Narrative 67

ideas and representations may, at times, come together to constitute a political force, and exploit contradictions or weaknesses in the dominant ideological ‘line’. In this way, it may be seen that elements of ideology may be used either ‘to legitimate or oppose power and dominance’ (Van Dijk 1998: p. 5). This understanding of ideology may be seen to grant it a degree of independence from material relations – what goes on at this level is not simply determined by the structural patterning of material relations, although, potentially, positions reached in struggles at one level may have an impact on what may be going on at another. From the discussions in the previous chapter, it may be seen how the field of ideology may be seen to be structured not just around economic but also cultural forms of capital accumulation, and also around systems of patriarchal and imperialist domination. Such structures singly and in combination may be riven with contradiction and offering particular opportunities for counter-strategies of resistance and assertion. A growing interest in the specificities of struggle at this level of social relations led to a final break with Althusser’s notion of the material being determinant ‘in the last instance’, and a relocation of analysis within wider discussion of the role of culture as an arena in which power relations could be enacted (CCCS 1978). Whereas the term ideology may denote a relatively narrow arena of systems of ideas and modes of representation, the term culture may be used to include wider ensembles of social relations, practices and identities, each with their own histories, ‘articulating principles’, dynamics of dissent and transformation, and interactions with other cultural formations. At a ‘macro’ scale, cultures may be structured around class, ‘race’ or ethnicities, gender, sexual orientation, age group and so on. Alongside this, and to some extent mediated by such wider structuring principles, distinctive cultures may emerge at much more local scales – within families, streets, peer-groups and communities. In this way, it is probably most helpful to see ideology as one aspect of a cultural level of social relations. The emergence of ‘post-’ theories has been characterised as a ‘cultural turn’ – a fundamental shift of emphasis to the processes and products of signification. In one sense, culture encompasses the range of representations between high art and vernacular or popular idioms. In another it comprises ‘bundles’ of everyday practices, narratives, symbolic connections and representational cues which provide the reference points for lived experience within particular ethnic, religious, local, class, sexual or other identifications – cultures which may reflect


elements both of colonisation by dominant groups and of collective resistance and self-identification (see, for example, Singh 1992). In order to construct an analysis, cultural theorists have sought to focus down on various ‘building blocks’, such as discourses, narratives, languages and practices, out of which a particular cultural edifice may be constructed. As structural accounts were seen as presenting too simplistic an image of consistency and internal coherence, with the emergence of ideas neatly fitting in with the overall dynamics of capitalism, imperialism or patriarchy, poststructural accounts have tended to shift the analysis to more local elements of culture operating, to some degree, independently of one another. These smaller ‘units’ of culture have been conceptualised as discourses. Just as there have been somewhat fruitless battles to argue for the primacy of one mode of oppression over another, there have been similar factional disagreements as to whether the cultural should take priority over the material, or the local over the structural. Ultimately, as long as issues of power and inequality remain central to the analysis, I would see no fundamental problems pursuing a ‘both/and’ rather than an ‘either/or’ approach. However, for analyses to mesh, there needs to be a degree of ontological consistency between them. Analyses must not be allowed to collapse into either polarity of the objective/subjective dualism. This is essential if oppression and other operations of power are to be understood as real – whether at cultural or material levels of social relations, or at personal, local or structural scales. In any critical approach, there would need to be a focus on the dynamics of social relations and an ongoing distrust of any suppositions about ‘natural’ or ‘essential’ human qualities. However, on this basis of these caveats, it may be possible to move towards integrating understandings of how more overarching structures of ideas and practices may interpenetrate with analyses of more local and particular instances. Larger-scale patterns may potentially be understood as aggregations and contingencies between processes operating at more local scales; and the local operation of power may be seen as taking place only within wider contexts of power relations.

Discourse and narrative Although employed somewhat differently by particular theorists, the term discourse is generally used to denote not just a specific speech act or text, but systems of cultural practices, symbolic representations, knowledges and ‘common-sense’ that may structure what can be said (or done) and by whom, within specific contexts of social interaction.


Discourses may construct certain ways of thinking or seeing as right and others as wrong, vest authority in the hands of ‘experts’, or force certain groups to take on specific positions of subordination if they are to participate at all in social interaction. Discourses may be seen to locate the potential identities and speaking positions of subjects, ‘form the objects of which they speak, and conceal their role in doing so’ (Lowe 1999: p. 78). A discourse may comprise a body of related writings or conversations that construct a particular mode of understanding – for example, the strictures around correct discipline to be found in late nineteenthcentury childcare manuals (see Miller 1983). It may comprise non-linguistic forms, such as the representation of women in Pre-Raphaelite art, or the symbolisation of the state and the party within Soviet architecture. It may also comprise sets of practices that signify certain meanings, for example, the rituals around medical consultations which construct doctor as expert and patient as passive recipient. All such discourses have the potential to situate people in particular (power) relationships to one another, or to specific social institutions or apparatuses. The capacity of a discourse to influence and determine social relationships is seen to reside within the very structuring of the languages or symbol-systems in which it is inscribed. By focusing on the internal operation of linguistic structures, discourse theory may be seen to provide the basis for a critical theory of the processes of ideology and culture. In turn, one of the building blocks of discourse may be seen to be the various narratives, the ‘stories’ by which individual or collective experience may be organised in specific ways. A narrative can ascribe certain meanings to present experience or events, either ‘laterally’, connecting with (or differentiating from) other contemporary happenings, or ‘temporally’, perhaps connecting with a specific reading of past events or charting a direction for the future (if the story leads to an ‘ending’). Meanings are not seen as being fixed by any intrinsic essence, but only emerge when they are ‘storied’, and placed within specific contexts. Narratives may be seen to be constitutive of experience – both opening up and closing down certain possibilities for perception, action and making ‘sense’ – although any process of suppression or exclusion may be an uneasy and fragile one: Narrative structures organise and give meaning to experience, but there are always feelings and lived experience not fully encompassed by the dominant story. (Bruner 1986: p. 143)


At a collective level, modernity has been underpinned by a multiplicity of narratives, located in science, literature and popular culture, which have constructed western bourgeois society as ‘the best of all possible worlds’ and contrasted this both, temporally, to the ‘Dark Ages’ of the European past and, laterally, to the alleged primitiveness or deviousness of non-western ‘others’. An even more prosperous future was to be guaranteed by strict adherence to the principles of instrumental rationality. However, particular narratives may both support and contest the terms of such a dominant discourse. The horror of events such as world wars and the Holocaust, and the ongoing threat of nuclear war, may be seen to have led to the emergence of much more pessimistic counter-narratives in the twentieth century, giving a very different ‘take’ on modernity as, variously, an inevitable but flawed form of social organisation, or an unstable edifice that could be transformed into a less oppressive social order. Adapting, transforming and bringing together narratives that encapsulate some elements of previously excluded experience may be crucial in establishing counter-discourses of resistance and liberation. For example, in parallel with the shift from ‘certainty’ to ‘uncertainty’ narratives around western modernity, there emerged significant shifts in the ways that certain colonised and subjugated peoples have perceived and given meaning to their situations. Earlier, dominant ways of storying may have constructed their past as glorious and their current experiences of exploitation, discrimination and social breakdown as an unfortunate transitional point on the road to assimilation within the prosperity of the ‘Western Dream’. Where this dream was seen to falter, opportunities arose for the emergence of more radical narratives in which the past was constructed as exploitation and the current situation as one of active resistance, the start of a process of struggle against western hegemony (Bruner 1986). An interesting instance of the operation of ideological struggle at a larger scale has been the recent displacement of ‘class’ as a concept from popular, political and academic narratives. Although, as has been argued earlier, the realities of collective exploitation and systematic inequalities have not disappeared, the notion of ‘class’ has been almost entirely eradicated from the debate as a means of comprehending – and acting to redress – such issues. The erasure of ‘class’ may be seen to have occurred within a number of individualising and fragmenting discourses that came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly those of postmodernism and neo-liberalism. Within the British context, these discourses were not just driven by the ruling elite in iso-


lation, but through the hegemonic incorporation of discourses arising from fractional interests – from disaffected radical academics and activists, to culturally mobile sections of the ‘respectable’ working class.

Poststructuralism and language Poststructural theory may be seen to have developed out of (and in reaction to) two quite distinct bodies of structuralist work: critical theories of social structures and structural understandings of how meanings may be constructed through the operation of language and the performance of social practices (see Delanty 2000). Through the work of Gramsci (1971) and Althusser (1971), critical theorists had begun to appreciate the importance of ideology – the operation of class or other struggles ‘in words’. With poststructuralism, the focus shifted away from social structures to an analysis of how meanings may be constituted in language, and how these may, in turn, structure power relations between social participants. A basis for doing this was to be found in the work of French linguistic structuralists, principally Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan. Ferdinand de Saussure (1974) proposed that language can be seen as a code in which meanings are constructed in relation to systems of other already existing meanings and associations. He opened up a crucial distinction between signifiers (sounds, images, written words, symbols) and that which is signified – entities existing outside language to which particular signifiers are deemed to refer. He suggested that the precise meaning of a particular signifier may be constructed in terms of how it differs from all other potential signifiers within a specific linguistic code or ‘chain’ of signifiers, rather than be read off from its relation to an entity external to linguistic structures. This suggests that a particular nuanced meaning may primarily be constituted within language – or other signifying systems – and may have no prior existence outside language. For example, the signifier ‘whore’ may be seen as deriving its meaning, not from some natural or self-evident reality ‘out there’, but through its specific connections to, and differences from, other gendered and potentially ideologically loaded signifiers, such as ‘virgin’ and ‘madonna’ on the one hand, and ‘stud’ and ‘lad’ on the other (see Weedon 1997: p. 23). The radical implication of this perspective is that it provides the basis for overturning modernist assumptions around the transparency and neutrality of language, in which signifiers (linguistic or cultural


symbols) are taken to have a straightforward and linear relationship with that which is signified. Within modernist thought, it is supposed that the signified already exists and has meaning independently of the process of representation, and the word/symbol/metaphor used by the author or speaker simply seeks to convey the signified as accurately as possible, given the available range of language and symbol systems. Such an ‘innocent’ language could, in itself, have no part to play in processes of oppression and subordination. However, once it is seen that meaning may be constituted within languages and symbolic systems, this opens up the possibility that language and other systems of representation may be potential sites for political struggle in their own right. This insight was developed by Roland Barthes, who called for a ‘political theory of language’ that would ‘study the “ownership” of the means of enunciation’ (1971: p. 25). He saw language as a sign system through which powerful groups could potentially label, define and rank others. If particular dominant groups were to be in a position to fix certain points of reference of current linguistic and other discursive structures, they would then be in a position to dictate that certain things can be spoken and others not, and to impose particular slants and meanings on to perceived reality. Especially through their control over the artefacts and representations of media such as advertising and popular culture, ruling groups could be able to lead (or seduce) members of other groups into identifying themselves and their place in the world in particular ways. If language can represent a potential site for domination, then it can also be a crucial site for resistance and struggle, although ‘oppressed groups may have to live even their revolt against the domination of the system within the framework of the dominant ideology’ (Poulantzas 1973: p. 223). Deprived of the possibility of constructing language in their terms, all that may be open to oppressed groups is to seek to empower themselves through changing the meanings of the key signifiers that secured their subordination. From the 1960s onwards, there have been a number of instances where issues of language, meaning and terminology have emerged as central to the struggles and self-assertion of many oppressed groups. Examples of such shifts are the redeployment of the abusive term ‘queer’ as the positively valued signifier of a branch of academic study and the inversion of morally inferiorising terms such as ‘bad’ and ‘wicked’ to denote ‘cool’ and ‘street-credible’ by African-American and African-Caribbean communities. Some disabled people have taken over and deployed the


word ‘cripple’ as a self-description to shock able-bodied liberals into some realisation of the pain and abuse that has been part of disablism (see Byrom 1999). It has been important for oppressed groups to find signifiers to represent their collectivity in a positive and assertive sense. The privileging of the signifier ‘woman’ over ‘lady’ or ‘girl’ by feminists sought to promote a term that was inclusive in terms of age and class and did not link directly into systems of signifiers and meanings associated with male patronage. By contrast, ‘working-class’ people have struggled to articulate any positive signifier of collective identity in recent decades, and this lack may be significant in the apparent rolling back of their opportunities to redress inequalities of opportunity and status. Instead, they face either their existence being erased from popular discourse, or being defined and subordinated on the basis of a concept of ‘working class’ that is imposed upon them via the discourses of ruling groups and other class fractions (Walkerdine 1995). It is particularly illuminating to examine how the term ‘black’ has represented a site of struggle in its own right. Initially constructed as an oppressive term, it stood as a racist signification of inferior ‘otherness’ that was crucial to the project of western hegemony. It represented the ultimate degradation, located even below ‘coloureds’ in its hierarchical distance below the summit of ‘whiteness’. To shift its meaning would destabilise the entire linguistic rhetoric of racism – the whole chain of interrelated signifiers. From the late 1960s onwards, the term became the focus of two separate struggles. First, it became adopted by the majority of all people subject to the experience of racism as the political term that united them in their resistance to white supremacy – to take on the signifier ‘black’ connoted a positive move to subvert the divide-and-rule hierarchy of colour, and its associations with biologically based racism, that had underpinned colonialism. Thus, ‘political blackness’ became a marker for raised consciousness and activism. In parallel with this, peoples of African descent, who had been inferiorised as ‘black’ within the discourses of western racism, engaged in a struggle to reclaim their skin colour from representing an embodiment of inferiority – an ‘ugliness’ by definition in comparison with the western notion of ideal ‘beauty’. Stuart Hall has analysed the resistance mounted by ‘black’ people against this hegemony, identifying the specific struggle over the meanings and connotations of the very word ‘black’: ‘Black’ could not be converted into ‘black = beautiful’ simply by wishing it were so. It had to become part of an organised practice of


struggles requiring the building up of collective forms of black resistance as well as the development of new forms of black consciousness. (1985: p. 48) The reclaiming of the term ‘black’ and the coining of new collective identities such as ‘African-American’ and ‘African-Caribbean’ may be seen as part of a wider struggle to ‘erase the marks of dispossession inflicted by colonialism and imperialism’ (Venn 1993: p. 2). However, the two parallel struggles around the re-signification of the term ‘black’ created their own contradictions, particularly for those groups who were ‘politically black’ in terms of some shared experience of racism and colonialism, but whose ethnic or cultural identities – Indian, Jewish, Arab, and so on – were not connected with any pride in ‘African blackness’, or the recovery of identities erased through slavery (see Werbner and Modood 1997). Nevertheless, the very real successes of radical moves to subvert and destabilise conventional and oppressive forms of language led to a major backlash from a hegemonic alliance between various dominant groups – particularly men and ‘white’ people. Through their control or influence within the media, these groups were able to establish an alternative discourse within which oppressed peoples’ disquiet with, and struggles over, meaning were situated as irritating and irrelevant instances of ‘political correctness’. While, in one sense, it may be constructive to point out that language is not the only issue and its relative importance may have become exaggerated (a legitimate element within the critique), it is nevertheless interesting to note how dominant groups themselves deployed language (as in coining the term ‘political correctness’) as a highly effective strategy in suppressing dissidence. In a much more subtle way, ruling groups have been able to exploit oppressed people’s discomfort at being crudely inserted within categories such as ‘women’ or ‘black people’ within the structural discourses of resistance that were supposed to bring about their liberation as a collectivity. As we have seen, working-class and ‘black’ women did not always recognise themselves within the constructions of ‘woman’ deployed by the feminist movement, and many non-‘white’ people found that their particular ethnic identity and experience of oppression could become lost within the political category of black. Drawing upon postmodernist themes of diversity, new discourses have been promulgated, such as ‘post-feminism’ and ‘multi-culturalism’, in which some of the force of earlier collective struggles may become dissipated. While it may be crucial to open up questions of difference within the


apparently homogeneous categories proposed by earlier activists, this does not need to be at the expense of any analysis of how each ‘micro’ category of ‘difference’ may relate, in their particular ways, to wider contexts of racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on. Taken outside such contexts, any celebration of ethnic or gender diversity implicitly assumes a social order in which we can all be ‘equal-but-different’, thereby erasing any debate on widespread and shared experiences of inequality: The whole debate on multiculturalism stumbles on the fact that the boundaries of difference, as well as the boundaries of social rights, are determined by specific hegemonic … discourses. (Yuval-Davis 1997: p. 199) This vision that language and systems of representation could, in themselves, be potentially constitutive of human experience, both oppressive or liberatory, offered a basis for moving beyond a previous overemphasis on material relations within structural theories of power inequalities. However, just as Marx could be criticised for his narrow ‘economism’, discourse theory has, in turn, tended to over-emphasise social relations at the level of ideology with respect to other levels of the social formation. At its most extreme it has produced the position that material aspects of social relations may be seen to have no existence except in as much as they are represented in language (see, for example, Hindess and Hirst 1975). Meanings are seen as only having meaning in relation to, and difference from, other meanings. Such a position harks back to the one-sided abstraction of the humanist conception of ‘pure thought’ and runs counter to any formulation which seeks to integrate analyses of material and discursive relations (see Werbner 1997).

Approaches to deconstruction A fundamental tenet of all forms of structuralism is that meaning is not self-evident – it cannot be read off in terms of the stable and essential character of whatever is being studied. Meaning associated with particular elements may only be uncovered by an analysis of their underlying relationships to other elements: ‘The error of traditional anthropology, like that of traditional linguistics, was to consider the terms, and not the relation between the terms’ (Lévi-Strauss 1972: p. 46).


This shift from an analysis of things-in-themselves to a study of things-in-relation-to-other-things may be seen to underpin both critical theories of social divisions and structuralist approaches to text, language, myth, custom and cultural practice. Just as Saussure derived the meanings of signifiers from their connections with, and differences from, other signifiers, so Lévi-Strauss (1972) applied similar principles to anthropological study. He looked at cultural phenomena, such as myths, rituals, kinship arrangements and cooking practices, to examine how elements and terms within these were situated and counterposed in relation to one another – and, in turn, how these sets of meanings placed the people of a culture in particular forms of connection to one another. For example, he saw within cooking and eating a series of rituals and practices in which the elements ‘raw’ and ‘cooked’ were brought into particular relationships to one another, signifying both a closeness to, and a radical separation from, the realm of nature – thereby defining people’s relationship both to nature and to one another. Such a structuralist approach was radical in the sense of creating a break with humanism: many of the meanings that situate people in relation to one another are to be seen as created outside the consciousness or intentionality of individuals, and the human subject ‘is to be understood as constructed by the symbol and not as the point of origin of symbolism’ (Coward and Ellis 1977: p. 3). However, despite this, Lévi-Strauss’s work remained substantially within the modernist tradition, since his focus remained on identifying functional relationships of cohesion and continuity, not on exploring issues of power inequalities or social tensions. By contrast, Jacques Derrida’s work on deconstructing text was much more destabilising for the modernist project (1976; 1981). Developing the linguistic analysis of Saussure, he examined the meanings inherent in texts, not in terms of their supposed relationships to entities outside the texts (representations of objective or subjective phenomena), but by an internal analysis of the text itself: how meanings were constructed out of the interplay of differences within the structures of the text. This approach brought into focus the way in which modernist thought rests on interrelated sets of hierarchically ordered binary oppositions: the dualisms of public/private, reason/emotion, fact/value, culture/nature, male/female, ‘white’/‘black’, and so on. He questioned the modernist presupposition that such words ‘centre’ meaning (‘logocentrism’). Instead, he argued that the meaning and significance of each of these terms was inherently unstable. Each term


had no meaning of itself, only in terms of its difference from an opposite term, and, in turn, the meaning of these terms could not be seen as fixed, but as deferring indefinitely to a chain of other related terms. Thus ‘female’ has no meaning of itself, only in the ways that it is constructed as different from ‘male’, and in the ways that the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ may be constructed in relation to (and defer to) other terms such as ‘public’ and ‘private’ or ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. In turn, these terms have no more claim to fixed meanings – the chain of deferral to other terms is infinite and unending. Similarly, more sophisticated understandings of the multiple and contested meanings of ‘blackness’ lead on to moves to deconstruct its opposite and previously unassailable term ‘whiteness’, and how their meanings defer to a ‘whole cascade’ of other related signifiers located in historically specific texts and practices (Malik 1996: p. 249). Such a project of deconstruction and contextualisation would seek to open up how ‘whiteness has developed over the past two hundred years into a taken-for-granted experience structured upon a varying set of supremacist assumptions (sometimes cultural, sometimes biological, sometimes moral, sometimes all three)’ (Bonnett 1997: p. 188). Such deconstructions of modernist discourse are potentially iconoclastic: the whole edifice is revealed as shaky and contingent, every term needing to be ‘shored up’ by other, equally unstable terms, and nothing remaining as natural or inevitable about the configuration of the current social order at the level of discourse or language. Similarly, the conscious intention of the author of a text cannot be assumed to centre or guarantee its unique and canonical meaning. The humanist focus on the individual author is superseded by an examination of the process of writing, thereby substituting ‘language itself for the person who until then had been supposed to be its owner’ (Barthes 1977: p. 143). Final subtleties of meaning do not exist prior to the writing: they arise within it from the specific ways in which terms are connected and counterposed. Once analysed within its particular historical and discursive context, a text may be seen to generate a multiplicity of meanings – meanings which may or may not have been part of the consciousness (or unconsciousness) of the author. Any discursive practice, text or representation has the possibility of temporarily fixing the meaning of certain signifiers in relation to one another. Such a practice may be seen as inherently political, in that it ‘is never a neutral act [as] it involves both interests and questions of power’ (Weedon 1997: p. 171). However, any attempt to fix meaning, and the power positions that this may reflect, may be seen as somewhat tenuous. Given that any text (utterance or image) is produced out


of a range of already existing discursive structures, each with their own tensions and instabilities, contradictory and dissonant elements are likely to creep in to even the most assiduously constructed writing. The process of deconstructing aims to look behind surface consistencies in order to reveal whatever jangling bundle of potentially conflicting elements may lurk behind: To ‘deconstruct’ … is, so to speak, to reverse the imposing tapestry in order to expose in all its unglamorously dishevelled tangle the threads constituting the well-heeled image it presents to the world. (Eagleton 1986: p. 80) However, practices of deconstruction may not always be ‘critical’ in the sense of seeking to unearth hidden relations of power and hence (potentially) form part of an emancipatory project. Within the wider postmodern agenda, multiple readings of meaning may be used to disrupt conventional ‘certainties’, without according any particular significance to issues of oppression. As Chris Weedon argues, Deconstruction is useful … in so far as it offers a method of decentring the hierarchical oppositions which underpin gender, race and class oppression and of instigating new, more progressive theories… . However, much deconstructive analysis … fails to attend to question of social context, particular interests and power. While its stress on the plurality and non-fixity of meaning is a helpful move … the implicit assumption that there is a free play of meaning not already located in a hierarchical network of discursive relations denies social power by rendering it invisible and in doing so reaffirms the status quo. (1997: p. 160) Such issues became an explicit concern for Derrida (1994), who sought to rescue a deconstructive approach from the endless possiblities for ‘play’ – and ethical nihilism – that characterised some developments of postmodernist textual practice. Somewhat uneasily, he proposed a non-relativist position on social or interpersonal justice: a defined non-violative ‘ethical’ relation to the other, which is both respectful of the difference of the other, and is always attentive to the potential for positional power play (however unintentional) to fix meanings for the other in ways that may be oppressive or devaluing. This stance would provide a fixed position from which to undertake deconstructive practice. However, paradoxically, fixing such a position of justice


entails some of the same force and violence that characterise modernist or structural attempts to secure particular readings or meanings as hegemonic. Therefore, this position must be constructed as a ‘power without a power’, in the sense that, while it does not set out to violate, it must nevertheless be a site of power, since ‘a powerless justice is not justice’ (Derrida 1992: p. 11). Thus it may be seen that poststructuralism can provide rich and valuable insights into the degree to which modernity depends on particular fixed or ‘logocentric’ modes of language, where the emphasis is always on the determinate character of a social world of things-inthemselves whose intrinsic meanings can be captured and given to us transparently through the use of the corresponding linguistic term. Such systems of language may be seen to depend on a hierarchically ordered framework of binary opposites, reflecting the fundamental dualisms at the centre of modernist thought. Deconstruction can offer a means whereby to disrupt and decentre this, opening up the politics of how meaning (and the subordination of those constructed as ‘other’) may have been fixed through the operation of particular modes of signification. Derrida’s move towards fixing a basis for emancipatory theory and practice also provides a direction which may be fruitful in achieving some degree of rapprochement between structuralist and poststructuralist critical perspectives. While both provide conceptual armouries for penetrating beneath the surfaces of modernism, there has remained considerable space for acrimonious debates between the two. While poststructuralists have seen a tendency for essentialism in concepts of capital or patriarchy, structuralists have argued that an endless focus on indeterminacy provides an unfortunate ‘smokescreen’ over issues of systematic oppression and inequality. A way forward would seem to be to reconceptualise larger-scale as well as local struggles as an ongoing contestation of alternative fixings of discursive and material relations. It may not, for example, be helpful to see patriarchy as some monolithic and unchanging structure. It may be seen, more dynamically, as sets of systematically interconnected relationships of difference, both within and between masculinities and femininities, that must be continually re-enacted and re-performed in particular ways in order to secure and maintain positions of dominance. Subtle alterations to the terms by which these differences are performed may (perhaps temporarily) restructure power relations. Nevertheless, given the degree of interlocking between these practices, the underlying power inequalities can only be contested by picking away at each and every weak point


within chains of deferral and legitimation, opening up ambivalences and contradictions within how the terms of relationships may currently be fixed. And this unpicking and refixing can only proceed in a systematic and emancipatory manner if it is underpinned, however tenuously, by an ethical commitment to social justice.

Psychoanalysis and language A focus on the construction and deconstruction of meaning in narrative is not unique to structurally informed linguistics: it has formed an integral part of psychoanalytic practice. Freud proposed a focus, not on the surface veneer of acceptable speech, but on where this apparent consistency and ‘sense’ breaks down – the mis-takes that reveal another register of discordant experience which he termed the ‘unconscious’. The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1977) linked this to the work of Saussure and Derrida to propose that the psychic ‘unconscious’ is structured like a language, but a language that only just about manages to suppress the fluidities of desire, yearning and melancholia that may be associated with current and past experiences of connection and disconnection. Within the current linguistic order, certain key symbols are seen to secure this repression, such as the signification of patriarchal prohibition ‘Le Nom’/‘Le Non’ (‘The-Name-of-the-Father’/‘The No’), and the excluded possibility of joyful ‘feminine’ desire-in-connection: ‘jouissance’. However, ultimately this symbolic order is seen to be anchored by the male-centred signifier of power: ‘the phallus’. Interestingly, this is seen to double not as some symbol of male ‘potency’ in terms of a capacity to make connections with others, but as a signification of yearning and unattainable desire. Such an account opens up the possibility of links being made between social and intrapsychic modes of oppression through a deconstruction of the power relations that may be embedded within language – thereby starting to transcend the individual/society dualism. Whereas Lacan characterised ‘the feminine’ as inevitably subordinated and excluded, as representing a ‘lack’ rather than a ‘presence’, post-Lacanian feminists, such as Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous, have sought to turn this around and see in ‘the feminine’ the seeds and possibilities of resistance and assertion of difference against a creaking, unstable and historically specific patriarchal sociosymbolic order. Following on from Derrida, Cixous proposed that


female sexual difference no longer be understood as the inferiorised or silenced term in a binary opposition of male:female, but as a position of ‘otherness’ from which to deconstruct the discourses of patriarchal domination (Cixous 1976; Cixous and Clement 1986). Modernist discourse is seen not just to be structured around an illusory fixedness of each word-in-itself (logocentrism), but that this fixedness is inextricably linked to a ‘masculine’ domination of the possibilities of desire and connection – not only among women and children, but also among men themselves. In this way, people may be seen to be located and constrained in specific ways within a system of ‘phallocentric’ (or ‘phallogocentric’) language. Although deconstruction may offer a critique of phallocentric language and discourse, it begs the question of how to transcend this and construct an alternative praxis of communication – a move that could be crucial to emancipatory political or social action. The post-Lacanian feminists started to explore the possibilities of alternative modes of ‘feminine’ representation that may engage with people’s experiences of connection, relatedness, oppression and violation: languages that are fluent rather than fixed, modes of expression that do not force the complexities and diversities of experience into distorting and hierarchical ‘black and white’ dichotomies. Kristeva (1989) theorised a structure of expression, ‘the semiotic’, that lies beneath, and is normally repressed by, the terms of the prevailing ‘symbolic’ (phallocentric) order. This is seen as the ‘feminine’ language of the unconscious and is characterised by expressions of fluidity, connection and diversity. She looked at how that which is typically repressed as unconscious may emerge, for example, in less conventional poetry or texts, such as those of Mallarmé or Joyce. (Interestingly, she tended to search for the emergence of the hidden ‘feminine’ in the writing of male authors, rather than in the work of women.) Irigaray proposed a concept of ‘woman-speak’: language that no longer reconstitutes and lives out the binary oppositions of the modernist/patriarchal social order (see Belsey and Moore 1989). Similarly, Cixous (1976) looked at the possibility of developing an ‘écriture feminine’, a way of writing which could embrace diversity in that it did not depend on terms that could only represent difference as a hierarchical ordering and an implicit inferiorisation. Although these theorists propose only very tentative possibilities for such modes of communication creeping in at the margins of modernist discourse, it may be seen that forms of expression which at least start to disrupt or avoid the fixed terms of ‘phallocentric’ language may


already be providing ‘a different voice’ – whether located in certain forms of theoretical writing or, just as importantly, in the ordinary and everyday discourses of women and other subordinated social groups. For example, whereas the moral thinking and explanation of western men tends to be characterised by the rigidities of ‘phallocentric’ codes and rules, that of subordinated groups may be expressed through a more fluid emphasis on the importance of maintaining relationship and connectedness (Gilligan 1982). Similarly, much of the writing that has underpinned the development of critical theory, from Marx to Lacan and Foucault, may be seen to have broken with the static precision of conventional academic codes, allowing terms to flow and acquire meaning from their interrelationships with other terms. Thus, whereas the language of modernist discourse may be characterised as ‘elemental’, as comprising a sequence of terms-in-themselves with fixed meanings and essential qualities, the languages of critical theory and practice may necessarily develop a more ‘relational’ emphasis. Instead of an ordered speaking of the words that places everything ‘in its proper place’, it may be important to experiment with a speaking between the words: linguistic and discursive practices that flow in among terms that no longer pretend to be solid and stable, speaking the horror of violation, or embracing connection and difference – practices that do not split off the emotional from the rational, the private from the public, and so on.

Foucault and the archaeology of the modern Developed in parallel with these analyses of language, the work of Foucault employs a radically deconstructive approach to dig, in a very detailed and painstaking way, beneath the surfaces and layers of particular modernist discourses and practices, examining particularly the histories (genealogies) of techniques of social regulation operating within, and at the boundaries of, modernist civil society. Motivated by ‘a certain restlessness to break up our familiarities’ (1989: p. 198), he allows nothing in the historical archive to remain as it seems: modernity’s self-representations are overturned to reveal inconsistencies, tensions and instabilities in the social fabric. Everywhere is unearthed the ‘micro’ operation of power, the deployment of knowledges and ‘expertise’, the constitution of resistance, and the shifting and contradictory nature of the discursive structures in which all of this may be situated – all to be analysed in their historical specificity.


He focused on the historical shift, with the onset of the Enlightenment, from the naked use of military might and monarchical, religious or legal authority in order to control the populace, to the more hidden, subtle and internalised forms of domination that may be seen to characterise modernity. In particular, he examined the modernist passion to regulate, using the power of rational or scientific discourses to specify and define, to categorise and to pigeon-hole experiences and behaviours which might otherwise be seen as disturbing or subversive to the established social order – as in the case of mental distress: Mental illness was constituted by all that was said in all the statements that named it, divided it up, described it, explained it, traced its developments, indicated its various correlations, judged it and possibly gave it speech by articulating, in its name, discourses that were to be taken as its own. (1972: p. 32) His examinations of institutionalised discourses and practices relating to the treatment of the ‘mad’ (1967) and the ‘bad’ (1977), are angled so that they reveal more about the precariousness of a modernist project based on reason and conformity – and the instability of the practices and knowledges designed to map out the boundaries of acceptability. Post-Enlightenment ‘freedoms’ are opened up to reveal their underside: the threats, coercions and prescriptions for insidious self-disciplining and compliance. Conversely, he demonstrates how nineteenth-century prohibitions on sexuality actually served to sexualise much of the social fabric, through its introduction into a wide range of medical, legal and other discourses. The charting and labelling of sexual expression, carried out in the name of suppression, is shown to have actually introduced the very vocabulary whereby those outside the dominant and permitted modes of sexual expression could identify and organise themselves. Thus, while, on the one hand, lesbian and gay people were repressed by being placed into various categories of ‘perversity’, this ‘also made possible the formation of a “reverse” discourse: homosexuality began to speak on its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or “naturality” be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified’ (1981: p. 101). Foucault’s work arose out of the philosophical melting-pot in which the products of language and culture were being taken apart, on the one hand, by Marxist and, on the other, by linguistic structuralists. At various points, he was closely connected with both Althusser and Barthes. While he saw structuralist methods as providing a basis for overturning the conventional humanist histories that failed to probe beneath


the surfaces of modernity, he utilised such ideas only as a point of departure for his own historical and philosophical analyses (see Foucault 1986). Following Derrida, he sought to open up and scrutinise sets of related discourses ‘composed of endlessly proliferating meanings, none of which are stable’ (Bevir 1999: p. 348). However, instead of the chains of meanings defering ‘laterally’ within a linguistic structure, the focus was on ‘temporal’ or historical genealogies in which meanings could only temporarily be fixed within an ever-shifting discursive ‘archive’. Foucault effectively resisted any simplistic dichotomous notions around the operation of power within modernity: he saw no easy way of locating the source of the power that may be oppressing ‘us’ with a separate and identifiable ‘them’. Instead, he proposed that modernity depended on the decentring of power through a multiplicity of discourses and practices running through the entire fabric of civil society in which everyone (unwittingly) participates. People may be seduced into ‘playing the game’, paradoxically because these very discourses and practices may offer people certain possibilities of accessing circumscribed forms of productive power. In this sense, productive power is to be understood, not as being necessarily desirable or beneficial, but as being creative in shaping and driving certain opportunities for people. In some of his work, he focused on relatively enduring discursive ‘regimes’ that embodied their own logics and disciplines in order to maintain particular configurations of power and social order – structures that could nevertheless undergo relatively rapid ruptures and shifts, such as the transitions between ‘classical’, ‘sovereign’ and ‘modern’ social formations. However, in some of his later work, he makes more of a break with such structuralist perspectives, decentring any logic of the social, and seeing any historical configuration as arising out of ‘the more or less random interaction of numerous micropractices’ (Bevir 1999: p. 352). Throughout his work, Foucault refuses to locate his analysis within any formal contexts of structural inequality – simply allowing for the possibility that aggregations of power operating at local scales might cohere to bring about wider social movements. Similarly, in distancing himself from Marxism, he makes no mention of any material aspects to any of the sets of power relations that he studies. In his studious resistance to contextualising his analyses in relation to such approaches, he stands firm against any possibility of some reductionist ‘reading off’ of the particular and the local from ‘grand’ narratives purporting to describe the social whole. However, by not accepting any such contextual grounding, he is constantly on the verge of falling


back into some of the very humanist positions that he is seeking to deconstruct. The lack of a theory of the constitution of the social whole leaves an implicit picture of an invasive and immanent source of disciplinary power – which might reflect the activity of some nebulous ruling elite, but might equally well represent the compulsive meddling of a ‘nanny state’, as constructed within neo-liberalism (see Burchell et al. 1991; Barry et al. 1996). Reflecting the same ambivalences, his vision of power sways uneasily between notions of oppression and resistance, which would be compatible with those of structural theorists, and an equation of power with the assertion of individual ‘will’ – a notion of productive power that harks back to Nietzsche’s romantic notion of an immanent force that impels the individual towards their destiny. Overall, his work would seem to be committed to a project of emancipation and empowerment, but it is not entirely clear what this might mean in terms of forms of politics or practice (see Fraser 1989). Like Derrida, he found the need in his later work to address questions of ethics (1994). However, he did not allow himself to declare any fixed ‘ethical’ relation to the other that would situate his deconstructive project in relation to any notion of social justice. Instead he sought to correct the implications of personal passivity, and lack of ethical responsibility, inherent in his conception of the subject as a ‘docile body’ upon which external power relations could be inscribed. He broadened his description of the possibilities by which people might resist the imposition of power, to embrace an active ‘ethics of self’ in which people might, to some extent consciously, pursue goals of emancipation. However, such ideas come perilously close to re-creating the humanist notion of the individual subject, one that he continually sought to deconstruct.

The politics of knowledge: social constructionism and standpoint epistemologies A variety of critical perspectives have sought to explore how modernist knowledges may not be neutral or value-free, but may instead reflect the sectional interests of particular groups and embody relations of unequal power (Habermas 1968; Althusser 1971). Instead of knowledge being guaranteed by principles of scientific objectivity or rational enquiry, such principles may themselves be seen as part of the very ideological structures that may underpin the position of elites, or function as mechanisms of social control. The canons of academic research


may become subject to the same scrutiny as other forms of discourse, leading to a growing awareness of how ‘descriptions and explanations … are shaped by … the interests, desires and values’ of researchers and the research process as a whole (Harding 1991: p. 15). There may be circular and self-reinforcing processes whereby knowledges may legitimate the positions of those already in power, and those in power may have leverage over the means to accredit (or discredit) knowledges, depending on whether they suit their interests. In this way, knowledge may be seen to be constructed in particular social conditions, and may be linked, overtly or covertly, to specific political purposes. Just as deconstructive approaches explored how language itself did not function as a neutral medium, faithfully reflecting what was already ‘out there’, so they have started to destabilise the claims of both positivist and humanist knowledges to relay any self-evident forms of ‘truth’. Instead, it has been argued that ‘any interpretation of reality is itself a manifestation of power’ (Yeatman 1997: p. 137). Foucault (1972) highlighted the indivisibility of knowledge and power within the social organisation of modernity, and analysed the circumstances in which certain bodies of modernist knowledge emerged, how they could be deployed by ‘experts’ and professionals over particular groups of people, and how they may have been internalised, resisted or reinterpreted by those people constructed as ‘objects’ of such knowledge. However, under the influence and diffusion of postmodernist perspectives, there has been some tendency to confuse and conflate the projects of ‘radical’ deconstruction, such as those arising out of the work of Derrida and Foucault, with the humanist tradition of social constructionism (or constructivism). While both seek to debunk universalist claims to the objectivity and permanency of knowledge, social constructionism tends to bracket out questions of power in the construction of knowledge, in that it assumes an intersubjective consensus in which people can come together to define notions of ‘reality’ within a particular social context (Berger and Luckman 1967). Furthermore, in opposing notions of positivist ‘objectivity’, it also rejects any concept of underlying reality within social relations: social phenomena are seen to exist only in as much as they emerge as consensual meanings. Thus, for example, from a social constructionist viewpoint, rape within marriage cannot be accorded any existence, as long as an intersubjective consensus remains (however arrived at) in which it is not considered a possibility. Thus, in settling for the established consensus, rather than delving for suppressed or dissident meanings beneath the surface, a social con-


structionist perspective may tend to reify taken-for-granted notions of common sense and custom-and-practice – and thereby become complicit in upholding the impressions of fairness and consent by which modernity has sought to present itself. While it may offer multiple possibilities for social groups to determine knowledge derived from their intersubjective experiences, its disregard of questions of power gives no basis for arbitrating between any competing truth claims that may emerge, or any way of supporting the voices of those who may face systematic forms of exclusion. Whereas social constructionism may tend, in practice, to give ontological priority to a dominant consensus in defining any knowledge about social relations, standpoint epistemologies seek to stand this on its head. It is argued that, by their very experience at the receiving end of relations of discrimination or exploitation, certain groups of people may achieve a privileged insight into the realities of power, giving rise to a narrative and conceptual resource that may be hidden from, or denied by, those in positions of domination. While such situated knowledge may be subordinated and marginalised within conventional modernist approaches, it may be seen to be crucial to any democratically driven emancipatory project: versions of the ‘truth’ may be wrested away from the elite or those that have secured the dominant consensus, and may be rewritten by those whose outcast position gives them a very different ‘take’ on the social relations of modernity. Rather than accept marginalisation within academic discourse, feminist and anti-colonialist standpoint epistemologists have claimed a particular authority for those ‘subaltern’ knowledges that may emerge from people’s experiences of oppression (Harstock 1983; Guha 1984; Hill Collins 1991; Harraway 1999). For social groups that have been refused the right to speak in their own terms, and whose perspectives have been systematically discredited, just the faltering process of starting to ‘tell it as it is’, to compose a narrative, begins to construct new knowledges of social meanings and relationships. It is clearly no coincidence that, for example, much of gender and anti-racist theory has been developed by those experiencing these particular aspects of oppression – and this may be seen to have given them a particular intellectual authority vis-à-vis the modernist knowledges that they set out to challenge. More recently, other subordinated social groups have become involved in commissioning and undertaking research and knowledge production. Within the field of human service practice, a particular resource is the ‘situated’ or ‘positional’ knowledges of recipients of services – the perceptions and meanings by which people have come to


make sense of their particular experiences. In the construction of relevant knowledges for practice, an emancipatory approach requires not just appropriating the existing but unarticulated knowledges of service users, but their direct involvement in the processes of knowledge production (Beresford 2000). It is out of disabled people’s direct experience, and their political struggles for recognition, that the social model of disability has been constructed and refined (Oliver 1996). Similarly, people with lived experience of mental distress have been involved in constructing a very different set of knowledges around issues such as compulsion and recovery than those knowledges that have hitherto informed professional discourses around service delivery (Deegan 1997; Coleman 1999; Tew et al. 2000). However, there is a danger that standpoint epistemologies may serve to re-create the very categories of essentialism, for example, in terms of Afrocentric, women’s or disabled people’s consciousness, that poststructuralism set out to deconstruct. Just by experiencing social reality from the situation of a particular subordinate group, no one may be afforded the right to speak for all those with whose experience they may identify, although, at times, this may constitute an expedient political strategy (Chakravorty Spivak 1987; Gilroy 1993). Just as situated knowledges may serve to break down the monopolies on knowledge secured by a dominant consensus, so they too may need to be contested from within, in order to tease out diversities as well as commonalities. Such processes of challenge and (sympathetic) deconstruction may also be valuable in identifying those elements of incorporated knowledge and internalised oppression that may inadvertently be reproduced in articulations of alternative knowledge discourses.

Poststructural practice: working with language and narrative As Christopher Hall (1997) has demonstrated, much of the field of social practice is constituted in and through language: the language of interviews and assessments; the language of reports and decision making; the language of therapy and personal meanings; the language of policy and procedural texts. Each of these languages is performed within specific discursive contexts, contexts that are laden with relationships of potentially unequal power: those between service user and worker, worker and agency, and between workers located in interprofessional hierarchies. A service user may present a narrative that weaves a particular context around an incident, problem or difficulty. A pro-


fessional, such as a social worker or nurse, may reconstruct this narrative and re-present it to someone in a more senior power position, such as a manager, judge or doctor. In this process, a fear may become recontextualised as a ‘delusion’ or a ‘symptom’, or an injury may be reconstrued as ‘non-accidental’, on the basis of professional ‘expertise’ and judgement. Each level of text or narrative carries with it its own persuasive politics of meaning – meanings that are nuanced with the potential to be empowering or oppressive. For example, for a particular practice of chastisement to be defined in professional discourses as ‘excessive’, may have a significant impact in redefining the power relations between a parent and a child and securing more effective protection against abuse. By contrast, having deeply personal or spiritual experiences dismissed as auditory hallucinations, within a discourse of ‘mental illness’, may be felt to be profoundly alienating and disempowering. A focus on the constitutive power of language, narrative or discourse is not, of itself, the basis of critical practice. What is crucial is how these various levels of ‘text’ are listened to, deconstructed and worked with – is the outcome of involvement to open up dominant stories to new performances that shift the power relations that are embedded within them? Many narratives may be presented with an overall ‘gloss’ that does not take the risk to open up the full extent of distress, oppression and conflict that is being experienced. It is therefore important for the practitioner to develop skills in recognising elements of discontinuity or dissonance that may serve as ‘clues’ to internalised oppression: In a politics of listening, one is searching for the form of colonising discourses hidden in the apparent transparency of personal accounts within. (Byrne and McCarthy 1999: p. 96) Without such a politically aware process of listening, practice may serve to shore up oppressive texts that may be beginning to fall apart due to the weight of their internal contradictions. For example, workers may inadvertently collude with the reiteration of discourses in which victims may blame themselves (as others have done to them) and hold themselves responsible for their distress or disablement. A social constructionist approach may be helpful in opening up the possibility of negotiating new meanings and perceptual ‘lenses’ by which to view what has seemed to be problematic, and this may in


turn lead to new patterns of behaviour and interaction (see, for example, Hoffman 1990; Parton and O’Byrne 2000). However, if this process is conducted in isolation from any grounding in the realities of power inequalities which may constrain or determine the particular shifts in ‘the story’ that may emerge, then it may represent little more than a renaming of situations of subordination or marginalisation that may render them slightly more palatable to those on the receiving end. Similarly, postmodern approaches can open up a ‘play’ of different readings and inflections that, while disrupting dominant or totalising discourses, may also discount the reality of experiences of oppression or abuse as presented in the narratives of those who may be currently victimised. Whereas social constructionism and postmodernism fail to address issues of power, through assuming either a modernist consensus around meaning, or a postmodern conceptual anarchy, poststructuralism opens up possibilities for a politically oriented practice of ‘deconstructing dominant cultural stories, particularly those which marginalize and oppress service users’ (Milner 2001: p. 2). Here, there comes the opportunity to work with the subtleties and contradictions in the operation of power at local levels, instead of becoming caught up in the polemical ‘us/them’ approach of structural activism which can construct ‘the other as an enemy … against whom one must fight until the moment that the enemy is defeated and either surrenders or disappears’ (Foucault 1991: pp. 382–3; see also Healy 1999). As has been suggested, pre-existing narratives may not be complete and neatly polished, all ready for an exact re-enactment. Instead, they may be, to some extent, fractured due to conflicts and contradictions arising either internally within a discourse, or externally between coexisting discursive regimes: Stories are full of gaps which persons must fill in order for the story to be performed. These gaps recruit the lived experience and the imagination of persons. (White and Epston 1990: p. 13) Narrative construction may therefore involve an active process of filling the gaps, either by drawing upon available devices that serve to ‘paper over the cracks’, or by allowing in potentially discordant or subversive material. In practice, such choices around how narratives are reperformed may not be made entirely intentionally or self-consciously – elements may creep in both within and outside awareness. It is in engaging with the uncertainties and ambiguities of ‘re-storying’ that professional practice may have its greatest influence.


Within emancipatory practice, it is not for the worker to attempt to fill the gaps within the story that a person may be recounting, but to enable the person to access alternative experiences, ways of seeing, knowledges and relationships. In doing so, a person may articulate previously suppressed or marginalised narrative elements – memories, significances, connections – and thereby start to ‘reclaim the unsaid’. It would be unrealistic to expect that a person in a subordinated or excluded position will suddenly be able to ‘re-author’ the story as if they were a free and autonomous actor. However, a person may be able to weave in previously suppressed or separated material in order to represent the narrative in a way that puts them significantly more in control of their situation, and/or more connected by relations of mutual support and recognition to those close to them. The telling and (re)storying of experience has long been at the core of many forms of ‘therapeutic conversation’ that seek to be usercentred, ranging from life-story work with children to help them reclaim personal frameworks of meaning and identity, to the complexities of working through unconscious material in psychoanalysis (see Dwivedi 1997). In between, there is a profusion of approaches that seek to enable individuals or groups to make significant changes in the frameworks of meaning that may have a powerful bearing on how they live their lives. Often, those who may be in need of such help may be seen to have reached a point of conflict ‘when the narratives in which they are “storying” their experience, and/or in which they are having their experience “storied” by others, do not sufficiently represent their lived experience’, leading to a situation in which ‘there will be significant aspects of their lived experience that contradict these dominant narratives’ (White and Epston 1990: pp. 14–15). Echoing a similar perspective to the interpretive sociology of Goffman (1974), the founders of cognitive approaches such as Beck (1976) and Ellis (1970) argued that it is often not any fixed or intrinsic nature of actions or events that can be crucial in determining people’s responses to them, but the framework of meaning through which they are interpreted. In turn, the meanings embodied in specific elements of belief or thought may be seen as ultimately deferring to an anchoring ‘schema’ of core beliefs laid down usually in childhood. Therapy involves strategies to enable the person to review and reconstruct selfdamaging elements within their belief system – not in terms of how they came to their original beliefs, but in terms of whether these still make sense in the present. Change depends on the incorporation of new experience or information, some ‘news of difference’ that adds to


and destabilises the ‘story so far’ within which particular core beliefs or attitudes may have been justified. Psychodynamic approaches also involve a review of historically embedded schemata of meaning, but from a somewhat different angle (Coren 2001). They seek to give meaning to current expressions of distress by relating them to parts of the story of past traumas which may not have been safe to express at the time and may have been suppressed for many years: ‘Psychotherapy is concerned with a story that is so disturbing that, however painful the telling may be, it must be attempted’ (Cox and Theilgard 1987: p. xxvi). Retelling and witnessing the story may start to shift previously fixed meanings that may have been functional for survival in past contexts of oppression and powerlessness, but now are destructive and limiting of opportunities. For example, stories of abuse may be retold with new meanings, so that victims may no longer shoulder all responsibility for their abuse and may pass this over to perpetrators and those who were in a position to protect but who failed to do so. However, both cognitive and psychodynamic approaches remain embedded within modernist assumptions of an unproblematic social order into which people may be reinserted following an individualised process of therapeutic ‘adjustment’. Typically, they lack any clear analyses of the power relations embodied within the prevailing discourses, knowledges and practices that provide the historical and cultural context within which personal stories must be negotiated. If the goal of intervention is to be some form of empowerment, rather than simply reinserting the person in some more socially acceptable discursive framework, an engagement with such power issues is inevitable. Otherwise, the real agenda of therapeutic conversations may be the reestablishment of subtle and pervasive techniques of regulation and social control, even if this is not overtly intended. In order to see what could be the implications, in terms of power relations, of working to shift sets of interrelated and oppressive meanings, it would be necessary to examine how people may have been influenced to take on certain meanings rather than others (or have meanings enforced upon them), and how they may have been ‘incited to perform operations … on their lives and relationships in order to subject themselves and others to the specifications of personhood and relationship that are carried in [dominant] “truth” discourses’ (White and Epston 1990: p. 28). Emancipatory change may therefore involve addressing complex significations of personal identity, in terms of gender, age, ‘race’, sexuality, and so on, unpicking routes of disciplin-


ary control, surveillance or self-harm, and identifying new or already existing discursive elements that may ground a sense of self-worth and connection with others. Instances may involve unique and idiosyncratic factors, but also collective or structural inequalities, which may both be revealed through the process of narration, and be implicit in what can be said and not said: ‘The experience of racism is difficult to define without the use of storytelling … . The real story that is told is often between the lines’ (Watt 1999: p. 54). The discursive shift from ‘victim’ to ‘survivor’ cannot be achieved through some linguistic sleight of hand, but by a serious and prolonged engagement with the micropolitics of violation and connection, of how chains of meaning defer to other chains of meaning, each with their own implications in terms of oppression or opportunity. Practical steps towards such a politically aware practice in relation to narrative and meaning may be found in the recent work of the mental health survivor movement, for example, in engaging directly with the speech and symbolisation of the internal ‘voices’ that people may hear (see Coleman and Smith 1997; Coleman 1999). Conventionally, this may be rendered meaningless as ‘symptoms’ of mental illness. However, closer examination may reveal complex and contradictory narrative elements, both re-enacting internalised oppressive, selfpunitive and regulatory discourses, but also comprising elements of parody, resistance and creativity, which may be harnessed in enabling people to restructure both internal and external power relations. Conventionally, people in powerless positions may have come to story their experiences of distress and abuse within a narrative of ‘problems’, in which their personal identity becomes so intertwined with that of ‘the problem’ that they may tend to see themselves (or be defined by powerful others) as ‘the problem’. In turn, such definitions may easily be taken up and magnified within professional discourses that may tend to individualise difficulties (Milner 2001). In order to challenge these interlocking narratives that prevent people having any possibility of power in resolving or acting in relation to ‘the problem’, Michael White and David Epston devised a ‘re-storying’ approach to detach or externalise ‘the problem’ from the problematised person. For example, the difficulties of a young boy leading an overtly antisocial lifestyle may no longer be personalised by defining him as a ‘delinquent’, and instead the sets of problematic attitudes and behaviours may be re-storied as a separate entity, ‘mischief’, which may be seen to have both attractive and destructive aspects, and to have ‘taken over’ much of (but not all of) the boy’s recent life, and significant aspects of


the lives of those around him. Everyone may be seen to have some power (intentionally or otherwise) in influencing the particular trajectory that ‘mischief’ takes. Such an approach may offer all concerned the opportunity to create new narratives that both describe their particular relationship with ‘the problem’ – how it has impacted upon them – and situate them in positions where they may see themselves as able to act differently in relation to ‘mischief’. In turn, this may open up a space for the person most intimately identified with ‘the problem’ to refuse their objectification and specification within ‘familiar’ narratives, and to start to construct and perform a new identity with the support of key allies. In doing so, they may reclaim elements of other self-stories that may have been suppressed while ‘the problem’ held sway, and also catch hold of externally available narrative elements, either within local ‘micro’ cultures or across wider cultural domains, which offer emancipatory possibilities. For example, a woman seeking to re-author her place within the organisation of domestic life may re-present herself to other family members in narratives that speak of her frustrations and unfulfilled capacities, at the same time connecting these with elements from available ‘women-changing’ stories drawn from friends, neighbours, workplace, media, fiction, and so on. If sustainable change is to be achieved, new narratives must be grounded in, and make sense in terms of, the particular sets of meanings and orientations that already exist within the situation, or may be encountered in the discursive structures that surround it. A narrative that is imposed will carry the taint of oppressive force: it may secure temporary compliance but will not be owned. New stories that are too confrontational and disrespectful of current norms and practices are unlikely to gain a ‘foothold’. It may not be feasible to ‘substitute a dominant discourse with its suppressed other’, but it may be possible to juxtapose elements of each in order to create a more ‘ambivalent structure’ which may offer greater possibilities for change (Byrne and McCarthy 1999: pp. 96–7). In a micro-scale version of Gramsci’s ‘war of position’, opportunity may come through exploiting points of contradiction and dissonant elements within existing narratives, finding the ‘gaps’ that may start to destabilise their hegemony. These gaps may be within the personal stories within which people define themselves and their relationships with others, and within the wider context of the ‘socioculturally constructed discursive complexes by which people are positioned’ (Kaye 1999: p. 35). Unlike the more extreme ambitions


of structural activists, narrative practitioners may have more modest intentions in terms of changing the terms of the everyday processes of people’s lives: From a critical poststructural perspective, it is not a question of overcoming domination once and for all, but rather the ongoing negotiation of power and identity. (Healy 1999: p. 130) Within a critical approach to deconstructive narrative or therapeutic work, there is a need to recognise a second set of power relations that lie alongside those of the people’s living situations: those that may exist between the worker and the client or user. Just as Derrida explored the power paradoxes implicit in the activity of deconstructing text, so it is important for practitioners to be critically aware of how they may have to take a position of power in order to overturn conventional understandings and thereby expose issues of power and violation. An ‘ethical’ stance on social justice is necessary in order to undertake any deconstructive practice. In practical terms, there may be a need to ‘take control of an interview in order to let the other have a voice, to be empowered’, in order for the process of deconstruction to get under way and the gaps in the surface veneer of narratives to start to emerge. This process is inherently ‘violent’ in the sense of seizing a position of legitimated professional authority, but this violence is necessary ‘in order to deconstruct the violence in people’s lives at the social, political, legal, media-technological, sexual or physical levels’ (Larner 1999: p. 40). Thus it is essential for the worker both to perform the power and simultaneously deconstruct its (institutional) basis; to remain, to some degree, the ‘expert’ on deconstructing and on social justice, while debunking any pretence to be ‘expert’ on the experience of the other, or on how any gaps in narratives might be filled. Maintaining a potentially awkward and painful dialogue around how power may be experienced ‘provides the very context in which deconstructing [practice] can proceed’ (ibid.: p. 41). Viewed in this way, a deconstructive approach to re-storying is not about some humanist dream of ‘the individual’ reclaiming their autonomous life through authoring ‘a unitary, integrated identity or self-story’ (ibid.: p. 31). It is also very different from the structural activist vision of a homogeneous collectivity engaging in an antagonistic struggle with a dominant group. Instead it describes a practice that is a continuum between personal and collective struggle, one that aims to work creatively with the contradictions that inhere within, or emerge from, both personal narratives and the broader discursive


structures with which they are interconnected. It is a process of simultaneously working with, and subtly transforming, the terms of personal, familial and cultural discourses: one that takes account of unique circumstances and situations, but can nevertheless aggregate to bring about significant shifts within the power relations of wider patterns of social and cultural structuring.

5 Hidden Depths: Reclaiming Emotionality

In the preceding chapters, I have explored both structural and poststructural perspectives and argued that any analysis of power relations would need to take account of dynamics and interactions taking place at both material and discursive levels of social relations. However, even this may be insufficient to capture the breadth of analysis that may be required in order to examine the operation of power in all its manifestations. In this chapter, I will discuss what may constitute a third discrete level of social relations: that of emotionality. This may be seen to be an aspect of social experience that has tended to be marginalised, not only within modernist discourse, but also within many critical approaches to analysis. Perhaps the most important key to opening up this arena to critical interrogation is the various theoretical and practice traditions that have developed out of psychoanalysis. Although these may touch on issues of oppression, they have tended to remain predominantly grounded within modernism, and hence lack any clear framework for analysing the operation of power. In addressing this weakness, there may be useful potential contributions from recent developments, particularly in the sociology of emotions, in terms of exposing some of the wider issues of power that structure, or are structured by, forms of emotional expression. Within this body of work there is much debate as to how to define or conceptualise ‘emotion’, and there have been various strategies whereby to try to collapse emotion into some other category – as an adjunct to rationality, as a form of behaviour or as an aspect of bodily physiology. While some form of conceptualisation is clearly important in order to progress this discussion, there is a danger of falling into the modernist trap of defining it too narrowly and precisely – and thereby 97


constructing a category of experience that may exclude aspects and connections that could be significant in an analysis of power relations. I will therefore start with a broad definition of the field of emotionality as comprising a range of experiences and expressions that may be internal to the person or emerge as part of social interaction, and which encompass states of feeling, non-rational or intuitive assessments of people or situations, and configurations of energies or drives. Such descriptions start to overlap with some understandings of spirituality, but I would not think it appropriate to subsume all aspects of spiritual experience within any conception of emotionality.

Emotionality under modernism Expressions such as passion, desire and distress mark out a territory that is alien to the ordered surfaces of modernity, and have thereby posed particular difficulties for the modernist project since its inception. Emotions may be seen to be integral to everyday ‘life-politics’, playing a crucial role in ‘communication, commitment and cooperation with others’ (Giddens 1992: p. 202). They may also have the capacity to speak out against conformity, oppression, abuse, to aspire to something better than the status quo, and the potential to rouse a ‘rabble’ of isolated and discontented elements into a fighting force for change. Within many traditional societies, the coding and regulation of powerful or disturbing emotions has been closely linked to systems of spiritual belief and religious practice, or to more secular celebrations and festivals in which some ‘Lord of Misrule’ could preside over a temporary and circumscribed suspension of conventional constraints. In many cultures, heightened emotional states may have been encouraged as part of religious ceremonies or valued as mystical revelations. Alongside this, spiritualised discourses, such as those around witchcraft or demonic possession, could be deployed to separate out the responsibility for any difficult or subversive manifestations of emotionality from the actual people expressing them, and these expressions could then be controlled through culturally and religiously sanctioned rituals. Such forms of ordering and directing emotionality may be seen to have fallen apart with the transition to modernity. As rationality replaced organised spirituality as a guarantor of the social order, emotionality, no longer tied in to social constructions of spirituality, presented itself as a potential ‘loose cannon’, a powerful force that

Reclaiming Emotionality 99

threatened to scandalise reason and undermine the smooth running of society. Not only was emotion potentially disruptive to the sway of rationality, it also had a very specific capacity to carry messages about the operation of injustice and oppression: ‘A very large class of human emotions results from real, anticipated, recollected, or imagined outcomes of power and status relations’ (Kemper 1984: p. 371). Emotionality may thus be seen as both a socially structured and a socially structuring force, playing a crucial role in both the maintenance and the transformation of social relations (Barbalet 1998) – particularly through providing ‘the “missing link” between “personal troubles” and broader “public issues” of social structure’ (Williams and Bendelow 1998: p. xvii). The preservation of modernity has depended on the manipulation and subordination of emotion through the deployment of a range of discursive strategies. One approach has been to exclude, trivialise or devalue emotion. Within ‘public’ discourses, it has been denied the words to speak itself, and it has been shut off within the world of the ‘primitive’, the ‘childish’ or the ‘feminine’: In our dominant tradition [emotionality] has not been seen as an aid to understanding and action, but rather as an impediment, even an evil. We have a long tradition of trying to dispense with, or at least to control and neutralise, emotionality. (Baker Miller 1988: p. 39) It has been represented as the inferiorised term of a mental/emotional dualism, and signified as belonging with ‘the body’, ‘nature’ and ‘the feminine’, rather than the higher world of ‘civilisation’, ‘culture’ and (masculine) citizenship. The very right to modernist citizenship has, at various points, depended on the ability both to control emotionally ‘unruly’ others (women, children, colonised peoples, the working classes, and so on), and to achieve ‘mastery’ over passions within (Venn 1997). It has been conventional for members of the aristocratic or bourgeois classes to construct themselves as ‘gentlemen’ and ‘ladies’, expressing emotion only in a ‘correct’ and ritualised manner that avoids disclosure of any real desire or vulnerability. By contrast, in class-based literary and other discourses, members of the peasant and working classes may be situated so that they appear ‘earthy’ and ‘common’, representations of an almost ‘animal’ sensuality. Similarly, racist oppression may be seen to operate through specific discourses that impact on possibilities for emotionality available to ‘black’ people (and, conversely, a reciprocal distortion of that available to ‘white’ people):


Blacks, like women, have been constructed as possessing the characteristics that are negatively valued in white western culture, for example, emotionality, sexuality and hedonism… . Racism reproduces itself not only … at an economic and social level. (Henriques et al. 1984: p. 89) An alternative approach has been to develop strategies for channelling, sanitising and managing emotion. Within the early modern period, it could be reconstructed in more anodyne form as ‘romance’, ‘sentiment’ or spiritual ‘fervour’. In later modernity, it has tended to become constituted as a commodity that may be consumed, induced or traded within an ‘emotion industry’: From psychiatrists to Agony Aunts, psychotherapists to GPs, social workers to self-help manuals, we are increasingly advised or instructed, encouraged or cajoled on how best to ‘manage’ our emotions, resolve our ‘troubles’ and ‘make the most’ of our lives, thereby achieving our ‘full potential’. (Williams 2001: p. 10) In his critique of current ‘post-emotional’ society, Mestrovic (1997) suggests that emotion has become detached from any connection with the experience or real social relations, and has been ‘McDonaldised’, able to be synthesised within theme parks and heritage centres or, more sinisterly, within media or political constructions of national mourning (as with the orchestration of Princess Diana’s funeral) or ethnic identity (as in the mobilisation of violence within the Balkans). While modernity may be dressed up, at the level of ideology and discourse, to appear fair, open and natural, it may come to feel very different to those subjected within its structures. There may be significant disjunctions and contradictions between how people are supposed to see their situation and their lived experience of it. And modernist strategies for suppressing or subordinating emotion may, at times, appear somewhat ‘leaky’. Just as discursive attempts to prohibit and regulate sexuality served to imbue it with a paradoxical power and a seditious importance (Foucault 1981), so too modernist attempts to repress or manipulate emotionality may be seen to have given it a ‘perverse’ status as a carrier of messages around oppression and resistance: ‘power … can be said to create emotionality’ (Lutz 1996). Julia Kristeva suggests that ‘the movement of material contradictions’ may generate the emotional drives and energies of the ‘semiotic’, which may, in turn, spill out into and disrupt the symbolic order (1984: p. 119). Such ‘gut’ awareness of unfairnesses and oppressions, and outrage against


assaults and abuses, may potentially provide a motive force for social change and transformation – or may remain internalised and fuel mental or emotional distress. Conversely, for those situated in positions of relative power under modernity, in order to continue to ‘play the game’, it may be necessary to dissociate from any awareness of how it may be experienced by those on the receiving end of exploitation or abuse – and forms of rationalisation may be employed in order to disqualify both their own and others’ feelings. Economically and politically excluded people may be blamed for their misfortune, and any empathy with their distress minimised through constructing them in categories such as ‘bogus asylum seekers’, ‘single parents’ or ‘scroungers’. A righteous sense of indignation may be used to cover up and cut off from more worrying and intuitive concerns of being complicit in the degradation of others. An extreme instance of this may be found in the ways that perpetrators of sexual abuse and rape often have ways of rationalising their behaviour as fair, consensual or even to the benefit of the victim – framed within a discursive structure in which the victim may perhaps be seen as ‘asking for it’ or enjoying it. Not only may a dulling of emotional sensitivities be necessary for the continuance of modernist relations of domination and subordination, but the possibilities of emotional closeness in social relationships may also be politically dangerous to the social order. Despite the various strategies for marginalising emotion that have characterised modernism, in practice, the exclusion of emotionality has never been total. Particularly for many members of subordinated groups, the realities of day-to-day survival may dictate a degree of interdependency grounded in a wider sharing of feelings of vulnerability, with the formation of ‘webs’ of emotional support and connection. These affective bonds may have the potential to develop into a more seditious glue, bonding people together as ‘comrades’, ‘brothers’ or ‘sisters’ in collective struggles against shared disadvantage or oppression. For members of dominant groups, maintaining authority may entail sacrificing the immediacy of desire in order to be able to act autonomously without being constrained by emotional dependencies, or displaying any signs of vulnerability or ‘weakness’. Even within the domestic sphere, men may typically ‘hold back’ their emotionality, so that ‘love’, openness and vulnerability may tend to be differentially located with those in subordinated positions (Duncombe and Marsden 1993). In this way, unsettling desires or personal weaknesses may


conveniently be associated with – or projected on to – those social groupings that have been deemed unfit to take on full ‘citizenship’ status, such as women and children. Within modernist thought, a fundamental strategy for taking away the potential political force of emotion has been its splitting into ‘objective’ manifestations and ‘subjective’ feelings, within the respective modernist intellectual traditions of positivism and humanism. The marginalisation of emotionality has been particularly evident in relation to the dominant modernist discourses of social ‘science’, which have, until recently, tended to exclude any consideration of emotionality as an aspect of social relations worthy of study. Within a discursive structure defined only by questions of classification and measurement, emotionality has very largely been ignored as a phenomenon – except for its physiological manifestations in terms of particular states of arousal. Here, emotion became redefined (and concealed) as an attribute of ‘the body’, belonging to the world of instinct and nature, of ‘fight’, ‘flight’ and appetite, and divorced from any form of social context or meaning. Emotion has had an uneasy relationship to humanist discourses. Some have maintained a clear subordination of ‘the emotional’ to ‘the rational’, for example in Kantian philosophy. Similarly, within Classical literary and artistic traditions, emotional expression has been regulated by rational canons of aesthetics and literary criticism that stressed the importance of form and order – fitting comfortably with the overall ethos of modernism. However, other humanist discourses may be seen to have permitted some more potentially troubling irruptions of emotionality or distress within subjective experience. Early on within the development of Enlightenment thought, David Hume (1969) struggled with the vexed question of feelings and accorded them an importance in their own right as, in some sense, coming before and not being constituted by rationality. He recognised emotion (or ‘passion’) as a primary source of personal motivation, which then had to be guided and controlled by reason. In the early twentieth century, the writings of another influential modernist, T.S. Eliot, while reflecting a strong commitment to upholding a literary and aesthetic order, nevertheless allowed dangerous and disturbing feelings to break through in some of his poetry. In ‘The Waste Land’ (1963), uncomfortable desires found expression at the margins of the text – located within a split-off persona, or in obscure footnotes quoted only in Latin.


Set against these predominantly rationalist traditions of humanism, aspects of emotional experience were allowed much greater prominence in the ‘irrationalism’ of romanticism, existentialism and psychoanalysis. While romanticism signalled a revolt against the suppression of feeling under classical discourses, it still served to maintain ‘the underlying assumption of rationalism – that reason and passions are firmly opposed’ (Crawford et al. 1992: p. 17). Furthermore, within the discourses of romanticism, rather than being seen as potentially a response to situations of oppression, emotion, like nature, could be viewed as beautiful and ‘exotic’: as ‘a great keyboard on which our highest sentiments are played out’ (Taylor 1989). Only very particular constructions of feeling could be permitted – perhaps gentle and contemplative, or, alternatively, dramatic and intense, but in a way that was also stylised and somehow divorced from everyday realities of living. The raw and contradictory force of emotion could be carefully filtered out within discourses that substituted ersatz reactions such as ‘sentiments’ in place of any real engagement with social and personal issues. Artistic devices such as ‘pathos’ could be deployed to engender a distancing sympathy, as opposed to any more involving empathetic forms of connection. Emotional awareness of (collective) power inequalities could be concealed behind a ruthless individualism linked with essentialist visions of a personal driving force or ‘Spirit’, or a narrow focus on the existential ‘I–thou’ encounter divorced from any social context (as in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Buber, respectively). The challenge posed to the rational authority of modernism comes through more forcefully within psychoanalytic approaches to emotional experience. The critical edge to this tradition came through both the emphasis of the importance of emotional life in its own right and the theorisation of mechanisms whereby this crucial aspect of social relations could be subject to systematic and potentially damaging forms of repression. However, some of the radical potential of Sigmund Freud’s work was constrained by its insertion within the modernist dualism between nature and culture. In his formulations, he theorised a conflict between the instinctual drives of the Id and the culture-based expectations of the super-ego, presided over by an ego governed by principles of rationality. He saw it as essential for the rational ego to have ultimate control, and for instinctual drives to be subjugated (however painfully) to the necessary values of ‘civilisation’. Thus emotion remained marginalised as a problem area for civil order – as a set of potentially dangerous forces to be contained, rather than an integral element of human social experience.


Shifts within modernism: emotion in psychology and sociology While psychoanalysis raised the difficult issue of emotionality, the mainstream tradition of psychology was established in a way that tended to exclude emotionality from serious consideration. Set up within the positivist tradition of scientific enquiry, the initial emphasis was on the ‘objective’ manifestations of human experience: only that which could be measured and would appear consistent in repeated experiments was seen as being of importance. Within such discourse, there has been a great reluctance to engage with emotionality in its own right, with it being subsumed either within behaviour (such as facial or bodily expressions) or, more recently, within the cognitive evaluation of situations (see Harré 1986; Crawford et al. 1992). Initially, cognitive theory was located within a rationalist paradigm: feelings were not allowed to intrude into the processes whereby thoughts and beliefs guided actions and the effects and consequences of actions could inform future patterns of thought and belief. However, just as behaviourism, on its own, had come to be seen as an inadequate explanation of the complexity of human transactions, so the limitations of cognitive behavioural approaches started to be recognised within psychology with a rediscovery of the importance of emotion (see Arnold 1960). A sanitised emotionality was allowed a place as long as it was to be seen as a functional part of a process in which people appraised and evaluated the various stimuli of their environment. Subsequently, and more radically, emotion started to be taken seriously, in its own right, as central to how people act in the world (Zajonc 1980). Rather than seeing emotion as just an adjunct to processes of cognitive appraisal, it could be understood as comprising its own condensed and non-verbal form of meaning, both as ‘feeling’ memories and as part of comprehending current situations (Frijda 1986). This work remained situated firmly within a positivist paradigm, with emotions, like cognitions and behaviours, being seen as belonging to an objective world in which human organisms interacted, in potentially predictable ways, with their natural environment. Emotions would be seen, not as disturbing and disruptive passions, but as ‘a motivator of adaptive behaviour’ (Safran and Greenberg 1991c: p. 352). This approach started to converge with how emotion had been construed within the other (and hitherto less influential) pole of modernist psychology: humanistic approaches. This tradition, informed by an uneasy synthesis of American individualism and existentialist and


Nietzschean ideas, presumed an inherent drive towards a ‘natural’ wholeness and integration of all aspects of personal subjectivity, and an assertive ‘being-in-the-world’ that was nevertheless potentially in harmony with an environment of other human subjects: ‘The innermost core of a man’s nature … is basically socialised, forward moving, rational and realistic’ (Rogers 1961: pp. 90–1). While the process of ongoing ‘self-actualisation’ could (temporarily) be blocked or deflected by external circumstances, it could potentially be overcome by an effective mobilisation of inner ‘organismic’ resources. The possibility of more fundamental contradictions between psychic renewal and social oppression were ruled out within an unswerving belief in the essential harmony of individual and society. Gestalt and other expressive psychotherapies had seen emotion as an essential part of the awareness necessary in order to process experience and promote personal ‘growth’ (Perls 1969; Stevens 1971; Gendlin 1981). Grounded within romanticism and distrusting rationalisation, ‘cathartic’ displays of emotion could be seen as an essential part of rediscovering a ‘true’ sense of self. These could often involve people’s expression of ‘resentment’ at how they felt that they had been treated by others, but responsibility for such feelings, and the onus for change, would remain firmly with the individual. Thus, certain evocations of emotion would be an integral part of an individual rebalancing their subjectivity with the world around them – and hence in bringing about adaptive change. In this way, both objectivist cognitive and subjectivist humanistic perspectives have come to construct an emotionality that may play a significant – and quasi-independent – role in bringing about the positive adaptation of the individual to their circumstances. Such developments may be seen to signal certain important shifts within the dualistic structure of modernist thought: a move to transcend the split between objective and subjective and the associated inferiorisation or suppression of emotionality beneath its opposite term, rationality. In one sense the emotional ‘cat’ is now out of the ‘bag’, but it is still rendered a remarkably well-mannered beast: feelings may now be welcome as long as they lead the person along a path of positive adaptation. What neither psychological tradition allows for is the possibility of painful and discordant feelings or desires that could lead to resistance or revolt against a social order that may be experienced as damaging or oppressive. As will be discussed in more detail later, the third major tradition within psychology, that of psychoanalysis, is the one that has both


recognised the prevalence of conflictual and disturbing feelings, and, at the same time, sought to construct therapeutic technologies whereby to subordinate them more successfully to the domination of the rational (ego) and the dictates of a potentially oppressive social order. Although acknowledging the pain and distress that may result from internalising and suppressing feelings of outrage, anger and loss, these issues remain carefully separated out as unique experiences of trauma that need to be worked through on an individual basis. The goal remains one of adaptation to the existing social order, rather than focusing or mobilising emotion as a force for social change, leading to an orthodoxy that has doubted that ‘political’ concepts such as ‘power or equality … are appropriate for talking about emotional life’ (Craib 1995: p. 155). Some time after emotionality made its entrance within psychology, it has started to be recognised within sociology and cultural studies – although initially having to struggle against those committed to positivist or rationalist modes of enquiry (Eichler, 1981). As with psychology, there was a resistance against allowing emotions to emerge as ‘a sui generis realm of personal meaning’ (Chodorow 1999: p. 287). Within social constructionist approaches (Harré 1986; Gergen 1994), emotion can come to be conflated with its social articulation, so that it is not possible to conceive of a feeling that cannot be spoken or acted out – perhaps because it may be at odds with social expectation. Instead, codes of emotional exchange are seen as integral to the construction and maintenance of social cohesion: ‘expressions are not, then, the “outer” signal of “inner” feelings, but are signs in the networks of social relations and interdependencies’ (Burkitt 1997: p. 45). This approach firmly excludes any consideration of the potentially disturbing power of emotions, focusing instead on a modernist concern with ‘the social function of emotions, in particular their role in social control’ (Parrott and Harré 1996: p. 2). A similar conflation of emotion with its expression may be found in discourse-based approaches: Affect is culturally ordered and does not exist apart from thought… . Feelings are not substances to be discovered in our blood but social practices organised by stories. (Rosaldo 1984: pp. 137, 143) Thus, instead of some prior emotionality being reflected in what people say or write, the actual form taken by emotional expression may be triggered by specific discursive and cultural contexts. Spaces


and specifications for pre-defined feelings may exist in available narrative structures: ‘language itself … contributes to the cultural construction of emotions’ (Jackson 1993: p. 207). Within this paradigm, discourse remains the crucial mode of social interaction and structuring: emotions appear as individual experiences interspersed ‘on cue’ within linguistic or cultural scripts. Even relatively unruly passions, such as ‘falling in love’, are seen to be invoked by, or to fall into place within, conventional discursive structures – for example, there may be peculiarly western ways in which moments of suspense, anxiety, elation and euphoria are already ‘storied’ for the person to occupy, with particular versions depending on gender, class, and so on. However, some writers have not felt comfortable with social constructionist or discursive approaches as a full and complete explanation of emotion, but have seen no way of exploring feelings directly as part of sociological enquiry. While emotions may be acknowledged as existing in their own right, they may be viewed as deep and impenetrable: ‘we have no access either to our own emotions or those of others’ (Jagger 1989: p. 148). They may be grasped only in as much as they may appear as a trace or a residue within discourse, in the ways that they are ‘talked and written about’ (Jackson 1993: p. 207). However, paradoxically, ‘talking about emotions … can often be a very effective way of avoiding the experience of emotions, and/or of hiding emotions that are experienced from oneself and/or of hiding them from others’ (Craib 1995: p. 156). Thus, while a discourse-based approach may be useful in that it allows the possibility of studying the rules and norms that govern the range of permissible expression within a given discursive context, it nevertheless offers little prospect of engaging directly with the possibilities of jarring or discordant forms of emotionality – the raw hurts, angers and distresses that may be experienced by those subject to oppression and abuse, and which may often be suppressed or may emerge in forms that do not conform with socially defined norms, perhaps to spread their own ripples of dissent, influencing and impacting directly on others without any form of mediation through discourse. Thus, emotion is now ‘out’ to some extent within modernist and postmodernist theory – but it remains relatively safe. Just as the binary social divisions based on class, gender and ‘race’ have come to be blurred (to some extent) within late (or post) modernism, and are understood in more complex and pluralistic ways, so too there would seem to have been some relaxation of the need to subordinate the emotional. This is probably best understood as an accommodation


within modernism, rather than a fundamental break from it. The overrationalisation of the mental is replaced by an acceptance of the legitimacy of emotionality as long as it remains contained within prevailing discursive structures, augmenting rather than disturbing the methods by which the individual may be invited to accommodate her/himself within the existing social order. In this way, emotions may be seen no longer as potentially subversive, and are seen as completing rather than threatening the wholeness of the western subject. This shift may be seen as perhaps as much a response to dissatisfaction with the painful self-discipline to which dominant groups have subjected themselves, as to any effective articulation of emotional dissidence by those subordinated.

The question of desire In order to avoid the impasse of total social determinism, any attempt to theorise the social and personal relations of emotionality must take account of some conceptualisation of desire (or, perhaps, spirit) as an active force impelling people towards emotional expression and interconnection with others. Just as Marx proposed that the necessities of physical survival should be seen as driving people towards economic participation, so some form of desire may need to be understood as that which underpins participation in a range of intimate and more distant emotional relations. However, it is important not to fall into the trap of essentialising particular configurations of desire either as ‘natural’, or as functional in terms of promoting social adjustment – for example, in the elevation of heterosexual over homosexual inclinations. Concepts of desire fit uneasily with the traditional modernist split between ‘mind’ and ‘body’, leading to a tendency either to ‘mentalise’ desire as the emotional component of rational motivation, or to place it outside the realm of the social as a primitive ‘bodily’ instinct belonging to the world of ‘nature’. The latter position formed a starting point for Freud, but the implications of his formulation did not easily remain within this dualistic bracketing. Drives were seen to arise in connection with contact, or the frustrated desire for contact, with other human beings – forms of contact that may be seen to take place within specific social, cultural and familial contexts. As Julia Kristeva argues, ‘Freudian theory is more than a theory of dualism, it is a theory of contradiction and struggle’, as soon as the biological becomes transformed through its articulation within historically specific social contexts (1999: p. 327).


Following on from Freud, Lacan developed a concept of ‘desire’ that was born out of particular processes of emotional identification with, and severance from, significant others, and then became encoded (and largely excluded) within systems of symbolic representation, as the infant became inducted into the world of language and discourse. At the very point at which an infant is enabled to speak and think as ‘I’, s/he also became cut off from all the flows and rhythms of her/his intuitive and emotional experience. Lacan suggested a stark choice – the price that has to be paid for the social power to be gained by entry into the world of language is having to submit to the rules of operation of the symbolic order, and hence to lose touch with much of one’s previous experiences of desiring. While Lacan may be seen to be closely linked with the modernist tradition, in terms of maintaining the absoluteness of the rationality/emotionality dualism, he also started to play with its absurdity. Although his story of the infant’s entry into discourse is construed as if it were a universal phenomenon, it would seem to be no coincidence that the linguistic signifier that he saw as achieving this repression was ‘Le Nom’/‘Le Non’, or ‘The Name of the Father’. This is a signifier that may, at the very least, be seen to relate specifically to patriarchal forms of social organisation, and may potentially provide a metaphor for the entire modernist project: the specific form of sacrifice that ruling-class western men have paid in order to maintain their domination. In his writing style, Lacan tended to undermine the concreteness of the logocentric discourse to which everyone was supposed to be subjected. He even provided the concepts for the very aspects of emotional experience that he claimed could never be grasped or expressed. He coined the term ‘jouissance’ to describe (somewhat wistfully) a hypothetical experience of emotional connection which is rendered totally inaccessible by the (apparently) rigid and total exclusion of desire within his developmental schema. This unsettling combination of rigidity and ambiguity characterises his treatment of gender. While making (outrageous) assertions that women, by definition, could not experience desire in their own right, but only as a reflection of male power and repression, he also located the (not quite possible) experience of jouissance within the feminine. In doing so, he left the door open for feminist psychoanalysts, such as Kristeva and Irigaray, to start to speak of the possibility of an intuitive emotionality that is not quite excluded, and may have the potential to interfere with and intrude into the masculine-dominated symbolic order.


With both Freudian and Lacanian formulations, the ‘difficult’ aspects of desire are seen to be largely suppressed within the prevailing social order: conformity to the dictates of modernity is achieved, but only at the price of considerable psychic violence and the possibility of ongoing mental distress. Such concepts of desire are inherently radical: they belong to neither ‘mind’ nor ‘body’, although they impact upon both. They start to theorise the operation of interpersonal energies which may be controlled, suppressed or distorted as the person is subjected within the prevailing discourses of ‘civilisation’. These processes will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 6.

Critical perspectives: power relations and emotionality In common with much of modernist thought, structural and poststructural critical theory has tended to overlook the potential significance of emotional relations as a possible site of oppression and political struggle in its own right. Instead, emotion has tended to be subsumed within an analysis of discursive or material relations – for example, in its signification in texts or in its implication for the social organisation of caring work. While the postmodern turn opened up the possibility of a more multifaceted analysis of experience – one that was no longer tied to conventional ‘grand narrative’ ways of seeing (and not seeing) the world – the emphasis on representations rather than reality tended to enable only a relatively shallow and superficial engagement with the depth and significance of emotional experience. Some of the most productive developments have come from critical appropriations of psychoanalysis or psychotherapy, starting with the work of the Frankfurt School in bringing together Marxist and Freudian perspectives. More recently, Franz Fanon (1986) explored the emotional alienation of ‘black’ people within racist and colonial social orders, being given little choice but to take on and live out a ‘white’ world-view, while simultaneously being inferiorised within it. Similarly, in terms of practice as well as theory, feminists have argued that feelings have a political significance in their own right, and issues of emotional oppression require to be placed firmly on the agenda for analysis. Having embraced ideology as a crucial arena for struggle – hence the importance of consciousness-raising groups – many women found that this was insufficient on its own to explain their experience of oppression at an emotional level:


We saw a clear link between our ‘personal’ feelings as women and the political structure we live in… . But even in a growing movement active in the world, and with a radical restructuring of domestic life, our feelings and relationships did not change easily. Women were gaining new power but were continuing to feel depressed, inadequate and confused. (Ernst and Goodison 1981: pp. 3–4) This suggested a need to integrate concepts of power in any understanding of emotional relations. Jean Baker Miller has suggested how emotionality may be constructed differently within dominant and subordinate groups. For many women and members of other inferiorised groups, the range of permitted emotional expression may tend to exclude feelings that may be seen as challenging of authority: Any subordinate is in a position that constantly generates anger. Yet this is one of the emotions that no dominant group ever wants to allow in subordinates… . It is … made to appear that subordinates have no cause for anger; if they feel anything like it, there is something wrong with them. (1983: p. 2) Anger may be suppressed by some combination of external force and internalised prohibitions – for example, in many cultures women may find that anger may not fit within available discursive and emotional constructions of femininity. This may leave little alternative but to turn their anger in upon themselves – and it may then become manifested self-destructively, in forms such as depression, anxiety or selfharm (see Scherer et al. 1986). However, not all the anger of those experiencing oppression may be seen as taking on such destructive trajectories. Within modernity, systems of emotional regulation are by no means ‘water-tight’. Suitably channelled, feelings of anger and outrage may serve as a particularly powerful motivating force that can enable subordinated groups to bond together around common concerns and to mount a ‘spirited’ resistance against injustice (see Tavris 1982; Fricker 1991). For many western men, the position can be particularly contradictory. On the one hand, they may be inducted into social positions where the deployment of expressions of anger and aggression may form a normal part, not of protesting against their oppression or suffering, but of maintaining and competing for dominance within hierarchies. In order to ‘be like a man’, ‘boys are made to fear not being aggressive, lest they be found wanting, be beaten by another, or (worst


of all) be like a girl’ (Baker Miller 1991: p. 189). On the other hand, men will often have personal experience of being dominated, bullied or abused at the hands of other men, perhaps when placed in situations of relative powerlessness, or simply as part of the bruising experience of jostling for power within competitive environments. Within dominant modernist constructions of ‘masculinity’, they would be debarred from sharing their intimate feelings about this – their hurts, distresses and anger. Such power-laden conflicts may be seen to be at the core of many western men’s experience of emotionality. Their anger towards other men which cannot be expressed directly may need to seek an outlet elsewhere, and may take the form of physical or sexual aggression – an intense rage ‘that is displaced onto and acted out against women and children’ (McLeod and Saraga 1988: p. 42). This may be seen to link with other dynamics that may be played out between parents of both sexes and their children within modern forms of family organisation. Alice Miller (1983) argues that, although childrearing practices have changed substantially over the past two centuries, the fundamentally oppressive principles underlying them have not altered. There remains an implicit expectation that parents of young children impose a specifically emotional form of domination under which a child’s ‘will’ is systematically subordinated. Various strategies of discipline and training, from intimidatory sanctions to the (threatened) withdrawal of parental love, may be employed so as to suppress children’s ability to articulate, or even be aware of, strong feelings that may be seen as challenging. If successfully inducted, such suppression may become internalised, with the child taking responsibility for policing their own obedience and docility. Nevertheless, although contained by such repressive strategies, ‘the forbidden and therefore unexpressed anger … does not disappear’. As internalised injunctions may preclude its expression towards parents or others in positions of authority, it may instead be taken out on those in subordinate or vulnerable positions ‘in various ways permissible and suitable for an adult’ (ibid.: p. 61). Thus, if those holding such feelings become parents, they may, quite unwittingly, come to take this anger out on their own children – thereby reproducing this pattern of emotional disqualification down the generations. As has been discussed earlier, the occupation of dominant positions within modernity may be seen to require an ongoing identification with rationality. However, there may be an inevitable price to pay for achieving this, in terms of the splitting off of emotional vulnerability:


It is because [Western] men identify with their reason, because of the Enlightenment identification between masculinity and reason, that they are thereby estranged from their emotions and feelings. This is systematically organised and structured. (Seidler 1990: p. 226) Nevertheless, while ‘white’ men may tend to be incoherent at expressing emotionality, this incoherence neatly conceals their vulnerability and may be effective in inviting (or forcing) subordinates to do their emotional ‘work’ for them. Inferiorised groups may face particular pressures to take on the expression of more vulnerable and intimate feelings, not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of those in dominant positions. Whereas ‘white’ people have monopolised claims to rationality, ‘emotion is completely Negro’ (Fanon 1992: p. 231). For example, black music has crossed over to ‘white’ audiences, expressing an openness to the depths and subtleties of emotions, such as sadness, hurt and tenderness, that ‘white’ people (particularly men) may have rendered themselves unable to articulate. Similarly, women may often be situated, discursively and economically, in positions where they may be given a ‘duty’ or responsibility to care emotionally for others – children, older relatives and, perhaps most crucially, men. This playing out of the modernist dichotomy between rationality and emotionality may be seen in the wider public/private split that constructed the modern family form as an oasis of emotionality, a ‘haven in a heartless world’ (Lasch 1977; see also Poster 1978). In this romanticisation, emotional relations came to appear central, rather than incidental, to the organisation of family life. Instead of being arranged for a variety of practical, economic, family and other reasons, marriage (or partnership) became based on an ideal of ‘love’, an apparently free choice by two people to spend their life together for emotional reasons. However, as feminist theorists have shown, this emotional bargain may actually be rather more complex than it appears. Women and men may enter ‘partnerships’ on a profoundly unequal basis in terms of material and economic relations, and this can serve to reinforce inequalities in the organisation of emotional relations: Women have been put in a position of being economically dependent within patriarchy, but the relationship between economic dependency and emotional dependency is not straightforward. Although this is not usually made explicit within the relationship, men’s dependency needs are most often met within marriage and


their emotional worries are processed by their wives. No equivalent place exists for women. (Eichenbaum and Orbach 1985: pp. 86–7) Thus women’s unequal social position may place them in the somewhat contradictory position of feeling dependent on men, but actually being depended on by men for the ‘servicing’ of their emotional needs: ‘for many women, being a dependent is synonymous not with receiving care, but with giving it’ (Graham 1983: p. 24). The distribution of emotional ‘work’ within western heterosexual and family relationships may typically be very unequal, with women having little choice but to take on the role of ‘recognising and meeting the emotional needs of household members’ (Duncombe and Marsden 1993: p. 234). As Delphy and Leonard (1992) argue, this asymmetry in expectation and performance is essentially exploitative – with ‘emotion work’ being systematically undervalued and rendered invisible. In one sense, rather than representing a form of disempowerment, western men’s characteristic modes of emotional illiteracy (such as the ‘strong, silent type’ or ‘Mr Angry’) may actually be deployed as a source of power within relationships, an aggressive withholding of vulnerability that constructs the other (woman/‘black’ person/child/social inferior) as emotionally ‘needy’, while simultaneously forcing them to supply the ‘missing’ range of more tender feelings that may be required (Canican 1989). However, in another sense, members of dominant groups may be seen to be losing out. As subordinate groups may typically have developed much greater facility with expressing and responding to emotion, they may be able to deploy this strength to advantage, typically in terms of establishing and maintaining networks of mutual support, but also as a basis for organising certain forms of collective resistance and assertive action.

Theorising emotionality as a distinct level of social experience From the foregoing discussion, it may be seen that, as one part of a strategy for suppressing dissidence within modernism, dominant groups have sought to construct a ‘way of seeing’ that privileges the importance of certain levels of social relations over others: rationality is recursively linked with instrumental activity, orderly behaviour and economic participation at the level of material relations. Thought and action, working together, offered the possibility of controlling unruly ‘nature’ and building a logical and efficient society. What this couplet


excluded was both a forceful medium of protest, and a way of forging common identifications and connections between those experiencing similar forms of vulnerability and distress. In order to unpick this strategy, it is necessary to reclaim emotionality as an aspect of social relations in its own right. If issues of emotion are to be rendered visible within analyses of social structures and interpersonal relations, it becomes important not just to subsume them within either discursive relations (how feelings may be articulated), or material relations (how feelings may be acted out on others – for example, through the use of violence). It may be argued that processes of repressing and distorting feelings and desires are as real an instance of oppressive relations as any other, and that emotions may serve as effective vehicles for the productive deployment of power. Just as it has proved valuable to identify the discursive as a level of social relations that is distinct from the material, so it may be important to offer the same degree of analytical separateness to emotionality. This suggests a revisiting and development of the Althusserian model of ‘levels’ within a social formation, in which emotionality may be seen as a potential site of power relations that is different from, but may connect with, the operation of power at discursive or material levels. Dispensing with any models of ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’, or making any assumptions as to the relative determining significance of particular levels or aspects of social experience, this offers the opportunity to open up a third arena for exploring how power may be enacted and contested – whether at the scale of the social formation as a whole, or in the more localised interactions of individual people. By using such a framework, not only would there be a basis for analysing the social and interpersonal relations of emotionality, but also for a study of how conflicting emotions, and their attendant power relations, may also be enacted within the psyche. Desires and distresses may be seen to be structured by a person’s insertion within specific patterns of recognition, domination or abuse, relating both to wider factors, such as gender, ‘race’, class, sexual orientation, age and (dis)ability, and to more localised experiences within more intimate familial and relationship settings. Oppressive aspects of social experiences may be internalised and people may take an active (if unconscious) role in policing themselves and securing their own subordination. In this way, emotionality may be seen to constitute a crucial level of social experience in its own right – with its own particular struggles, conflicts and contradictions. Such struggles may be seen to take place simultaneously at the scale of a social formation as a


whole and at the scale of functioning of particular individuals, with individual change potentially influencing societal change, and vice versa. Politically, this opens up the possibility of appreciating that personal experiences of oppression or dissatisfaction – which may be suppressed, concealed or internalised within a given social order – may nevertheless be acknowledged as ‘real’ and important, and may provide a key to bringing about emancipatory social change. The variety of ‘emotion words’ used to denote particular forms of feeling may be seen to differ widely between cultures and languages (Heelas 1996). It is important not to construct any general theories of emotion that are either predicated on some biological essentialism, or on some imperialist notion that certain western understandings of emotion have some universal applicability. Emotions may best be understood as the articulation and negotiation of desiring within particular histories and social contexts, and as intuitive appraisals of, and responses to, specific situations and circumstances (usually, but not always, involving relationships with others). Hence particular emotional ‘codes’ may arise within specific social and cultural settings. Particular forms of emotional expression may make immediate sense to others who have experienced similar circumstances, but may appear alien or strange to those in radically different gender, culture or class positions.

Witnessing and mobilising emotions: issues for practice The splitting off and disregard of emotional issues has been reflected, not just in modernist practice, but also in more critical and activist approaches – and this may be seen to limit their potential to bring about lasting and sustainable forms of social transformation. As Cherie Moraga argues, emotion cannot be bracketed away from struggles for emancipation and liberation: The danger lies in attempting to deal with oppression purely from a theoretical base. Without an emotional, heartfelt grappling with the source of our oppression, without naming the enemy within ourselves and outside of us, no authentic, non-hierarchical connection among oppressed groups can take place. (1981: p. 27) It is the organising (and distortion) of emotionality that may represent the primary site for ‘holding’ and internalising the damage and devastation that may result from histories of abuse and oppression. Thus,


given the particular roles that emotions may play as ‘carriers’ of messages around power and resistance, simply the acknowledgement or, to use Alice Miller’s phrase, the ‘enlightened witnessing’ of emotion may be seen to have an emancipatory political purpose. However, this may not be straightforward as emotional meanings are not always to be found ‘on the surface’. Expressions of hurt, anger or distress may have had to be suppressed in situations of powerlessness and vulnerability, and so may be held, largely outside awareness, as embodied or repressed emotional ‘memories’. Therefore, it is possible that emotions may emerge in ways that are tentative, coded or disguised, or spill out in ways that are unexpected, incoherent or out of control. Set against such needs for acknowledgement, mainstream practice traditions have sometimes served as very sophisticated strategies for disregarding the potential meaning of emotion, or of ‘hearing’ distress in such a way as to dissociate it from issues of inequality and oppression. Within psychiatry, ‘disordered’ emotionality can become labelled as the symptomatologies of biological processes – as the signs of ‘depression’, ‘mania’ or ‘borderline personality disorder’. No attempt may be made to engage with the content of emotion, to hear what it might be trying to say about past or present experiences. Similarly, within the legal discourses of protection in relation to children or vulnerable adults, there has been a tendency to disregard emotional evidence as inadmissible or too unreliable to ‘stand up’ in its own right. Instead, action (or inaction) has typically been dictated by the presence of physical injury or behavioural disturbance, or the victim’s ability to tell a consistent ‘factual’ story. In this way, the professional practices of modernity may ensure that only certain levels of social experience are allowed to ‘matter’ or have a bearing on outcomes. Moving beyond issues of diagnosis and assessment, many conventional approaches to intervention may similarly serve to suppress or marginalise emotionality. Within behavioural approaches, emotion may be effectively ignored. Thus, children ‘acting out’, having ‘temper tantrums’ or behaving obsessionally may be managed within structures of punishment and reinforcement, without any acknowledgement that ‘behavioural disorders’ may start to make sense as forms of emotional expression. Even within the wider scope of cognitive behavioural perspectives, there can be a tendency for emotion to remain sidelined, figuring only as negative or dysfunctional feelings (such as anxiety or depression) that need to be overcome as they may impede an individual’s goal achievement (Ellis


and Bernard 1985). Therapeutic work would consist of bolstering people’s capacity for instrumental rationality in order for them, once again, to construct themselves as modernist citizens: Cognitive therapies have traditionally emphasised the importance of adopting a scientific stance towards one’s experience as a way of controlling disruptive emotions. (Safran and Greenberg 1991b: p. viii) In subtle and non-confrontational ways, much of psychodynamic and humanistic practice, although allowing the ventilating of such ‘disruptive emotions’, may encourage people to reinsert them within frameworks of dominant meanings, making them appear ‘affectively comprehensible’ (Antonovsky 1979), thereby implicitly discounting how individual distress may reflect realities of injustice, oppression or discrimination (see also Masson 1992b). Alice Miller criticises conventional psychoanalysis as a ‘way of thinking that overlooks the actual imbalance of power’ (1985: p. 124). This ‘overlooking’ may be traced back to the point where Freud drew back from the revelations of sexual abuse he uncovered in ‘The Aetiology of Hysteria’ (1962). The implications of these – that abuse was widespread and that its emotional aftermath could be represented as mental distress – would seem to have been too hot for him to handle (Masson 1992a). His only defence was to reconstruct such expressions as arising out of children’s unacceptable fantasies, rather than as potentially real instances of the abuse of power – a rather desperate strategy of blaming the victim that has been perpetuated in much of subsequent therapeutic practice. In more recent years, as such issues have forced themselves more effectively into the therapeutic (and public) domain, this strategy of discounting what people may say has resurfaced in the construction of the ‘false memory syndrome’ (Enns et al. 1995). Despite this history, a background in psychoanalysis or psychotherapy can provide a training in listening to, and working with, emotion, which has enabled some professionals to start to hear the disturbing content of what children and adults may be expressing, and to challenge embedded ideologies of ‘overlooking’ this. Responding to feelings that link with experiences of abuse, violence, discrimination or exploitation – which may in turn relate to subjection within gender, racial, class, or other categories – can form the basis of a politicised practice that gradually unpicks the full realities of oppression: By uncovering the unconscious rules of the power game and the methods by which it attains legitimacy, we are certainly in a position to bring about basic changes. (Miller 1983: p. 62)


It is important to note that it may not necessarily be highly trained professionals who make the most effective ‘enlightened witnesses’: often it is someone who has gone through similar experiences that may be able to recognise the significance of certain cues or patterns of expression, or grasp intuitively the meanings that may come from particular configurations of feelings. To feel believed and, at least partially, understood may feel profoundly empowering to people who have undergone the potentially devastating experience of suffering domination and abuse, and were forced to suppress their feelings about this at the time. Nevertheless, the witnessing of distressing and disturbing feelings may be seen to constitute only the first stage of an emotionally emancipatory practice. Emotions may not only signal unfairnesses and abuses, but also may be crucial in mobilising energies to bring about changes that in some way start to redress these. Emotion may have the potential to focus a sense of motivation and purpose, both intra-psychically and collectively, and also to forge bonds of support and alliance between people. Emotional expression has been seen as integral to processes of change within many traditions of psychotherapy. Difficult and frightening feelings may be held, supported, re-enacted, reflected back, worked through and harnessed to drive forward some form of external action or psychic transformation. Conventionally, however, this would have been situated within a paradigm of social readjustment or ‘adaptational encounter’ (Lazarus 1991: p. 299). Emotions would be seen as an ‘instrumental mechanism’ in restoring a lost equilibrium, either within the person or between the person and their social environment. However, there is no reason why elements of these approaches could not be appropriated within a more emancipatory project, where emotion could be seen explicitly both as a guide to the realities of oppressions, and as a basis for focusing and mobilising energy for resistance and transformation. Such a critical practice is not necessarily the preserve of professionals. Just as people sharing common experiences of abuse or discrimination may make the most effective ‘enlightened witnesses’ for each other, so too may they be particularly effective in mobilising emotional energies for change. Within situations of mutual support and collective action, there may be less in terms of internal differentials of power and status to get in the way of generating a common ‘well’ of shared feelings and empathetic understandings. Similarly, professionals may be most effective if they allow their own experiences of oppression to be touched by the feelings expressed by those with whom they


are working – an emotional bonding may be possible that, to some degree, transcends conventional power hierarchies of ‘expert’ and ‘client’. This perspective would suggest the possibility of very different forms of practice in relation to the protection of those who may be vulnerable to abuse, discrimination or exploitation. Instead of rationally and behaviourally oriented professionals constructing an assessment and imposing a plan of intervention to reduce or manage risk, it might be more productive to seek to establish partnerships and connections at an emotional level, linking vulnerable people with others in a position to witness and empathise, and to mobilise their collective hurts and angers so that they, themselves, become more empowered to resist further oppression and change the nature of the social relationships in which such oppression might occur. Such an approach has been pioneered in initiatives such as women’s refuge movements and mental health survivor organisations, which have tended to operate at the fringes of, and with somewhat ambivalent relationships towards, mainstream service providers. It has yet to have much influence on dominant forms of practice.

6 Stepping Out: (De)constructing Identities

In Chapter 4, I examined how poststructuralism has provided new critical perspectives on culture, discourse and narrative. In Chapter 5, I explored how emotionality may constitute a further level of social relations at which power may be enacted. This chapter builds on both of these approaches in order to study how identities can be formed and performed, split and held together. In this way, the humanist notion of a subject-as-essence is deconstructed and replaced by a more complex analysis of how acting within the social relations of (late) modernity may require the cementing of disparate and contradictory elements of identity into individual or collective subjectivities. I start with a critical examination of the modernist emphasis on seeing actions as being initiated by coherent and self-directing subjects. Discourse approaches may unseat relatively fixed notions of essential ‘character’ or sense of ‘self’, and offer a more dynamic and critical understanding of identity (or more accurately, identities) as having to be performed or reiterated within particular contexts of social relations. Images of autonomy and consistency may start to be taken apart through psychoanalytic understandings of internal splitting and repression – although such analyses may need to be located more clearly within specific cultural and political contexts. This discussion of the construction of mental and emotional aspects of subjectivity leads on to an exploration of the body, not as representing some biological given, but as constituting a location at which power may operate. Power relations may also be seen to be implicated within the reflexive aspect of subjectivities: the ways in which we come to view ourselves. These approaches open up the possibility of taking seriously, and working with, those elements that may not ‘fit’ easily within conventional constructions of subjectivity. Problematising notions of consis121


tency and autonomy may suggest an emancipatory practice which opens up possibilities of a greater fluidity or dispersal of identity. However, finding ways of negotiating this may not be easy within forms of modernist social relations that may marginalise or pathologise those expressions of subjectivity that diverge too far from normative notions of stability and responsibility.

Decentring the subject Each historical epoch may be characterised by ‘the institution of a particular form of subjectivity’, located within specific normative constructions of sociality (Venn 2000: p. 14). Prior to the Enlightenment, acting as a subject would be understood in terms of operating within a system of obligation and duty – to God, king, family, and so on. Identities would typically reflect people’s interdependence and interrelatedness with family or community, with ancestors, or with their environment. It is only with modernity that there arose the notion of a free subject as an autonomous locus of agency in its own right (see Taylor 1989). Central to modernist thought has been the sacrosanct idea of ‘the individual’ as a unitary agent, whether acting predictably as homo economicus, or breaking new ground as one of the ‘great men of history’. Within this way of thinking, society could be seen to regulate, but in no way enter into, the consciousness and intentional activity of its constituent subjects, the ‘free’ citizens of modernity. A crucial task of critical theory is to move beyond such dualistic thinking: to take apart the supposed autonomy of the individual and to deconstruct ‘the fiction of the ego as the master of circumstance’ (Butler 1993: p. 124). The smooth and efficient functioning of modernity may be seen to require that people, by and large, regulate themselves. In order to have this somewhat circumscribed freedom, and thereby be permitted to participate within the mainstream of social and economic relations, people may have little choice but to construct themselves in the requisite image of freedom and autonomy: The modern subject is an individual who has learned to control his emotions and his passions, and has forged himself into a predictable and constantly self-monitoring agent. (Morgan 1999: p. 57) As such, people may be expected to conduct themselves appropriately and accept full responsibility for their actions. Thus, as in the statement ‘I am a British subject’, being a subject implies that one is

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constructed (and constrained) within a specific cultural and ideological framework, while, at the same time, appearing to act freely and spontaneously. It is this dual meaning which leads into an understanding of modernist subjectivity as an ability to act which is conditional on going ‘with the flow’ of prevailing economic, discursive and emotional regimes. Becoming a subject involves the paradox of ‘a primary submission to power’ that simultaneously opens up the possibility of agency (Butler 1997b: p. 2). Induction into the expectations of modernist subjectivity may be seen to take place largely outside awareness and may be seen to be reinforced through a variety of economic and discursive structures which situate ‘the individual … with regard to law, to contractual obligations and to property’ (Henriques et al. 1984: p. 133). Constituted through insertion within systems of power relations, living such a subjectivity may typically involve holding together conflicting elements in order to create the appearance of coherence that is required for social participation within modernity. Instead of the humanist notion of a pure and free subject representing some outward manifestation of an inner consistency, an essential individuality, Althusser identifies it as a vacant space within the social order into which people may be invited or ‘interpellated’ – as it is only from such a position that they may be able to join in as part of prevailing economic and social relations. However, in order to carry this off and secure their ‘ticket’ to participation within modernity, they must make it appear that they are freely accepting this subjection, making the requisite ‘gestures and actions’ to pretend their own authorship (1971: p. 182). Thus, under the economic relations of capitalism, working-class people are invited to construct themselves as if they were free agents who choose to sell their labour power at less than its use value – and may then be held accountable for the quality of their work. Similarly, within modern forms of marriage, it may be suggested that women may have to construct themselves as freely choosing to enter into what may be a profoundly unequal contract in terms of economic and emotional expectations – and may similarly be held accountable for their performance as a ‘good wife and mother’. From a poststructural perspective, Derrida further disrupted any notion of the centredness and agency of the subject within discourse. He brought into question any conventional notion of subjects being free to use some neutral medium of language in order to think and express themselves in language however they wish. Instead, the available structures of language and discourse may be seen not only to


influence possibilities of meaning, but also to locate the subject position(s) that may be taken by a speaker. Despite this, the speaker may still live the illusion that they are fully in control of what they are saying: Language, in the form of an historically specific range of ways of giving meaning to social reality offers us various discursive positions, including modes of femininity and masculinity, through which we can live our lives… . In taking on a subject position, the individual assumes that she is the author of the ideology or discourse which she is speaking. She speaks or thinks it as if she were in control of meaning. She ‘imagines’ that she is indeed the type of subject that humanism proposes – rational, unified, the source rather than the effect of language. (Weedon 1997: pp. 25, 31) Further examination suggests that the image of a free and self-directing subject is not equally available to all: in its assumption of autonomy, it fits only as a strategy for those in positions of power who may be seeking to suppress internal or external dissidence. This ‘seamlessly unified self … is in fact … constructed on the model of the selfcontained, powerful phallus. Gloriously autonomous, it banishes from itself all conflict, contradiction and ambiguity’ (Moi 1985: p. 8). Others may be given only a very partial access, or denied the possibility of subjectivity altogether – as in the historical suppression of some ‘black’ peoples where even for a slave or a servant ‘to look directly’ at a white person would be punished brutally, as it would be seen as representing ‘an assertion of subjectivity’ (hooks 1992: p. 168; see also Venn 1984). Constructed as an autonomous and consistent subject, some degree of influence may be possible, but only by holding together an amalgam of identities that may increasingly be at odds with aspects of experience that may refuse to fit the image that is required. As Foucault (1967) has shown, failure to construct such apparently stable identities can be seen as fundamentally subversive to modernity. Forms of unconventional speech or behaviour could be accommodated within feudalism because they did not threaten a social order that was held together by externally policed ties of duty, obligation and respect to social superiors. ‘Madness’ or disinhibition may be seen to be inherently threatening to a social order in which the operation of power is more hidden and social cohesion is achieved through the internalised performance of self-regulation. Under modernity, those failing to achieve the required coherence of identity may be legally or medically classified (as ‘criminals’ or as ‘mentally ill’) and then either hidden


away in institutions or have the requisite form of subjectivity restored through discourses of rehabilitation. Once subjectivity is no longer seen as the unfolding of an inner essence, it may be seen as a site of instability and struggle; no longer a pre-given, it may be understood as constituted through the operation of both oppressive and productive modes of power – and hence open to the possibilities of transformation: The political significance of decentring the subject and abandoning the belief in essential subjectivity is that it opens up subjectivity to change. (Weedon 1997: p. 32) As subordinated groups have sought to make sense of, and challenge, their inferiorisation, they have looked for strategies by which to change the terms of their subjection, and to access the potential for power implicit in the dominant modes of modernist subjectivity. Earlier struggles either sought to achieve equality through enfranchising excluded groups into pre-existing forms of modernist subjectivity, or to assert difference from hegemonic forms of subjectivity through articulating (‘black’, lesbian, feminine) alternatives. However, both of these strategies may be seen to have been limited by their implicit acceptance of the fixed and unchanging nature of this dominant mode. From a poststructural perspective, the equality–difference debate may be opened up to reveal the centrality of this silent and taken-forgranted term. Both the terms ‘equality’ and ‘difference’ may be seen as deferring to an assumed-to-be-fixed term, that of the modernist subject (see Scott 1988). ‘Equality’ involves a process of aspiring to access its power, without challenging the basis of how it may be constructed. ‘Difference’ involves a process of self-definition as differences from this fixed signifier, which paradoxically serves to reinforce and affirm its centrality. Either way, it is members of subordinated groups who are left to dance around the periphery of a subject position that holds the power that they cannot have, a position that they cannot enter, and one which continues to define the parameters of their own subjectivities. Such a perspective opens up a crucial direction for emancipatory struggle: a systematic assault on, or subversion of, the still largely unchallenged symbolisations and practices that continue to fix the position of the modernist subject, a struggle that may need to be waged across traditional boundaries, forming alliances with members of dominant categories who may themselves be uncomfortable with


what they have to exclude in order to construct the requisite subjectivity. Real emancipation may become possible only when the modernist subject can be revealed as decentred, as a hollowness shaped out of submission that can only be maintained by playing off its superiority against inferiorised others. If it becomes unfixed, little by little – potentially in response to pressures from both outside and inside – it would cease to have such a stranglehold over the constitution of all other subjectivities, opening up increasing possibilities of a social order based on a non-hierarchical acknowledgement of difference.

Performing identities Structural approaches, and the identity politics that followed from them, saw the possibility of changing power relations through solidarity and the assertion of collective subjectivities. However, in turn, these came to be criticised for assuming a uniformity within categories such as ‘women’, ‘the working class’ and ‘black people’ which, at times, ran perilously close to essentialising their identities (Fraser and Nicholson 1990). This form of stereotyping could feel every bit as pernicious as that perpetrated by dominant groups, leaving people struggling with supposedly emancipatory identities within which they could barely recognise their own particular experience. As a response to this, poststructuralists started to open up more flexible understandings of identity as arising out of the operation of a multiplicity of significant and power-laden differences. Taking account of local as well as structural regimes of power, these perspectives suggest that the simultaneous operation of discourses may set up an array of potentially conflicting and unstable identities that are continually being constructed, performed and replayed. As with any term within language or discourse, identities can only be fixed in a temporary and contingent manner. They are not neatly defined by some internal essence, but only exist in their connections to, and differences from other identities. Dominant identities may only take shape through the simultaneous construction of inferiorised identities, and their persistence may depend on being continually played off against these. Thus the construction of the West as ‘civilised’ inherently involved the denigration of the African as ‘savage’; and the taken-for-grantedness of ‘white’ identities requires the continual, if sometimes more subtle, contrasting of them against the inferior characteristics attributed to a variety of


others, such as asylum seekers, Hispanics or Moslems. Similarly, men’s social participation within modernity may typically depend on their ability to perform an amalgamation of ‘dominant’ identities – perhaps by appearing ‘solid’, ‘dependable’, ‘aggressive’, ‘strong’, ‘impassive’ and ‘in charge’ (both of themselves and others) – all of which characteristics can only take shape as long as they are played off against the emotional vulnerability and volatility that is projected on to groups of ‘others’ (principally women and ‘weaker’ men). In having to perform as the ‘other’ of masculinity, women may find that available identities require them to hide their desires and frustrations behind a femininity that is about being there for others but not for themselves, one that may proscribe any direct expression of anger or aggression. Mobilising, and being mobilised by, specific identities may be seen to be crucial in all forms of interaction – political, community and interpersonal. Such mobilisation will generally be within the context of particular regimes of power to which specific identities may connect – either structural or local. For example, the subjectivity of someone (or a group of people) engaging in street violence abroad may be seen as an organisation of an array of, say, ‘masculine’, ‘white’, ‘football supporter’, ‘national’, ‘heterosexual’, ‘youth’, ‘able-bodied’ and many other constituent identities. The performance of this ensemble of identities is only possible if they can be played off against present or implied ‘other’ identities which are to be seen as inferior or antagonistic (such as ‘foreign’, ‘feminine’, ‘police’, and so on). Thus, instead of identities being something that we ‘are’ (whether arrived at by nature or nurture), they may be seen as something that we ‘do’ – a discursive practice rather than a category. Such performance may not be understood in some voluntaristic sense, of pre-existing autonomous subjects choosing which roles to play, but in a much more insidious sense of any form of subjectivity being the compulsory (and compulsive) reiteration of normative positionings. Following Gramsci, Judith Butler argues that ‘hegemonies operate … through rearticulation’ (1993: p. 132). Social structuring has no existence of its own apart from how it is performed, although the parameters of each performance will be substantially determined by those that preceded it. This suggests an inherent instability within categories, such as ‘race’ or ‘sex’, which can only operate in as much as they are reiterated at a particular point in time: they may be ‘both produced and destabilised in the course of this reiteration’ (ibid.: p. 10). Oppressive structures of identity can only be preserved as they are if everyone gets their performances exactly ‘right’ – living out in every degree, say, the precepts of


heterosexist manhood: ‘That it must repeat this imitation … suggests that heterosexual performativity is beset by an anxiety that it can never fully overcome’ (ibid.: p. 125). While the room for manoeuvre may be limited, the potential for subversion is ever present: the possibility of conducting a reiteration that is recognisable, but is subtly different from the previous performance. Such subversions or strategies of resistance may not be seen in simple terms as representing the intentional actions of free and centred subjects. Instead, many challenges to the terms of hegemonic identities may take place outside awareness, arising out of the unpredictability and ‘excitability’ of speech, writing or other signifying practices: what comes out may not be exactly what was expected, and may include nuances, inflections and slips – even parodies – that reflect the unacceptability and unliveability of prevailing norms as they are currently experienced (see Butler 1997a). As Freud suggested, mistakes may be far from coincidental, reflecting the irruption of desires and experiences that may have been suppressed within the current organisation of subjectivity. This perspective suggests possibilities for resistance and transformation through exploiting the ambivalence inherent in processes of reiteration. For example, terms of social abuse and degradation, such as ‘gay’ and ‘queer’, have, somewhat unevenly, ‘been turned … to signify a new affirmative set of meanings’ (Butler 1993: p. 223). Drawing on structural as well as poststructural perspectives, such a ‘turning’ may not be seen as coming about through some individual or collective act of will, as in modernist constructions of ‘agency’, but by the interpenetration of a range of material and discursive circumstances, such as the growing economic power exerted by younger, predominantly ‘white’, people, living out lesbian and gay lifestyles in certain western societies. Despite acknowledging the possibility of such historical shifts, Butler remains generally pessimistic as to how much can be achieved, since, very often, ‘the accumulated force of a historically entrenched and entrenching articulation overwhelms the more fragile effort to build an alternative cultural configuration from or against that more powerful regime’ (ibid.: pp. 132–3). However, as Lois McNay suggests, this may underestimate the already complex and contradictory composition of the ‘symbolic realm’, which comprises ‘conflicting values and resources which may be actively, and sometimes creatively appropriated … to institute new value systems and new forms of collective identity’ (1999: p. 187). There may be new elements of script already ‘out there’ which can be drawn upon in constructing each new performance.


In this way, poststructural perspectives may be seen to have transformed understandings of identity: instead of a modernist conception of a relatively fixed essential core, a singular sense of ‘character’ that could become manifest in a person’s dealings with the world, identities may be seen as plural, flexible images of coherence that may be reiterated in particular situations. From this perspective, personal subjectivity may be seen as a particular fixing of a set of identities, an overall orientation that subsumes and organises these (potentially conflicting and unstable) identities in a certain way – and hence constructs a (reasonably) coherent subject that is able to transact at material, discursive or emotional levels. As with any fixing of meaning, this may be seen to involve the deployment of power and a degree of violence, both internally between constituent identities, and externally towards those identities ‘out there’ that must be played off in a certain way in order to establish particular chains of meaning. Identities may be secured not only by a fixing in relation to other currently available identities, but also by reproducing, or playing off against, chains of previous representations. Identities as performed may be seen to reflect both histories of internalised oppression and external definition, and also of complex processes of resistance and struggle. Similar considerations may be seen to apply in relation to collective or group identities. Families, cultural groups, geographical communities, and so on, may all be seen to have to constitute themselves in terms of (relatively) coherent identities in order to be recognised as potential collective subjects within modernity – where, as for the individual citizen, any right to influence is coupled with a responsibility for self-discipline and policing of boundaries. Group subjectivity may be seen to be achieved by similar processes of welding together disparate and conflicting constituent identities, involving a degree of violence both internally (suppressing those elements of identity that are not seen to fit), and externally, playing off identities against their devalued or antagonistic opposites.

Opening up the psyche The taking on of identities may be seen to be a complex process, much of which may take place outside awareness: they are neither entirely externally determined, nor freely chosen, but may reflect the interplay of internal experiences (past and current) and subjection within particular patternings of material, emotional and discursive relations. The


normative modernist subject may be seen to represent a hollowness that may be specifically shaped so as to exclude (or distort) certain potentially unacceptable configurations of desire or aspiration. Particular thoughts, feelings or potential actions may have to be repressed entirely (even from the person’s own conscious awareness) if the person is to remain coherent and participate within a particular social context. Those thoughts, feelings and actions which are allowed to emerge, do so only in a form that is mediated (to some degree) by the dictates of the specific contexts and subject positions into which the person is inserted. In order to explore this terrain, structural and poststructural perspectives have sought to connect with psychoanalytic accounts of mechanisms for repressing, displacing and splitting off elements unacceptable to subjectivity. The psyche may be understood as comprising the whole of mental and emotional experience. It may be organised in particular ways, with some elements of experience spilling into and taking shape within the various vacant slots of identity and subjectivity that may be available to a person, while other elements may face systematic forms of exclusion or distortion if they do not fit with what may be required for social functioning. Psychoanalysis suggests that this organisation, although to some degree flexible in terms of current pressures and opportunities, is firmly rooted in the dynamics of personal history. Linking this to both structural and poststructural perspectives, it may be seen how specific patterns of splitting and repressing experience may relate to the continual renegotiation of desire within a context of both local and wider-scale power relations, giving rise to particular tensions, energies and contradictions in the operation of the subject. Although approaching the issues of subjectivity from very different directions, both Nietzsche and Freud challenged the modernist story of a self-aware, rational consciousness as the unitary centre of human being and action. Both saw the human subject as, in some way, being driven by irrational forces from within. Nietzsche proposed that the subject be understood only as a ‘perspective illusion’, an ‘apparent unity’ that somehow holds together ‘a tremendous multiplicity’ of drives and needs, each with their own directionality (1968: p. 281). Freud also started to theorise the inherently split nature of ‘the individual’, conceptualising autonomous and potentially conflicting functional organisations: the id (the ensemble of instinctual impulses), the ego (the location of rationality and decision making) and the super-ego (the introjection of parental and societal authority). As Althusser argues, despite Freud’s location within a modernist tradition that took


as ‘natural’ the historically specific social relations of his time, this insight contains the potential for a breakthrough in dismantling the illusory consistency of the subject, exposing underlying structures of conflict and misrecognition: Freud has discovered for us that the real subject, the individual in his unique essence, has not the form of an ego, centred on … ‘consciousness’ … [but] that the human subject is de-centred, constituted by a structure that has no ‘centre’ either, except … in the ideological formations in which it recognises itself. (1971: pp. 218–19) In developing Freudian insights, different psychoanalytic traditions have sought to theorise processes of conflict and splitting in more sophisticated and detailed ways, thereby challenging ‘the postCartesian notion of a unitary self-enclosed consciousness’ (Benjamin 1998: p. 88). These approaches may be of particular value in understanding how personal subjectivity, and its constituent identities, may be constructed within historically and culturally bound social arrangements, and how drives and desires may become structured in relation to dominant forms of social organisation. This provides a basis for examining issues such as that of ‘how subordination can be internalised deep in our personalities’ (Cameron 1985: p. 117). The ‘object-relations’ theorists, such as Melanie Klein (1948), Ronald Fairbairn (1952) and D.W. Winnicott (1965), concentrated on very early mechanisms by which an infant may perceive and structure relationships with significant caregivers. The particular focus of Jacques Lacan (1977) was on slightly later processes whereby the infant submits to structures of authority as it enters the world of language and signification, splitting its psyche into the separate organisations of ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious’. Both perspectives seek to move beyond the Freudian concept of the infant as some discrete and bounded individual that seeks to satisfy the demands of endogenous drives – an already emerging template of the autonomous modernist subject. Instead, the infant is viewed as a site of polymorphous energies that flow in and out of connection with significant others. It is seen as intrinsically social, although not, in any way, socialised. As such, its experience, identifications and connections may be seen to be shaped out of the nexus of social relations into which it is inserted, and hence by the operation of both local and structural forms of power. Object-relations theory proposes an internal mechanism by which the pre-verbal infant may deal with its experience of relative powerlessness in relation to caregiving others – most typically the mother within


western patriarchal social formations. This has provided a critical starting point for feminist psychology and the women’s therapy movement in their attempts to contextualise some of the universal and naturalist assumptions of conventional psychoanalysis, in particular with regard to the construction of female and male identities (see Baker Miller 1988; Jordan et al. 1991). Nancy Chodorow (1978) explored some of the specific psychic consequences that might emerge for both girls and boys of being brought up in a gendered household in which the great majority of the care was provided by mothers. Even in situations where a significant caregiver is male, such care may take place within an ideological framework that constructs this role as somehow ‘feminised’ and thereby secondary and subordinate to other ‘proper’ male roles. Similarly, it is suggested that symbolisations of patriarchal authority may be so pervasive that it may present its power over women as mothers ‘irrespective of the actual existence or intrusion of an actual man/father’ (Mitchell and Rose 1982: p. 39). Thus the wider discursive construction of ‘care’ may actually be more powerful than the biological sex of particular parents in terms of how the infant experiences the gendering of their care. Being, to a very large extent, dependent on a feminised (m)other in order to meet basic needs, the infant has to find a way of coping with any instances of rejection where, for whatever reason, the (m)other does not respond to its desire and its neediness (an other that it cannot yet conceptualise as a separate being). It finds itself ultimately powerless to make the (m)other meet its needs, so its only way of reasserting some semblance of control may be to restructure how its experience is perceived. In order to hold on to the image of an other who will (always) be there for it, it may bracket off painful or contradictory experiences of being ignored, hurt or abused by the (m)other (or where s/he may not have provided adequate protection against the abusive actions of others). In this way, it may split its desire into two separate ensembles of feelings and intuitions, one directed towards an imaginary representation of that part of the (m)other that does respond to its needs and seems to be under its control (the ‘good’ mother-object) and the second directed towards that part which it experiences as rejecting or denying (the ‘bad’ mother-object): The embryonic psyche … transfers the difficult situation to the world of inner reality, where it can exercise more control… . The unsatisfying experiences that occur in relation to mother then find their expressions of her in the infant’s inner world. Mother becomes


a disappointing person who has to be split in two: the known and longed-for giving mother and the known and deeply disappointing mother. (Eichenbaum and Orbach 1985: p. 18) Unable, as yet, to conceptualise the (m)other as a subject in her (his) own right, the infant invests ‘good’ feelings in relation to one imaginary mother-object and ‘bad’ feelings in relation to a second motherobject. Thus, before the infant is able to conceptualise its ‘self’ in any way, a real split may be seen to be emerging in how it organises its experience: ‘The ego is incapable of splitting the object without a corresponding splitting taking place within the ego’ (Klein 1948: p. 6). Contextualising this, it may be seen how the mother-objects that are internalised may be socially constructed, reflecting ‘the social position of women’ (Eichenbaum and Orbach 1985: p. 34). Thus, before the infant is able to conceptualise its ‘self’ in any way, a real split may be seen to be emerging in how it organises its experience, one that both defines and splits the position of the feminine. Thus, within a social formation that both subordinates women and constructs them as primary caregivers, children may enter the world of discourse with an already split and ambivalent set of feelings towards what is represented by ‘mother’ – and hence what is represented by ‘female’ (see Dinnerstein 1976). They may tend to structure and represent their experience of women as ‘split objects’ that have either to be idealised caregivers or to be seen as rejecting, evil and dangerous. Within patriarchal discourse, symbols for such a split objectification of women are readily available – for example, ‘good fairy’/‘witch’ or ‘madonna’/‘whore’ (see Welldon 1988). For men, these significations may provide a structuring of emotional subjectivity which reproduces the specific relations of patriarchal domination: the perpetual expectation of emotional care and sexual ‘satisfaction’ from women (women as ‘good’ objects), coupled with the misanthropic rejection (fear) of any emotional demands made by women (women as ‘bad’ objects). Not only may such processes of defensive splitting incorporate powerful messages about prevailing relations of gender, so they may also reflect elements of the positioning of significant others in relation to the structural power dynamics of ‘race’, class, sexual orientation and other categorisations. Just as crucially, such splitting may take place in response to particular experiences of the localised operation of power, such as forms of physical, emotional or sexual abuse. It would seem that the most damaging experiences of trauma are ones in which systematic practices of invasion, manipulation or neglect take place


within a social setting where there is no one around to tell who would have the power to protect. Surviving may depend on holding on to the fantasy that such a caregiver exists and investing feelings in an emotional connection with a split-off idealisation of an actual person (the ‘good’ mother-object), while somehow justifying the real behaviour of this person by taking on the self-definition as the ‘bad’ object who deserves to be mistreated. In constructing this self-definition, the infant ‘may instantly adopt something salient from the invading and punishing entity, and incorporate it. After all, that is where the power is, and power is what the [infant] needs or lacks’ (Rowan 1999: p. 18). It is suggested that, once established, such patterns of splitting and internalisation, and the power-laden messages that they carry, may persist in the construction of subjectivity in later life. In a paradoxical way, this may serve to suppress the actual memory of abuse from consciousness, while still perpetuating its damaging impact through the continued enactment of the splitting. Lacan proposed that, prior to an infant’s entry into discourse (when it first uses language), it cannot conceptualise the difference between self and other, and hence cannot distinguish its own desire for the other from its wish to be desired by the other, to be the (sole) object of the other’s desire (see Turkle 1979). Thus, whenever it finds itself illtreated, or if the other does not attend to it, it may experience a catastrophic denial of its desire, a loss which it cannot yet conceptualise. Lacan saw the shattering of the illusion of connectedness as an inevitable part of the infant’s development – something which would inevitably lead the infant to the realisation that the desire of the other was, in fact, controlled by some much greater external force, that of the patriarchal law. However, if a more critical perspective is employed, the degree to which (and the way in which) this sense of connectedness is shattered may be seen to depend on the specific responses that the infant receives from the other (or others): the degree to which they are receptive to its desiring and are able to communicate their desire in return, or, on the contrary, the degree to which they use their position of relative power to abuse or distort the infant’s desire. This, in turn, may be seen to depend on specific cultural constructions of mothering, fathering and other aspects of family organisation, and on the specific life experiences of the people who come to occupy these positions. People’s experience of past and present oppression will influence whether or not they may be too harassed to have time for the infant, whether they are too depressed to be able to respond to its feelings, or


whether they may use their position of relative power to abuse the infant in some sense (perhaps having been abused themselves). Central to Lacan’s schema is the process whereby the infant is driven to construct itself as a subject in discourse, able to think and communicate using symbolic languages (and hence becoming a direct participant in ideology). However, although not directly subscribing to the objectrelations account, some post-Lacanian psychoanalytic feminists have challenged this (masculine) emphasis on the rational world of discourse as potentially ‘over-estimating the subject’s having been the slave of language since before his birth’ (Kristeva 1982: p. 62). Instead they would see the intuitive organisation of emotional identity as continuing to have a crucial bearing on subjectivity, even after the subsequent ‘birth’ of the subject in discourse. Indeed, the precise configuration of the subject in discourse may be seen to reflect its need to cover over and substitute for particular ‘semiotic’ or pre-symbolic patternings of desire. For Lacan, the most crucial process of splitting takes place at the point at which the infant begins to think and talk, using the structures of language and discourse within which it finds itself. He argued that it is in order to be able to name, and hence perhaps to deal with its lack of connection, that the infant is impelled to enter into the symbolic world of discourse, the domain of power in which it perceives the desire of the other to be expressed and controlled by the signifiers of prohibition and control. As part of the same relation that allows the infant to signify and comprehend experience, the infant itself is constituted as a subject by the discourse (and thereby takes on a position in relation to already existing ideological and cultural frameworks). In this way, a Lacanian approach ‘articulates a theory of subjectivity which focuses on its structuring in accordance with cultural forces, and which provides an account of the way these forces operate at the deepest levels of the individual’s experience’ (Frosh 1999: p. 151). Once it enters into this system, it is able to call upon already existing significations of itself and others. Speaking as ‘I’, the infant moves into a subject position that was already prepared for it even before it was born, one that may be situated not only in relation to a supposedly universal ‘Symbolic Order’, but also in relation to specific (familial) discourses: Symbols in fact envelop the life of man in a network so total that they join together, before he comes into the world, those who are going to engender him ‘by flesh and blood’; so total that they bring to his birth … the shape of his destiny; so total that they give the words that will make him faithful or renegade. (Lacan 1977: p. 68)


From a more critical perspective, it may be suggested that the infant, in accepting its name as its opportunity to think and speak within the domain of ideology and culture, also takes on a specific set of attributions to do with its gender, ‘race’, class position, and many other factors. For example, as the research of Semaj (1980) has shown, a black child can display a knowledge of its racialisation from around the age of two onwards. According to Lacan, the fundamental symbol that the infant requires, in order to make sense of its situation, is one that describes the authority that is seen to control the desire of the mother, the power that makes her (at times) unavailable to the infant: The child does not find himself or herself alone in front of the mother… . The Phallus forbids the child the satisfaction of his or her own desire, which is the desire to be the exclusive desire of the mother. (1957: p. 14) Although Lacan sees this symbol as relating to a universal societal authority, the fact that he relates it to specific signifiers such as ‘The Name of the Father’ or ‘The Phallus’, suggests a domination of the desire of both the mother and the infant that is specifically patriarchal. As Hirst and Woolley point out, due to its widespread legitimation and its unconscious internalisation by women, this is ‘a symbol exceeding the “real” father, who may be a weakling, absent or dead’ (1985: p. 10). Extending this thinking beyond questions of gender, it may be helpful to consider ‘The Phallus’ as representing a wider and more complex set of significations of external domination over some or all of the primary caregivers that the infant encounters: it may embody aspects of ‘race’, class, (dis)ability, age and sexual orientation. Lacan’s perspective focuses on what the infant has to lose as it takes its place in the world of discourse. In order to fit in to its pre-existing slot, the infant has to repress some (or, in Lacan’s account, almost all) of its own desiring. It is this desire that cannot be articulated that comes to form the person’s unconscious, the split-off location of their repressed drives and aspirations: ‘it is the subject who introduces division into the individual’ (Lacan 1977: p. 80). However, Althusser, in his reading of Lacan, stresses that this phase be understood, not in idealist terms, as an eternal image of some inevitable ‘paradise lost’, but as a process of splitting whose parameters may be crucially determined by dominant forms of social organisation and the requirements of citizenship. Between them, Lacanian and object-relations perspectives offer an understanding of how people’s experience and desiring may become


split off, displaced or repressed through the internalisation of cultural constructions of masculine power and of a femininity that may be simultaneously idealised and feared. In order to enter into social relationships within modernity, girls and boys may learn to construct themselves as recognisable emotional subjects within a modernist discourse whose terms are dictated by the signifying power of powerladen symbols such as ‘The Good Fairy’, ‘The Witch’, ‘The Phallus’ or ‘The Name of the Father’. Such specifications of masculinity and femininity may also be seen to imply a universally heterosexual orientation. In this way, men are invited to construct themselves within the terms of the required ‘phallic’ subjectivity, repressing their more intimate feelings and equating desire with the emotional domination and possession of women: Masculine [heterosexual] sexual identity is established through feeling superior to women we are close to… It is as if we only know how to feel good ourselves if we put others down. (Seidler 1985: p. 169) Such a distorted subjectivity demands, as its complement, a female subjectivity that is essentially passive and receptive, willingly accepting subordination while looking after the needs of men. Thus, in order to access the subject positions necessary for relationships with men, women may be forced to participate in the construction of their own powerlessness, such that they ‘come to hide their desires from themselves’ (Eichenbaum and Orbach 1985: pp. 7–8). Thus, within western societies, the conventionally available subject positions for women and men tend to exclude the possibility of achieving any real intimacy or mutuality: men are rendered unable to share their emotional vulnerability and women come to suppress their own desiring. The frustrations and contradictions inherent in this may be reflected in a peculiar sexualisation of men’s attempts at emotional intimacy, one which, in turn, carries the potentiality for violence and abuse: Sex is one of the few socially acceptable ways in which men can aspire to closeness with others, and as such it becomes the carrier of all the unexpressed desires that men’s emotional illiteracy produces. However, this same power of sex to produce emotionality makes it dangerous to men whose identity is based on the rejection of emotion; sex then becomes split off, limited to the activity of the penis, an act rather than an encounter… . Sexual abuse is inherent in a mode of personality organisation that rejects intimacy. (Glaser and Frosh 1988: p. 24)


Potentially, the psychoanalytic account may be seen to provide crucial openings within the trajectories of personal development, in which people may be inserted not just within prevailing constructions of gender and sexual orientation, but also within other regimes of power. As the infant negotiates its difficult and painful entry into specific emotional and discursive arenas, an array of already available identities may be inscribed, arising out of local or familial narratives of power as well as wider structures of class or ‘race’, each offering particular combinations of limitation and opportunity. These factors may be compounded by more specific insertions within situations of oppression and abuse. In this way, people may come to internalise and play out, not just the patterns of splitting and repression that underpin a generalised identity (for example, ‘white’, working-class male), but also those that go with particular subscripts (or anti-scripts) that may be taken on from localised interactions with family and community, and which offer particular ways of living this identity. Thus, for example, a ‘white’ man may find that he has taken on identities that preclude the expression of vulnerability in relationships with either women or ‘black’ people, but do permit certain circumscribed forms of intimacy with other ‘white’ men.

The art of projection Moving beyond accounts of individual psychic development, psychoanalysis offers an insight into the mechanisms whereby splitting may also be played out between people, as well as within individual psyches. Within families, social groups or communities, particular issues, attitudes or sentiments may become split off and located just with certain members, or attributed to some externalised ‘Other’. This may be understood in relation to the psychoanalytic concept of projection, the process whereby ‘elements which cannot be tolerated by one or more of the … members are reallocated … in an attempt to avoid the experience of internal conflict’ (Moustaki 1981: p. 166). An instance of the operation of such a process is given by Anna Freud: When a husband displaces onto his wife his own impulses to be unfaithful and then reproaches her passionately with unfaithfulness … his intention is not to protect himself against aggression from without, but against … disturbing forces from within. (1964: p. 120) Conventionally, such perspectives have been used in understanding the peculiar emotional force of prejudices, such as racism or homopho-


bia, in which undesired or frightening internal characteristics are disowned and attributed onto defined others, who are then subjected to systematic violence and assault because they are deemed to have these characteristics. However, this may be seen to be an extreme instance of more general processes by which ‘areas of life denied by the dominant groups are relegated and projected onto all subordinate groups’ (Baker Miller 1988: p. 47). Members of dominant groups are only able to construct superior identities as ‘rational’, ‘good’ or ‘orderly’ as long as they can disown the opposite characteristics by identifying these as belonging to some visible category of others. In order to sustain this disowning, the repudiated others must not be banished too far away: instead they ‘must be kept close at hand’ (Lucey and Reay 2000: p. 153). It is suggested that projection is a process that takes place almost totally outside awareness. As a consequence, the mechanism by which the split-off feeling could be transferred to another person has been far from obvious. The originator of the projection may be facing, on the verge of their awareness, an urgent but unacceptable element of their experience – one that is incompatible with the organisation of their subjectivity. For a man, that might be some element of distress or vulnerability. For a woman, that might be anger or aggression. What needs to be clarified are the mechanisms by which the recipient chooses to (or is forced to) take on the projected feeling: Projective identification is an unconscious process which takes place between two people… . Some differentiation has to be made between ‘receiving’ and ‘colluding’ with the projections. It is important not to see the object of the projections as necessarily passive… . The object … may be involved to a varied extent, according to the readiness or vulnerability with which he receives the projections. (Waddell 1981: p. 20) What is missing from this framework is any analysis of interpersonal power relations. It may be inequalities of power that can determine the degree of ‘readiness’ or ‘vulnerability’ of the recipient of a projection. For example, in the instance cited by Anna Freud, it is unlikely that the woman ‘readily’ accepts her continued subjection to her husband’s persecutory accusations. The inequality in the power relationship shows through in the way that the woman is clearly not able to move out of the position of victim, in which she has to hold, and be punished for, the moral discomfort that rightly belongs to her husband. From this position, she is able neither to tell him to stop, nor to


suggest that maybe it is he, and not she, who is tending towards infidelity. During their years of material and emotional dependency, a child may be particularly vulnerable to accept projections from significant adults. The child may be situated in parental discourses such that they are only recognised if they act out particular attitudes, dispositions or qualities (for example, appearing loving or strong, caring or aggressive). They may perhaps pick up subtle signs of encouragement or discouragement for – or be coerced into – the expression of particular identities. In more extreme scenarios – for example, if they are physically or sexually abused – a child may be forced to take on and act out (in some confused form) particular feelings or identities that may be violently rejected by an adult – for example, vulnerability, hurt, fear or particular constructions of sexual desire (Miller 1985). In this way, it may be seen how the psychoanalytic concept of projection, once reformulated within an understanding of power relations, may help to unwrap the mechanisms by which prevailing forms of social organisation structure the emotionality of its members: how women, ‘black’ people, children and others may find themselves systematically living out identities that contain and articulate the disowned feelings and vulnerabilities of those in dominant positions. These processes may both reflect, and reproduce, material and discursive relations of subordination.

Conscripting ‘the body’ An essential part of the modernist construction of the individual has been the imposition of a dualistic split between mind and body, with the former constructed as a (potential) subject and the latter as an object to be controlled and regulated. The body was seen as representing a ‘container’ of irrational forces, belonging to the world of nature, that came perilously close to impinging on the seat of rationality, intention and will: human consciousness. This separation became reflected in academic discourse: the mind inhabited the realm of the social and of history, whereas the study of the body was seen as belonging to medicine and biological science. However, this uneasy separation came to be challenged from within modernism (in particular, by Nietzsche and Freud). Building on a Nietzschean approach to genealogy, Foucault saw the body as fundamentally social: a ‘docile’ surface, upon which modernist power relations were inscribed. Penal discourses and disciplinary prac-


tices were established that regulated and confined the bodies of dissident subjects (Foucault 1977). The bodies of women, children and men were, in different ways, constructed as representations of prevailing legal and medical discourses about sexuality – as available or prohibited, vulnerable or knowing, ‘natural’ or perverse (Foucault 1981). Thus, bodies may be seen as having been enlisted into the social, representing a corporeal aspect to subjectivity that situates the subject as a body within power-laden discursive structures. Scientific and medical ways of ‘knowing’ the body may be seen to have played a crucial role in the subjection of people on the basis of age, ‘race’, gender, (dis)ability, and other categorisations. Out of medical discourses have emerged constructs of ‘fitness’ that have acted as bodily markers which can define whether or not a person may access certain privileged forms of subjectivity, leading to the exclusion or subordination of those who may be deemed immature, geriatric, non-‘white’ or disabled. Women have sometimes come to be defined exclusively in terms of the reproductive capacities of their bodies, and this has been deployed as a means of denying access to particular modes of economic and social subjectivity. Similarly, backed up by the scientific taxonomy of racial types (and its hierarchy of worthiness), skin colour has been constructed as a marker that prohibited entry into the upper echelons of ‘civilised’ subjectivity. As Franz Fanon (1986) describes, no amount of acting ‘white’ can give people with ‘black skins’ access to the privileged subject positions of ‘whiteness’. In such ways, it has often been specifically the bodies of subordinated groups that have been seen as defining their inferiority and their ‘unfitness’ to assume (fully) the position of the modernist subject in economic and cultural spheres. These perspectives connect with a slightly different approach, a materialism of the body or ‘corporeal feminism’. This focuses on how ‘power … produces and normalises bodies to serve prevailing relations of domination and subordination’ (Bordo 1993: p. 26). Extending Lacan’s conception of femininity as ‘lack’, Elizabeth Grosz identifies how this can become embodied: The female body is inscribed socially, and most often, individually, as a lacking, incomplete or inadequate body… . Women’s oppression is generated in part by these systems of patriarchal morphological inscription. (1986: p. 142) Similar processes of morphological inscription can be seen to apply to people with disabilities. For them, it is the body, and not the social


order, which is forced to carry the signification of a ‘lack’. The power relations of the social become subsumed and concealed within the realm of the biological and the medical. It is through these ways of ‘knowing’ the body, constructed around notions of health/normality and sickness/pathology, that people’s entire subjectivities may come to be read off from a measurement of the precise nature of their impairments (Hughes 1998). In this way, the disadvantage faced by disabled people becomes displaced from the level of the social, economic and political, and becomes individualised as the ‘tragedy’ of abnormal or pathological bodies – a tragedy that victimises the person both as deviant and as necessarily vulnerable and dependent. Revisiting the feminist separation of ‘gender’ (seen as socially constructed) and ‘sex’ (taken as a biological given), Judith Butler argues that bodies are ‘sexed’ through an enforced (but not always entirely successful) reiteration of heterosexual norms and practices. The very materiality of sexual difference is seen to arise, not out of some essential or natural factors, but through ‘a regulatory practice that produces the bodies it governs’ (1993: p. 1). From this perspective, even biological notions of sex, the naming and categorisation of female and male bodies, may be seen to represent a particular heterosexual colonisation of bodies, fixing meanings such that, for example, a vagina comes to be seen as having been ‘made’ for the insertion of a penis. Such a partial reading of the body may be seen as shaping the power relations of an eroticism that is fundamentally heterosexual and able-bodied. In her work, Luce Irigaray seeks to challenge the patriarchal colonisation of the female body. In its place, she seeks to capture and build upon some of the messages and meanings associated with the morphology of the female body, as a way of resisting the historic dominance of phallic modes of signification. Although sometimes accused of biological essentialism, she may be seen to be engaged in a political project that recognises that physiology may constitute a crucial arena for materialist struggle, in the sense of how physiology may be deployed within relations of unequal power. She questions the basis on which a singular piece of biology, a penis, has come to subjugate all the intricacies, fluidities and pluralities of sensation and activity that are associated with the female body – and, by implication, the possibility of plurality and complexity within the male body also. Similarly, it may be seen that bodies may be materialised through, and inscribed by, power relations of class. Questions of deportment, grooming, make-up and dress may constitute an important component in the deployment of cultural capital. Bodies may be reserved or dis-


played, contained or exposed to signify class-related inflections of subjectivity. For example, as the work of Beverley Skeggs (1997) has demonstrated, many working-class women may come to relate to and dress up their bodies as an ‘investment’ to secure their material survival. Not only may the body represent a surface on which external power relations may be played out, but it may also hold or be shaped by conflicts and contradictions arising internally. Particularly as understood within object-relations and Lacanian schools, drives may be seen as energising the body as motivations or resistances that orient the person in specific ways. In this sense, drives may be seen as materialised forms of signification that lie between and ‘connect … the biological and the symbolic’ (Kristeva 1984: p. 167). Thus, repressed awareness of traumas and abuses, whether part of current or past interaction, may be held and re-presented within the tissues, organs, musculature and circulation of bodies. Unresolved conflicts may become embodied as physical blocks or as depressed (or enhanced) energy levels. These various perspectives may be seen to be complementary. The body may become conscripted within subjectivity, exposed to the imprinting of an external ‘gaze’ that may both incite and discipline, situated as a malleable ‘surface on which social law, morality and values are inscribed’, the site of operation of specific discourses of power and potentially contradictory meanings; at the same time, within its configuration of energies and tensions, it may hold the ‘internal or psychic inscription’ of past and present social experience – an embodied history of oppressions, frustrations, connections and satisfactions (Grosz 1995: p. 33). In this way, the body may be understood as the material embodiment and representation of key aspects of social and cultural experience, with their attendant contradictions and internal dynamics. It may come to be seen as an arena for representing and transforming subjectivity, a potential site of violation and degradation, but also one of expression and opportunity.

Reflexive identities Subjectivity may be seen to comprise, not just an outgoing ‘performance’ of a (relatively) coherent ensemble of identities, but also a reflexive element, a set of individual or collective self-concepts that are internalised. Although partly constituted at the level of emotionality, reflecting a variety of experiences of connection and oppression, selfconcepts may be particularly shaped by past and present insertion


within specific discursive structures. Self-identity is thus very much ‘a narrated self, constituted as an identity by the stories that a person talks about herself, and are told about her by others’, stories that are themselves located within ‘culturally located scripts’ (Venn 2000: p. 21). Just as taking on the position of a modernist subject requires a degree of submission to external forms of power, so may this submission assume ‘a psychic form that constitutes the subject’s self-identity’ (Butler 1997b: p. 3). Central to this is the expectation to construct, out of a potential plurality of self-concepts, a singular sense of self that demonstrates a degree of internal consistency: the individual is encouraged to produce ‘himself in this imaginary wholeness, this imaginary reflection of himself as the author of his actions’ (Coward and Ellis 1977: p. 76). Sustaining such a coherent self-identity may involve ‘cruelties that include self-cruelty as well, the abasement through which coherence is fictively produced’ (Butler 1993: p. 115). Those already situated in positions of power may be in the privileged position of being able to define their own subjectivity, but only as long as they are able to exert rigid control both, externally, over the subjectivities of their subordinates and, internally, over the more vulnerable aspects of their own desires. This may lead to the construction of a sense of self that is predominantly one of self-in-isolation. By contrast, those frequently situated in positions of subordination may have less sense of being in control of their identities – the parameters of these being largely constructed for them by powerful others within transactions to which they may have little choice but to submit. Rather than approaching a modernist sense of ‘individuality’, their sense of self is more likely to reflect experiences of interdependence and collectivity, and be constructed as a self-in-relation with others – a sense of self that may, for example, be particularly experienced by women and ‘black’ people (see hooks 1989a; Surrey 1991). Typically, the body represents a crucial site for the operation of selfidentity; bodies are both marked with personal history and are continually constructed and re-presented as a racialised, classed, gendered and gender-oriented corporeal image, one that is available to be ‘read’ by others and, more privately, by oneself. For those in subordinated groups, their bodies may be so powerfully socially inscribed that, to a large extent, their identities are already defined for them in ways that internalise their oppression: For black people, the pain of learning that we cannot control our images, how we see ourselves … or how we are seen is so intense


that it … rips and tears at the seams of our efforts to construct self and identity. (hooks 1992a: pp. 3–4) To a considerable extent, a sense of self may be constructed on the basis of identifications with others – others that somehow reflect back a ‘sameness’, a perceived identity of gender, ‘race’, class, orientation, and so on. It is by imitating the separation and autonomy of his father’s position, that a boy can hope, in turn, to take on a position of ‘phallic’ power over women’s desire. For a girl, the matrix is reversed: identifying with her mother may lead her to take on for herself the split objectification – as ‘Good Fairy’ or ‘Wicked Witch’ – which she may have already experienced in the organisation of her feelings towards her mother. Typically her power can only come vicariously through her being perceived as attractive as a woman – as an object of male ‘phallic’ desire. Self-identities for lesbian and gay people may be hard to locate within this dominant structure, leading to possibilities of confusion or denial, or alternatively, perhaps by building on already established ‘out’ identities, struggling to construct more affirmative forms of self-identity (see Cass 1979). Similar issues arise in the construction of racialised identities. ‘White’ self-identities may be formed through identification with established ‘white’ people, imitating their sense of ‘whiteness’ as natural and normative, and thereby taking on a historically constructed and reiterated sense of ‘racial’ superiority. The trajectories of those who are corporeally marked with signs of ‘blackness’ may be more complex (see Mama 1995). For many, immediate family or community may offer some affirmative identifications of ‘blackness’, perhaps derived from cultural, religious or ethnic referents, from which to construct a sufficiently strong ‘black’ self-identity that can stand against subjection within wider societal discourses of ‘denigration’. However, if immersed within social contexts where ‘blackness’ is negated or marginalised as ‘other’, some may seek to assume the only obviously acceptable identity, that of ‘whiteness’: their ‘white mask’, rather than their ‘black skin’ becomes the significant marker for self-identification (Fanon 1986). This contradictory form of self-identity may be inherently unstable: as soon as an instance occurs in which the person is hailed as ‘black’ – for example, when subjected to racist abuse – their ‘white’ self-identity may become catastrophically shattered. What may follow is a painful and dislocating process of reappraisal, leading perhaps to an affirmative ‘black’ identification (see Cross 1991; Helms 1995). However, such a process would depend on the cultural availability of


affirmative icons and representations of ‘black’ culture and ethnicity – an issue that remains problematic within ‘white’-dominated racist contexts. Questions of racialised or ethnic identities become even more complex within situations of mixed heritage, and where notions of ethnicity may themselves be ‘sliding’ between different class, geographical and cultural contexts, leading to notions of ‘hybrid’ and multiple identities (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1992; Bhabha 1994; Modood and Werbner 1997). Within the British context, self-identities in terms of class have shifted greatly within recent decades. While, on the one hand, class remains ‘not only etched into our culture, [but] also deeply etched into our psyches’, this period has also witnessed the discursive disappearance of class within ‘the current pervasive culture of individualism’ (Lucey and Reay 2000: pp. 139, 147). An apparently assertive and self-confident working-class culture, organised around trade unions, clubs, geographical communities, popular music and ‘kitchen sink’ drama is no longer so clearly visible, removing many possibilities for constructing affirmative identities as ‘respectable’ or ‘decent’. Partly, this may be a reflection of the degree that these self-identities leant on and intertwined with ‘white’ and patriarchal identities – which in themselves may have been rendered more uncertain as shifts within the labour market have tended to take away the areas of work that were traditionally the preserve of ‘white’, working-class men. In her study of a group of white, working-class women, Skeggs (1997) found repeated instances of seeking to pass as middle-class, while often lacking the required cultural identity markings in order to carry this off with conviction. Similarly, Lucey and Reay, in their study of working-class children’s self-identities, found that ‘all the children devised tactics to preserve a sense of themselves as decent and respectable, which was why so many claimed to be middle-class’ (2000: p. 146). Both groups were living self-identities which were essentially fragile and contradictory: they ran the continual risk of being found out and hailed as working class, with all the self-deprecation and disgust that could go with that.

‘Cutting up and remoulding’: working with identities A reasonably secure and stable personal identity has been seen as integral to the well-being of the citizens of modernity (Giddens 1991) – and shoring up such a sense of ‘ontological security’ has formed an almost unquestioned goal within much of human services practice. Such a humanist approach, in seeking to respect each individual, may


tend to assume a model of autonomy that may be far from the actual experience of members of subordinated or excluded groups. It cannot conceptualise how relations of power and oppression may have penetrated the boundaries and permeated the very core of people’s subjectivity, and it may remain continually puzzled by the way that people may not be able to respond, as unitary subjects, to the opportunities that may be offered to them. Such apparent resistance may come to be recast as the personal failures of subjects who should be taking responsibility for their actions. In this way, an uncritical commitment to value the individual may slide easily into a practice that tends to blame or pathologise. Although, in one sense, claiming to be holistic, it may actually tend to disconnect the person from the ‘bigger picture’ of how they may be implicated in wider patterns of social relations. In a somewhat different way, the identity politics that has underpinned some traditions of activism has taken for granted relatively fixed and unproblematic concepts of collective subjectivity – as ‘gay’, ‘black’, ‘working-class’, ‘women’ and so on. It was assumed that, once members of oppressed groups came to realise their true position within social relations, they would be able to mobilise themselves ‘as one’ and assertively strive to achieve their common goals. However, experience has shown this to be far from straightforward: seeking to act as a pure collective subject may be just as unrealistic as seeking to act as a pure individual subject, as crucial dynamics of internal oppression, conflict and contradiction may not easily be ignored. Poststructural perspectives have sought to expose the illusory nature of any form of pure subjectivity, and have suggested that any apparent unity is a temporary and unstable construct on the surface of a personality or identity-grouping, rather than a reflection of any ontologically or politically secure core. Furthermore, any such fixing of identity may be seen to be achievable only through the violent repudiation of elements, both internally and externally, that are seen not to fit. This suggests that a more complex approach may be needed in developing emancipatory ways of engaging with issues of identity, one of ‘fracturing unities and effecting regroupings, furrowing across individuals themselves, cutting them up and remoulding them’ (Foucault 1981: p. 96). One strategy would involve finding more effective ways of negotiating with prevailing expectations. Although performing some degree of coherence of individual or collective identity may be necessary in order to secure participation in key economic and discursive structures, such compromise may be achieved in greater awareness, particularly an awareness of the creative possibilities of subversive reiteration, of con-


tinually ‘tinkering’ with the script so as, ever so slightly, to shift the terms of these structures. Gender, ‘race’, class, sexuality, community and other aspects of identity may be replayed in ways that challenge boundaries and open up new opportunities. More radically, there may be possibilities of taking on, re-creating and refining more ‘affirmative’ identities that do not close down the possibilities for difference and diversity within these (see, for example, Davies and Neal 1996; Corker and French 1999b; Patel 1999). These may be crucial strategies in establishing alliances and common ground in collective struggles: an identity politics that does not have to be based on static or essentialised identities, but can continually be nuancing, refining and advancing positions already achieved, and recognising differences within, as well as between, identities. An alternative approach would be to establish social contexts in which to explore the liberatory aspects of living more fluid and multiple identities: We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries. (Foucault 1982: p. 212) This is the terrain of the postmodern politics identified by Chantal Mouffe (1995): a ‘radical democratic’ conception of citizenship in which subjects are not held to some restrictive unitary identity, but speak themselves through a more flexible ensemble of positions that allow them to make best use of the multiplicity of discursive, material and emotional structurings which may be available to them (see Byrne and McCarthy 1999). Identities that may ‘spill out’ in unexpected directions would continually undermine the oppressive potential of categorisation, leading ultimately to a weakening or dissolving of the very categories themselves. In some ways, a refusal to ‘make sense’ within the current configuration of identities may constitute a powerful political statement. Such a direction, although hard to achieve, even within the limited relaxation and blurring of categories of late (or post) modernity, would offer both the possibility of contributing to collective political transformation and, on an individual scale, accessing greater possibilities for personal empowerment: Each narrative of the self may function well in certain circumstances but lead to miserable outcomes in others. To have only a single


means to make self intelligible, then, is to limit the range of relationships or situations in which one can function satisfactorily. (Gergen and Kaye 1992: p. 179; see also Cooper and Rowan 1999) However, there may be need for caution here. Any failure to live within the confines of conventional notions of identity may come up against both external and internalised forms of prohibition, or labelling as deviant or psychotic. In this way, such moves may potentially be experienced, not as accessing wider opportunities for the realisation of desire, but as opening up ever greater possibilities of distress or terror, and of being let down, misunderstood and invalidated (Glass 1993). In the absence of any external support in taking apart identities that may reflect internalisations of discrimination, subordination or abuse, people may attempt, in some sense, to ‘do’ deconstruction on themselves: to allow some spilling out of the conflict within, and a cutting up of discursive or bodily images of coherence. While this may signal a partial refusal to ‘make sense’ within the terms of dominant discourses, it may also tend to reproduce some of the very patterns of damage and oppression from which they may be seeking to escape. Such a breaking down of modernist subjectivity may take place on a variety of levels: sometimes mentally, through some form of psychotic dissociation or splitting apart; sometimes emotionally, through depression, anxiety or other veiled representations of internalised hurt and anger; and sometimes corporeally, as forms of self-harm, ranging from substance misuse through to literally cutting up and scarring the body – a particularly disruptive ‘language’ to dominant modes of representation (see Lefevre 1996). Alternatively, this spilling out may emerge as the failure to perform social roles – such as parenting or employment – in ways that are seen as adequate or acceptable. It may often be the consequences of such processes of breakdown that can lead people to the attention of human services workers. Deconstructive approaches to counselling or therapy involve opening up an already assumed identity to critical scrutiny, exploring both the particular violences that may have taken place in order to secure it in its current form, and the ways that its organisation may reflect the internalisation or projection of specific oppressions. Work may involve dialoguing with individuals, opening out issues in a group situation in which people may have experience in common (as in survivors groups for people who have been abused), or challenging the projection of uncomfortable aspects of identity on to weaker group members, as in family or other social settings.


As with the traditional therapeutic adage, ‘no gain without pain’, people may experience the early stages of taking apart a familiar shell as, in itself, somewhat violent. The ‘relentless’ curiosity required, on the part of both the person and their worker, to deconstruct their ‘familiarities’ (to borrow Foucault’s words) may threaten what little security they feel they have left. However excruciating it may have been to perform the self-harming, socially limiting or inferiorising aspects of an identity, doing without them may leave a person feeling painfully exposed and vulnerable, perhaps even verging on the psychotic. Reiteration, however unpleasant, is at least familiar. In parallel with the opening up of identities to greater awareness, may come various possibilities of ‘doing’ them differently, or of drawing upon new elements that may be available from alternative discursive structures that might offer more empowering possibilities. There may be seen to be important parallels between the projects of deconstruction and psychotherapy (see Parker 1999). Both approaches seek to open up surface unities in order to explore the splits and conflicts, and potentially the embedded power relations, that may lie beneath. A crucial part of the therapeutic process is the ‘holding’ of dissonant elements as they emerge: witnessing the horror, offering acceptance for the split-off parts that do not fit with each other, and gently reflecting back the material that has come into awareness. For such a process to be empowering, this holding must become detached from any ulterior agenda which (implicitly) assumes some correct way for the pieces to be put back together – one which might invite people to reconstruct themselves according to some bland and untroublesome image of a modernist subject, perhaps through the subtle re-imposition of the very violences and oppressions that contributed to the original distress. Instead, practice would need to be more daring, going with the transformative potential of dissonant and disruptive elements, and enabling the emergence of discordant and somewhat unstable identities that refuse to fit in with the current social order – identities that may demand changes in interpersonal, family or social relations in order to redress experiences of oppression or abuse. By their very nature, such identities are not easy to live in isolation, hence there may be great importance in supporting people in connecting with others sharing similar experiences in order ‘to feel secure in challenging conventional images of themselves’ (Butler and Wintram 1991: p. 17). Alternatively, there may be value in supporting the renegotiation of identities within families or other already existing social units.


Unless the rules and expectations of the system as a whole are enabled to change, there may be an inexorable pressure on the individual to fall back into familiar (and limiting) constructions of subjectivity. It is important to recognise that performing more fluid and discontented identities may be seen to run perilously close to what is conventionally understood as ‘psychosis’ or ‘personality disorder’, inviting potentially savage responses in terms of social control. Thus, in order to be survivable, identities need to be lived with some degree of care and caution, using intuition and awareness in order to determine how subjectivity may be deployed in order to be most effective in bringing about wider forms of change – for example, when to challenge overtly or when to ‘subvert’ in more subtle ways. Recasting psychodynamic insights and techniques within a deconstructive framework may offer the possibility of a practice that can be emancipatory for individuals or groups: one that would give voice to previously excluded elements, and, in doing so, push beyond the constraints of conventional constructions of subjectivity. If successful, such approaches might take away some of the compulsion to signal and re-enact issues of abuse or domination in ways that can be self-limiting or injurious. They may offer more effective and less life-threatening ways of ‘not making sense’ to the dominant order. Instead of the ‘cutting up’ being directed internally or on to the surface of the body, it may be re-presented through identities that are more challenging and externally destabilising (albeit sometimes in rather subtle and subversive ways). And any subsequent ‘remoulding’ may be seen, not in terms of restoring social conformity, but of a more pervasive renegotiation of identities within interactional systems that may start to mount a ‘bottom-up’ challenge to the reiteration of oppressive forms of normative expectation.

7 Relations of Power

Throughout the preceding chapters, power has figured as a central theme. It is the purpose of this chapter to pull together the various (and not entirely consistent) notions of power that have emerged from developments in critical social theory, in order to arrive at clearer definitions of what power is and how it may operate, and to develop a working framework whereby to analyse power relations in theory and in practice. Starting with a discussion of the ambivalent relationship between power and the modernist project as a whole, I will then look at how power relations have been understood from structural and poststructural perspectives, moving beyond the conflation of power with notions of an oppressive force, towards understandings that encompass the possibility that it may also operate in more productive modes. This leads to the setting out of a conceptual matrix whereby to distinguish the directional nature of power relations, and their capacity both to limit and to open up forms of social opportunity. Following on from a discussion of the contested concept of empowerment, this matrix is used as the basis for an exploration of how practice may seek to shift the terms of power relations in emancipatory directions.

Power and modernism Power is an issue that has haunted modernism. Modernity has presented itself as aspiring to fairness and an inclusive citizenship, abolishing exclusive notions of caste or inherited status. It offered the overthrow of previous traditional or feudal forms, in which the status quo had been secured by the deployment of naked force and notions of absolute divine/monarchical authority, and substituted a vision of a 152

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more consensual, participatory politics. However, beneath this façade, modernity has been characterised by a systematic reiteration of inequalities of opportunity, and situations of oppression and abuse. It is out of this context that a particular paradox has emerged: on the one hand, certain notions of power are no strangers to everyday or academic discourses, while, on the other hand, for something so apparently familiar, there has been remarkably little clarity as to what power actually is. It perhaps represents that which, were it to be fully revealed, might be most directly threatening to the vested interests of modernity (or even postmodernity). Unravelling the operation of power may thus be seen to constitute a defining core of the enterprise of critical theory. Sometimes, concepts of power have been rendered peripheral to modernist analyses of social and interpersonal processes, thereby maintaining the illusion that the current organisation of social relations is somehow fair and natural (see Apfelbaum 1999). Where notions of power have entered into modernist discourses, its operation has been seen as (naturally) serving to promote the tenets of modernity. For example, people, acting as individuals, may be seen to engage in forms of competitive jostling for position – a pursuance of self-interest that, as with free-market economics, is seen to work ultimately for the benefit of all. Crucially, power has tended not to be construed as a relation between people, but as an entity in itself – an attribute or property of either ‘society’ or ‘the individual’. Much of the dynamism of power becomes lost when it becomes reduced either, within positivism, to a fixed status or quality that a person may (or may not) possess or, within humanism, to some subjective sense of centredness, capability or personal authority. No integrated understanding of the operation of power is possible as long as one remains caught between the poles of the subject/object dualism that is central to modernist thought. For the early political philosophers of the Enlightenment, such as Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, the exchange and regulation of power was seen as central to the ‘social contract’. Participation as a modernist citizen was seen to involve a bargain whereby each person elected to forfeit some of their individual power – their right to act howsoever they chose – and vest this power with the civil state, giving it the authority to govern and regulate in the interests of all citizens. Such a bargain was seen as essential for maintenance of social cohesion, but also as being in the ultimate interest of all individuals. In this way, a paradigm was constructed in which all citizens were rendered equal by


the act of signing up to citizenship, and any potential for structural conflict within society was ruled out of existence. Such notions of individual power meshing easily with a beneficent societal authority may be seen to resurface in the functionalist sociology of Talcott Parsons. Here, power was understood as a driving force that functions to maintain the systemic order of modernity. Thus, an ‘objective’ concept of power emerges, not as a relationship that can divide people into unequal groups, but as the ‘generalised capacity of a social system to get things done in the interest of collective goals’ (Parsons 1960: p. 181). The social whole, and the assumed consensus upon which it is seen to be founded, is seen as possessing some immanent power to shape and determine the attitudes and activities of individuals so that they ‘fit in’ and contribute to the well-being of the wider group. Securing such an operation of power requires the ‘institutionalisation of authority’ (Parsons 1967: p. 331), in which it comes to appear natural for the power of this consensual social order to be vested in those in existing positions of authority, such as statesmen, fathers, industrialists and community leaders. In this way, any possibilities of oppression or contradiction are neatly erased from the analysis: Two obvious facts, that authoritative decisions often do serve sectional interests, and that the most radical conflicts in society stem from struggles for power, are defined out of consideration. (Giddens 1968: p. 265) Within the humanist tradition, any understanding of power has been entirely subjective, an individual ability (as a unitary subjectivity) to set one’s own direction in life, to exert one’s ‘will’. It could be seen to be part of man’s nature to seek to ‘plough his own furrow’ in an essentially asocial manner, to achieve entirely individual ends without any desire to connect with others, except as an expedient means to achieve such ends. This may be seen as a quintessentially masculine vision of power – and one that could be held in check only by a similarly masculine commitment to the rational regulation of conduct. Although this has been a dominant formulation, it has also been subject to some degree of challenge. On the one hand, Rousseau introduced the idea of empathy or compassion as a counterbalancing quality of human ‘nature’, while on the other, Nietzsche sought to do away with both rationality and empathy, leaving a notion of an unbridled ‘will to power’ that was inherently threatening to the stability of the modernist social order.


Such philosophical notions have been influential on humanistic psychology, where power has been seen as emerging from within each individual – as a releasing and realisation of inner potential and latent capabilities. It may also be seen to be reflected within the formulations of sociological action theory, where it is seen to represent ‘the “can” which mediates between intentions or wants and the actual realisation of the outcomes sought after’ (Giddens 1993: p. 118). Such approaches may be somewhat naïve as to the complex internal and external barriers that may exist for people participating in a social order characterised by a multiplicity of oppressions, where subjectivity itself may be seen as constructed in and through power relations, and the individual may be seen, not as ‘the vis-à-vis of power’, but as ‘one of its prime effects’ (Foucault 1980a: p. 98). Within positivist understandings, power has been regarded, rather like money, as something which may be acquired, owned or distributed to others. However, because, unlike money, it is not an objective entity that can be directly observed, quantified or measured, it has tended to be seen as of relatively marginal importance as a tool by which to make sense of social interaction. As an entirely individualised notion, it may only be used within certain circumscribed contexts, such as studies of the relative influence that different individuals may bring to bear in a group decision-making process (see, for example, Dahl 1957). It is seen as a measure of the degree to which one individual can influence or force another to do something that they would not otherwise have done, ‘the capacity of an individual to realise his will, even against the opposition of others’ (Weber 1968: p. 1111). Once such capacity to influence may be seen, not just as some intrinsic attribute, but to depend on received or consensual notions of social status, a more ‘radical’ view of power becomes possible. Starting with a primarily behavioural focus, Stephen Lukes (1974) studied decisionmaking processes in situations where there were indications of a conflict of interest and, following Dahl, categorised the overt exercise of interpersonal power in terms of behaviour by which one person may direct or influence another to act in a way that they would not otherwise have done. However, he extended the analysis beyond this into the territory of the less observable and potentially more pernicious exercise of power. Under the category of the covert use of power, he characterised more underhand strategies of coercion, involving threats of deprivation or the possibilities of patronage, the deployment of legitimated positions of authority, and more complex strategies of manipulation. In such


scenarios, although there is awareness of conflicts of interest or desire, these never reach the point of being articulated by those who emerge as relatively powerless – there is never overt disagreement. For such strategies to have effect (although this is not a line of argument pursued by Lukes himself), there must be some form of context of embedded power inequalities. In order to threaten deprivation, one must have a differential command over resources. In order for one to use authority without fear of contestation, it must be already embedded within a taken-for-granted discursive fabric. Finally, Lukes opened up the possibility of latent power, in which certain actors may be in a position to subvert the possibility of other actors even developing an awareness that they may have a contrary interest. Through the use of techniques such as advertising or media manipulation, those securing power may be able to set the agenda in advance of any decision-making process, such that all participants enter into it believing that they share common aspirations, although, for some, these professed aspirations may run counter to an analysis of their ‘real interests’. Although formulated in terms of the strategies that may be adopted by individuals or groups of actors, this raises the possibility of larger interest groups or sections of society securing their dominance by the broader-scale deployment of latent power – an approach which starts to converge with structural notions of ideological hegemony.

Theories of oppression and discrimination As has been discussed earlier, the crucial advance of Marxist, feminist, anti-colonial and other critical perspectives has been to identify collective dynamics of domination and subordination embedded within modern social formations. Through these relations, which may be systematically obscured behind notions of fairness, naturalness and inevitability, certain social groups have secured positions of privilege over others, able to wield configurations of economic, discursive, emotional power to their advantage. The collective oppression or exclusion of one group by another may be achieved through securing privileged access to key resources, practices and modes of expression – through control not only over economic capital, but also over modes of cultural and symbolic capital that legitimate or prioritise certain forms of representation or emotionality (see Bourdieu 1987, 1989; Skeggs 1997). Nevertheless, such relations of domination are never entirely secure, and opportunities for resistance may be ever-present. In this way, the


hierarchical power structures that currently attach to socially constructed differences may be seen, not as permanent or unchanging, but as temporarily fixed points in an ongoing and continually shifting ‘war of position’ between various social groups. Structural power may be deployed in a variety of ways, and it may be helpful to clarify these, along with the different terms that may be used in their description. Iris Marion Young, reviewing the various usages of the term ‘oppression’, sees it as encompassing a number of different processes whereby members of certain groups may be subject to power relations that cause them to ‘suffer some inhibition of their ability to develop and exercise their capabilities and express their needs, thoughts and feelings’ (1990: p. 40). While ‘for every oppressed group there is a group that is privileged in relation to that group’ in terms of choices and opportunities (ibid.: p. 42), members of the privileged group may not necessarily be aware of any conscious intention to oppress others. Taking this argument further, it may be suggested that those on the receiving end of forms of domination may be far from clear about what is happening to them and why it may not feel right in some sense. They may find themselves immersed within discursive regimes that disguise the operation of oppression, or legitimate unjust practices as appropriate, necessary, or for people’s own good (see, for example, Miller 1983). Thus, in some instances, incoherent and inexplicable ‘gut’ feelings, or the drive to re-enact patterns of abuse on self or others, may serve as the most accurate pointers to forms of oppression that may be taking place. Young identifies a historical shift in the usage of the term ‘oppression’. In relation to pre-modern or feudal social relations, oppression tended to denote subjection to the will and dictates of a tyrannical ruler. While such usage may now make little sense within the public sphere of a modern liberal democracy, it could be argued that such configurations of absolute and abusive authority may still be present to some extent within the patriarchal organisation of domestic life, providing the relational context for the perpetration of domestic violence and sexual abuse. Within the more sophisticated social relations of modernity, oppression may take on more subtle forms. In relation to wage and domestic labour processes, people may be exploited in terms of not receiving due credit for the value of work performed, marginalised or excluded from participation at certain levels of the labour market, or rendered powerless in relation to a ‘social division between those who plan and those who execute’ (Young 1990: p. 58). Two further forms of oppres-


sive social practice are considered: cultural imperialism and violence. The former ‘involves the universalisation of a dominant group’s experience and culture’, backed up by its effective control over ‘the means of interpretation and communication’. Viewed from the perspective of those on the receiving end: The culturally dominated undergo a paradoxical oppression, in that they are both marked out by stereotypes and at the same time rendered invisible. As remarkable, deviant beings, the culturally imperialised are stamped with an essence. (ibid.: p. 59) Cultural imperialism may involve a symbolic violation of people as their bodies are packaged and ‘stamped’ to represent certain characteristics: ‘black’ people may be defined as ‘sexual’ or ‘aggressive’, and gay men as ‘effeminate’. Such symbolic processes establish the categories of people whose bodies may then be subject to systematic exposure to actual, or threatened, assault; the violation becomes (potentially) physical. Although processes of oppression may not always be immediately decipherable, there are some which may be more readily observable, and where the outcomes, in terms of differential opportunity, may be relatively clear and measurable. For example, when ‘black’, female or disabled employees are rarely promoted above certain ‘glass ceilings’ within organisations, there are strong indications of unfair employment or educational practices. While some authors use the terms oppression and discrimination interchangeably (for example, Thompson 1997), I think that it is helpful to reserve the term discrimination for that range of practices where an impartial ‘fly on the wall’ might readily discern systematic differences in the ways that people in different social groups are treated. These are practices which may potentially be exposed through the conventional tools of modernist objectivity – data collection and rational analysis – and where, in principle, it may be possible to enshrine opportunities for redress or resolution within anti-discriminatory legislation, policies and guidelines for professional practice. However, although this is not a line of argument pursued by Young herself, such instances of discrimination may be imagined as the visible or tangible ‘tip’ of a much larger ‘iceberg’ of social practices that systematically diminish, injure or hold back members of certain social groups: the totality of people’s experience of oppression. Any recourse to objective definitional criteria may have the effect of denying the reality of what may be going on beneath the surface: those more sub-


jective experiences that may not fit particular headings, or may be felt viscerally while not easily making sense rationally. In turn, this could lead to a reformist politics in which only overt inequalities are addressed, leaving the more pervasive and insidious aspects of social oppression unrecognised (see Rees 1991). Beneath this ‘tip’ of overt discrimination, there may be a multiplicity of other experiences, such as the devaluing or violation of identities, or emotional inequalities in relationships, where there may be a substantial oppressive impact, but where processes may be hard to observe – perhaps relying on subliminal languages of tone and inflection, implicit shared assumptions and chains of meaning, already existing vulnerabilities, or processes of attribution and projection. It is here that theories of subjectivity and identity may play a role in opening up this terrain for analysis: how oppressive power relations may be embedded within the very forms of organisation by which people may constitute themselves as relational subjects. For people in subordinated categories, to operate at all as a recognisable social subject may require an acquiescence to, and reiteration of, many of these more subtle languages of oppression.

Foucault and the dispersal of power In his explorations of the operation of power, Foucault distances himself from any centralised, ‘top-down’ or structuralist understandings, arguing that ‘power comes from below’ (1981: p. 94). Instead of seeking to analyse the local operation of power as a reflection or consequence of the deployment of power by the state or ruling elites, he gives ontological priority to a myriad of localised, unstable and continually shifting power relationships or antagonisms: One must rather conduct an ascending analysis of power, that is from its infinitesimal mechanisms, which each have their own history, their own trajectory, their own tactics, and then see how these mechanisms of power have been – and continue to be – invested, colonised, utilised, involuted, transformed, displaced, extended, etc. by even more general mechanisms and by forms of global domination. (Foucault 1980b: p. 99) While unpicking the ways in which hegemonic regulatory forms of power are embedded in state institutions, professional roles and an array of everyday discursive practices within which people are subjected, he


resists any humanist understanding of such power relations being consciously or intentionally applied by such groupings. Although, in practice, logics and strategies may have emerged that are effective, interlocking and consistent, ‘it is often the case that no one is there to have invented them’ (Foucault 1981: p. 95). Instead, he proposes a much more complex set of processes in which such frameworks of power arise as the cumulative effects of a multiplicity of localised conflicts. He argues that the power relations arising from ‘local oppositions’ may sometimes coalesce in order to produce more generalised regularities of power, ‘that run through the social body as a whole’. In this way, ‘major dominations’ may be understood as ‘the hegemonic effects that are sustained by all these confrontations’ (ibid.: p. 94). Although he does not develop this conceptualisation of how the local may link to the structural any further, similar ideas emerge in the work of Laclau and Mouffe. They also propose a move away from a ‘top-down’ focus on large-scale conflicts of power within the social formation to a study of how hegemonic positions may be ‘welded together’ out of a ‘multiplicity of dispersed wills’ (1985: p. 68). For example, they argue that, while there may be no ‘single mechanism of women’s oppression … the ensemble of social practices, institutions and discourses which produce woman as a category are not completely isolated but mutually reinforce and act upon one another’ (ibid.: pp. 117–18). Foucault proposes that resistances may tend to take place within, rather than challenge, the terms of the dominant regimes of discourse and social organisation. He is cautious of the possibility of any generalised ‘great Refusal’, and instead focuses on how the localised operation of oppressive power may tend to incite particular and sometimes idiosyncratic forms of resistance, depending on the specific situation. Nevertheless, he allows some possibility for localised resistances to coalesce, suggesting a formulation that comes close to Gramscian notions of hegemony: There are a plurality of resistances, each of them a special case… . Are there no great radical ruptures, massive binary divisions, then? Occasionally, yes. But more often one is dealing with mobile and transitory points of resistance, producing cleavages in a society that shift about, fracturing unities and effecting regroupings… . And it is doubtless the strategic codification of these points of resistance that makes a revolution possible, somewhat similar to the way in which the state relies on the institutional integration of power relationships. (Foucault 1981: pp. 95–6)


Again, it is important to understand such resistance, not as straightforward and conscious acts of ‘will’ pursued by humanist subjects, but as reiterative refusals or subversions that may even take place outside awareness, and may reflect people’s complex histories of subjection and participation within conflicting discursive structures. Thus, although some sense of subjective ‘will’ may be a component of resistance, it is a ‘will’ that ‘is never totally controlled by each self’ (Fornas 1995: p. 127). In his later work, Foucault comes to view power not just as something potentially repressive or antagonistic, but also in terms of a productive network which runs through the social fabric: one that may be creative and constitutive of opportunities, one that ‘produces things … induces pleasure [and] forms of knowledge’ (1980b: p. 119). At times, this more positive exposition of power, and its dissociation from understandings of oppression, may lead him perilously close to Nietzschean notions of a universal ‘will to power’ (Henriques et al. 1984: p. 116). Ultimately, however, he resists any reversion to such a humanist perspective: his subjects remain decentred, acted upon by power and acting in power. For him, ‘power is no unidirectional force that can be possessed, but is an always concretely situated, mutual but asymmetrical, intersubjective relation’ (Fornas 1995: p. 65). Developing Foucault’s interest in the productive potentials of power, poststructural feminists have explored how women may gain access to particular forms of power, precisely by exploiting and developing certain of the positions, such as that of a ‘domestic goddess’, that may be discursively available to them within the contradictory social relations of patriarchy. Thus, in some ways, femininity may be seen ‘as something that women themselves construct, in positive and powerful ways’ (Williams 1996: p. 66). However, in accessing such productive forms of power, there may be a substantial price to pay, in terms of what may simultaneously be closed off for them in the construction of such subjectivities. In Foucault’s earlier formulations, although power is to be seen as operating in more localised and individualised contexts, it is still conceptualised in quasi-structural terms as struggles of oppression and resistance. This notion of power is therefore potentially compatible with the terms of wider structural analyses. If localised oppression and resistances may coalesce and aggregate in ‘strategic codifications’, then it may also be possible to admit that localised positionings and antagonisms may derive crucial aspects of their context from wider material, discursive and emotional structures of inequality, such as those


constructed around gender, ‘race’ or class. Thus there is no reason why ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ perspectives should be seen to be in contradiction: influence may potentially travel both ways. His later focus on the emergence of productive modes of power, and his shift away from antagonisms, pose more of a conceptual challenge to structural perspectives. It requires an opening out of the possibilities of power – a move away from an exclusive focus on binary oppositions, but one which still recognises ‘asymmetry’ in the construction of social relations. Such thinking is crucial in moving beyond a simplistic ‘good/bad’ approach to power that may be seen to have characterised some structurally informed analyses. As Peter Leonard argues, ‘not all power is malignant nor every resistance benign’ (1997: p. 168).

Reclaiming productive aspects of power Moving beyond the ruthless individualism that tends to underpin modernist notions of power, Jean Baker Miller starts with a very general definition of power as ‘the capacity to produce a change’ (1991: p. 198). She offers a distinction between conventionally male definitions of power – ‘to exercise dominion or to dominate’ – as against women’s familiarity in using power to bring about change with or for others, within familial or other relational contexts (a concept of power that is rendered almost invisible within a patriarchal social order). A similar distinction is drawn by Riane Eisler in her historical distinction between ‘dominator’ and ‘partnership’ cultures. In the former, difference is ‘equated with inferiority or superiority’, whereas, in the latter, difference is not located within any hierarchical ranking and ‘social relations are primarily based on the concept of linking’ (1987: p. xvii). Janet Surrey takes the argument further and distinguishes two strands within western male constructions of power: ‘mastery’ over others and self-determination of one’s own life. (There is an obvious connection between these two understandings of power and the worldviews of, respectively, positivism and humanism.) Both definitions are based on masculine ideologies of separateness and competition that exclude any positive sense of relatedness with others. Thus, within dominant masculinities, men ‘can come to view connection as if it were associated with loss of identity, control, power and the capacity to act on one’s perceptions and interests’ (1991: p. 168).


Surrey contrasts these notions of ‘power over’ with very different ideas of ‘empowerment’ that emerge from practical experiences of consciousness raising, self-help and collective action (see Freire 1970; Rappaport 1984). Such relational strategies of empowerment are not dissimilar to the sorts of power that women in many cultural contexts may be familiar with using in their everyday lives (but typically more for the direct benefit of others, and only indirectly for themselves). They involve ‘a mobilisation of the energies, strengths, resources, or powers of each person through a mutual, relational process’ (Surrey 1991: p. 164). Such a forging of connections with others may be infinitely more potent in terms of bringing about opportunities for change and development than the separateness of ‘self-determination’: The movement of relationship creates an energy, momentum or power that is experienced as beyond the individual, yet available to the individual… . Neither person is in control: instead, each is enlarged and feels empowered. (ibid.: p. 168) On a more practical level, acting together may be instrumental in opening up new possibilities and choices that would not be possible as an isolated individual. There is a startling contrast between the dominant modernist vision, in which achievement requires each individual to pursue their own objectives and, if necessary, bend others to their will, and the experience of many subordinated groups where not just the realisation of opportunities, but everyday survival, may depend on mobilising complex webs of material, emotional and discursive support. Such practices of sharing, challenging and acting ‘in relationship’ may be seen to underpin the achievement of ‘power together’, whether within formal organisations, such as women’s groups, trade unions, or cultural or religious groupings, or within informal networks of mutuality based on family or community. Although these formulations were originally developed within a predominantly humanist paradigm, by locating empowerment within a relational context, they are helpful in moving beyond the modernist dualism of individual intention and agency set against fixed social structures. The unitary subject – as agent of change – is no longer central to the debate. A somewhat lonely masculine vision of ‘independence’ (in the image of Clint Eastwood) no longer sets the agenda for the personal deployment of power. Instead, there emerge possibilities for complex and fractured subjectivities to explore ‘power together’: to


connect and challenge each other, to play with elements of sameness and difference, to move and be moved in ways that offer mutual recognition, and to cooperate in bringing about opportunities for emancipatory change. This is the territory of a ‘politics of interdependence’, a practice of solidarity that, unlike many historical social movements, resists any ‘homogenising impulse’. As Peter Leonard argues, this must be underpinned by ‘a moral responsibility for otherness’: a vision of empowerment that builds on the ‘recognition that mutual interdependence is at the core of our subjectivity’ (1997: pp. 164, 165). Out of such openness to connection may be forged new forms of identity that neither presume sameness, nor seek to place difference within any form of hierarchy. However, at the same time, there is the potential for ‘power together’ to be far from emancipatory. There are possibilities for very different forms of connection being made between subjectivities, of initiating processes of collusion against and rejection of what may be experienced as ‘other’, both within and outside individual or group. This may be seen as a defensive banding together in order to resist some form of uncomfortable awareness (such as feelings of vulnerability), or a more active and intentional formation of an exclusive ‘club’ (such as Freemasonry or other secret societies) with the aim of keeping out, and keeping down, those deemed not suitable for membership. At its most extreme, there is the potential for subjectivities to merge to form lynch mobs or to run concentration camps. On an everyday basis, discourses such as humour may be deployed in order to bolster insecure identities, by playing them off against the identities of others, characterised as inferior: thus being ‘English’ may be (re)constructed around an illusory commonality of superiority over, say, being ‘Irish’ or ‘Asian’. While people acting cooperatively to achieve common purposes may bond around shared aspects of identity, they may also, sometimes unconsciously, discount or dismiss issues of difference. In this way, ‘white’ men may connect and achieve significant ‘power together’ acting collectively within a trade union structure, while simultaneously colluding to impede the involvement of ‘black’ or women workers, or, more subtly, tending to discount the significance or relevance of issues raised by them. Similar dynamics have arisen and led to fundamental processes of reappraisal within the women’s movement. Just as instances of ‘power together’ may or may not be emancipatory, so situations of ‘power over’ may not necessarily involve oppressive forms of control. Although fraught with possibilities for misunderstanding and multiple reading, there may be scenarios in


which people (most typically women) may seek to use their power or authority in the service of, and ultimately to protect, vulnerable others, such as children, older people, or people with disabilities (see Baker Miller 1991). Similarly, in a more conventionally masculine sphere, the need to protect vulnerable people has been used both legitimately and illegitimately as the rationale for policing, imprisonment and military intervention. Within the modern state, a range of welfare and other professionals may be authorised to use legal powers if necessary to ensure the protection of children or adults deemed to be vulnerable to abuse or exploitation by others. The use of superior power positions in order to promote notions of security or justice for ‘the weak’ always runs the risk of shifting over into relations of patronage or oppression. Authority may be sanctioned by (and intertwined with) structures of oppression: the authority of the police and armed forces may be predominantly sanctioned by dominant social groups (upper class, male, white, heterosexual), and the positions of parents may be seen to be embedded within structures of patriarchal power. Thus, any intervention would need to be interrogated to establish exactly how power may be being used. To what extent may vulnerable people have been objectified and homogenised, characterised on the basis of some index of their ‘neediness’, without any real respect or understanding being shown towards the specificity of their situation? To what degree have their preferences and aspirations set the agenda for any action undertaken on their behalf, and how may (or may not) this action enable them to progress beyond their current positions of relative vulnerability? Are there opportunities for them to challenge or renegotiate the extent of their need for protection? Only once such questions are answered, may it be possible to ensure that the deployment of protective ‘power over’ is working as a strategy for safeguarding against immediate risk while promoting possibilities for longer-term emancipation.

A matrix of power relations Although, from a critical perspective, the possibilities for defining and redefining power may be endless, for the purposes of this discussion, I would propose that power be understood as a social relation that either opens up or closes off opportunities for individuals or social groups. These may include opportunities to define and negotiate identities, to make or break connections with others, to express desires and feelings (and have these acknowledged), to satisfy needs or aspirations, to participate


and contribute, to influence and make choices, or to engage in some form of transformatory action. In relation to taking up any such opportunity, power may be seen to represent the capability (or otherwise) of bringing about a shift in positioning with regard to some pre-existing discursive, material or emotional context. Such shifts may take place at different scales, often simultaneously. They may be internal to personal subjectivity, or take place within the parameters of interpersonal relationships (for example, taking on or renegotiating identities). They may also involve changing the terms of participation in wider social relations, perhaps through involvement in some more extensive collective enterprise or struggle. Working with these definitions, and pulling together some of the themes from the earlier discussions in this chapter, a tentative framework emerges whereby to analyse the operation of power. Using the vectors of ‘power over’ and ‘power together’, it is possible to distinguish the fundamentally different directions that power relations may take between people. At the same time, power relations may be evaluated in terms of their effects on those implicated within them: is the operation of power productive in terms of opening up opportunities, or is it limiting and serving to close them down? Putting these criteria together sets up a conceptual matrix by which to analyse particular instances of the operation of power (Figure 7.1). This matrix provides a framework for viewing some of the complex forms that power relations may take, and the possibilities for interconnection and ‘sliding’ between each of them. Many social situations may comprise elements of each operating simultaneously. The possibilities whereby protective practices may slide into oppression, and Figure 7.1

Matrix of Power Relations Power over

Power together

Productive modes of power

Protective Power Deploying power in order to safeguard vulnerable people and their possibilities for advancement

Cooperative Power Collective action, sharing, mutual support and challenge – through valuing commonality and difference

Limiting modes of power

Oppressive Power Exploiting differences to enhance own position and resources at the expense of others

Collusive Power Banding together to exclude or suppress ‘otherness’ whether internal or external


cooperative organisations may slip into collusion, have already been discussed. From a structural perspective, the conditions for the ‘vertical’ operation of oppressive power may generally only be secured by a dominant group through the simultaneous ‘horizontal’ organisation of collusive power – both between members of the group, and between the group and other groups and interests who might also stand to gain in some way. Systematic forms of exploitation and abuse require a collusive dissociation of those involved in perpetration from any awareness of the potential impact that such practices might have on those at the receiving end. If the deployment of protective ‘power over’ is not to become stifling and potentially oppressive, then social relations must be constructed so as to permit a shift towards the ‘horizontal’ mutuality of cooperative power over the course of time.

Reconceptualising empowerment Hailed as ‘the central, energising feature’ for social work and potentially other forms of human services practice (Adams 1996: p. 2), ideas of ‘empowerment’ have assumed considerable importance in recent years. However, the term has a complex and contested history within the politics of both the ‘New Right’ and the ‘New Left’ in the late twentieth century (Wainwright 1994). Within neoliberalist discourses of late modernity, empowerment represented the triumphant re-emergence of the individual citizen, freed from the pampering and interference of the ‘nanny’ welfare state. People were to be given the moral right (although not necessarily the economic means) to ‘look after their own’, untrammelled by regulation or bureaucracy. Where residual state services were to be continued, people, as consumers, were to be given power relative to professionals in determining how these services were to be delivered. This discourse tapped into a widespread sense that the organisation of welfare had tended not to be empowering for its recipients, subjecting them to demeaning and disrespectful procedures, unwarranted intrusion and surveillance, and relationships that fostered ongoing dependence on benefits and services. This also meshed with some aspects of the concerns and discontents that had been voiced by user movements. Based on this critique, empowerment was to be seen as a shift of power away from the ‘class fractions’ of bureaucrats and human services professionals towards the individual citizen as consumer and as autonomous agent (see Wistow 1992). However, in other respects, the social order was to be seen as fair and inclusive – and not in need of any form of transformation.


Alternative readings of ‘empowerment’ also derived from user critiques of the oppressive deployment of power by professionals, agencies and services (Beresford and Harding 1993). However, these experiences of powerlessness were not to be seen in isolation but in the wider context of other forms of discrimination, stigmatisation and exclusion (Braye and Preston-Shoot 1995). By joining together in mutual support or campaigning groups, or by asking for more respectful ‘partnership’ relationships with professionals, service users sought to address a wider agenda of social change, one in which issues of disability or vulnerability interlinked with issues such as racism and sexism, and the exclusion or exploitation of those located in workingclass or underclass positions. However, if the term ‘empowerment’ is to be used to describe a practice that is fully emancipatory in its intent, then it must be disentangled from modernist notions of power and agency. There has been an assumption that there is only a finite quantity of power, so that ‘empowering a previously powerless individual or group requires disempowering … those who already hold power’ (Barnes and Bowl 2001: p. 19). Such competitive ‘zero-sum’ notions of power may serve to fuel resistance among professionals who may see that any progress would necessarily be at their expense. However, more complex and critical understandings of the interplay of relations of ‘power over’ and ‘power together’ offer the possibility of moving away from a one-dimensional struggle for position within a hierarchy of domination and subordination, and instead developing forms of cooperative and protective power that may be of mutual advantage: A model of partnership practice which enables the knowledge and insight of both user and professional to be drawn on in developing problem-solving strategies not only has the potential to produce better outcomes for the user, it can also provide learning opportunities for professional actors to develop their practice. (ibid.: p. 20) In seeking to avoid the narrowness of such positivist notions of power, it may be easy to embrace humanist discourses of empowerment, resting on notions of centred, rational and self-contained subjects. These offer a superficially attractive vision of people realising their potential through exercising choice and taking control over their lives – a vision which discounts those forces within the constitution of modernity that may impinge upon, and be internalised within, the organisation of subjectivity. Conceptualised in this way, such aspira-


tions mark an implicit subjugation of the emotional to the rational, and are strongly implicated with liberal ideals of ‘being your own man’, of achieving an illusory independence as a consumer that masks a continued dependence on the operation of economic and cultural markets in order to have personal needs met (Leonard 1997: p. 158). It is therefore important to detach such aspirations from their humanist context in order to unpick what may be meaningful. Decentred subjects do make choices and decisions, and exercise aspects of control, as part of their everyday lives. Not as straightforward rational, consistent and independent subjects, but as complex, contradictory and potentially impulsive subjectivities whose identities and decision making reflect both their insertion in their current social context, and their internalisation of a myriad of introjections from their subjection within previous discursive regimes and interpersonal relationships. Viewed in this way, choice may be decoupled from illusions of individual sovereignty, and understood as a much more complex process of negotiated interdependence – where the negotiation is not just an external process between people, but may also take place between discordant and conflicting elements within subjectivity. This offers the possibility of reconceptualising empowerment, not in terms of discrete individuals owning, disowning or redistributing some commodified form of power, but, more dynamically, as changing the terms of relationships and the modes of operation of power between (and within) people from limiting to more productive forms. This suggests a practice that is not just about ‘achieving power’ within preexisting structures, but is also about ‘transforming it’, engaging in processes of the creative construction of new forms of power (Ward 2000: p. 51). This may involve shifts in identities, orientations and practices that open up, rather than close off opportunities. It may involve co-construction of new knowledges and understandings, making sense with others out of the differences that may emerge in situated experiences (Yuval-Davis 1999). Empowerment may thus be a mutual, interactive and generative process, one that is moving and challenging for all parties. It is a process that takes place within and between the complexities of individual and collective subjectivities. This raises wider questions as to whether it is ever possible for people in positions of relative privilege (practitioners) to empower others in positions of relative powerlessness, or whether it is only for those in such positions to claim power for themselves (Levy Simon 1990). In practice, the organisation of effective resistance and the claiming of productive forms of power may not only come about in response to


some form of ‘invitation to power’ from those already in positions of institutional authority. Paradoxically, such shifts of power relations may sometimes be triggered by their very opposite: particularly blatant instances of oppression or exclusion by those in positions of dominance. Thus, the power to undertake transformative action, or not to do so, may be seen to rest ultimately with those currently experiencing disadvantage or domination; empowerment is not a ‘gift’ that may be handed out by practitioners (Smale et al. 2000: p. 108).

Power in practice The matrix of power relations may be used as a basis for identifying potential directions for change in a way that takes account of the productive possibilities of power, as well as recognising the damaging impacts of oppressive and collusive deployments of power. It offers ways of moving beyond a one-dimensional ‘war of position’ between the forces of oppression and resistance, suggesting creative possibilities for more lateral thinking to engage dominant as well as subordinate elements as ‘stakeholders’ in processes of emancipatory transformation. Within a critical human services practice, it may often make sense to pose working objectives in terms of ‘diagonal’ moves within the matrix: seeking to bring about shifts from collusive to protective, and from oppressive to co-operative modes of operation. From the perspective of potential perpetrators, creating situations in which abuse or exploitation may take place can involve joining with others in (or drawing others into) a collusive network that will systematically ‘not see’ or discount the significance of what may be going on. Intra-psychically, it may involve constructing the reflexive aspect of subjectivity such that abusive behaviours are split off and concealed from full awareness. Faced with such an operation of collusive power, some approaches to child or adult protection may simply serve to write off those currently charged with ‘caring’ as inadequate or dangerous, and to substitute professional modes of surveillance. While such a deployment of protective power may sometimes be necessary in the short term, it may also contribute to the further disempowerment of a relational system that may already have become somewhat fragile and shaky. What may be more effective in the longer term is working alongside (some of) those already involved to help them to challenge patterns of ‘not-seeing’ for (and in) themselves. By acting co-operatively rather than collusively, they may be able to mobilise sufficient protective power to ensure safety without any ongoing external intervention.


Activist traditions of practice have sought to mitigate or redress the structural disadvantage suffered by specific communities and social groups (see Chapter 3). This has involved an explicit assault on aspects of social and economic organisation that serve to perpetuate forms of oppressive ‘power over’. Empowerment is seen, not in terms of some individualised process of people claiming control over their lives, but in terms of the mobilisation of forms of cooperative ‘power together’, through awareness-raising and collective action, by which to mount more effective forms of resistance against external oppression (see, for example, Mullaly 1993; Ledwith 1997). Acting in a similar direction (although somewhat separately) has been the development of anti-discriminatory or anti-oppressive practice. Driven initially by a commitment to act against personal and institutional racism, it has been applied more widely to other structural forms of discrimination (Mama 1991; Dalrymple and Burke 1995). It seeks to challenge discrimination, not only at the personal level of prejudicial attitudes and behaviours, but also at the levels of culture and structure, where it may be embedded within ‘common sense’ understandings and institutionalised within customary ways of acting, and be interlinked with wider inequalities in social and economic relations (Thompson 1997). Both activist and anti-discriminatory practice traditions have rested on assumptions of commonality and solidarity of experience that could subordinate questions of internal difference and diversity within the politics of ‘the struggle’. While this vision of cooperative ‘power together’ may result in some substantive gains for subordinated groups in terms of reducing oppressive instances of ‘power over’, this may be at the cost of colluding against any recognition (or valuing) of internal difference. In turn, this may lead to the breakdown of wider alliances, with individuals and sub-groups feeling excluded or oppressed by the very people with whom they wished to connect in order to bring about change in their situations. If practice aimed at countering forms of inequality and discrimination is not itself to become implicated in the oppression of other forms of difference, there needs to be a reappraisal of how cooperative power may be constructed. Instead of solidarity requiring an implicit sameness, difference would need to be valued and respected (Leonard 1997), and any challenge that it poses would need to be seen as an opportunity rather than a danger, a potential source of new energy and creativity, rather than a distraction from the ‘real struggle’. Incorporating such postmodern perspectives implies a shift from a ‘top-down’


imposition of a general analysis (based on class, gender, ‘race’, and so on), to working outwards from the specifics of people’s current experience (Harlow and Hearn 1996). Informed by principles of respect and social justice, it would be for practitioners and users to work together to see beyond ‘how it is’ and to construct a locally persuasive vision of how things could be (see Rosaldo 1994). It is possible for cooperative power to be developed beyond conventional notions of solidarity by engaging in potentially difficult but rewarding processes of dialogue across differences (Patel 1999), as in the practice of ‘transversal politics’ (Yuval-Davis 1999). Such processes must both acknowledge and creatively transcend the boundaries of ‘otherness’, and the power relations that may currently attach to these. It requires a practice of ‘empathy without sameness’ (Cockburn and Hunter 1999: p. 89). Through including and, in a respectful way, learning from multiple standpoints, it may be possible to generate new awarenesses, identities and transformative alliances. Such perspectives link in with the pioneering work around engaging directly, not only with those who may be suffering victimisation or exclusion, but also with those involved in oppressing or perpetrating forms of abuse – for example, men who use violence against women (Cavanagh and Cree 1996; Wild 1999). Members of such groups may find themselves locked into one-dimensional relationships of domination and subordination, the terms of which may exclude any experience of sharing or cooperative ‘power together’. Attempts to challenge this ‘from the outside’ are unlikely to bring about any creative alliance for change, and may simply result in a greater entrenchment of existing patterns. What may unlock the situation may be the opening of a dialogue, across boundaries of difference, which seeks to identify the mutual advantage of shifts in position. For example, it may only be if men start to understand the possibilities for new forms of intimacy and mutuality in relationships with women that they may decide to renounce the use of violence as a means of exercising control. An emancipatory practice also demands a critical examination of professionals’ use of their own positions of power – an awareness that has not always been central to human services practice, even that claiming to be guided by anti-oppressive principles (see Wilson and Beresford 2000). Within the dominant discourses and practices of the ‘caring professions’, there can be a continual slippage between an ethical position of caring about – a stance that suggests seeking to


empathise with, and respect, otherness – and the position of caring for – in which one may tend to define the other in a permanent ‘onedown’ position of essential neediness, inadequacy or dangerousness (see Morris 1998; Ellis 2000). While the former places a responsibility on the worker to practise in a way that takes the other seriously as a partner in dialogue, the latter inevitably places the worker in a relationship of superiority or patronage. In this way, workers may tread an uneasy line in seeking to create opportunities for co-operative power across the user–practitioner divide. Failure to protect may be experienced as collusion with perpetrators, while heavy-handed deployment of protective power may come over to those on the receiving end as (at best) showing all the oppressive hallmarks of well-intentioned paternalism. Through current discourses of welfare, there may be assumptions that ‘needs’ may best be understood by professional assessments, and may best be met by provision of care services (see Smale et al. 2000). Such discourses may readily slide workers into expert technical or managerial roles with respect to users of services, taking away whatever possibilities there may have been for engaging in a dialogue to mutual benefit and in the exploration of co-operative solutions. Once established, the expectations created by such processes may be mutually reinforcing: people may quickly become convinced of their own uselessness. Moving from the agenda of ‘care’ to that of ‘control’, there is a similar need to scrutinise whether what may be intended or supposed as a deployment of protective power may slide into something with damaging and oppressive elements, particularly where this may involve the use of compulsory powers of other forms of statesanctioned authority. Research based on the testimonies and narratives of those subject to compulsion within the childcare or mental health systems, suggests that often only a minority may experience a positive sense of ‘safeholding’ during a period of extreme vulnerability (Roberts and Taylor 1996; Barnes et al. 2000). Being defined as incapable of looking after (or ensuring the safety of) self or others, and hence being subject to ongoing detention or surveillance, may be debilitating and stigmatising in its impact on individuals and families, potentially leading to a further fracturing of already fragile subjectivities (Farmer and Owen 1995; Deegan 1997). What may constitute the dividing line between the protective and oppressive deployment of professional power, may lie in the quality of the relationship that is maintained during this process. Although


located in a space of contradictory feelings and expectations, is the practitioner able to maintain a stance of respect for the other person and to validate their strengths, while taking seriously whatever within their subjectivity may, at this point, be limiting their capacity to take charge of their situation in a sufficiently safe manner? Is the practitioner able to be honest about their reasons for taking action and open to a dialogue around alternatives? Is the practitioner open to feelings, such as anger and hurt, that may be engendered in the other? Does the practitioner make a space within the discourse for a point in the future when the person might be able to take an increasing measure of control and the professional mandate for intervention might come to an end? Issues of ‘professional’ power have tended to be taken up in a somewhat separate literature which has focused explicitly on the ‘hierarchical relations between the providers and users of welfare services’ (Williams 1995: p. 97). Differentials of professional and agency power cannot simply be erased or denied: embedded power dynamics must be acknowledged, and their implications worked through, if there is to be any potential for discovering some form of co-operative ‘power together’ (Moreau 1990; Barnes and Bowl 2001). Achieving a dialogue that is genuinely reciprocal may be far from straightforward, given the power-laden baggage of expectations and assumptions, languages and procedures that may be brought to the encounter. Nevertheless, there have been moves to devise models for user participation that seek to enable service users to have some impact on the services they receive (Beresford and Croft 1993; Hopton 1995; Campbell and Lindow 1997; Braye 2000). At one end of the spectrum, located within an essentially ‘New Right’ consumerist ideology, service users may be consulted on certain issues to do with their use of services. Within such a ‘market research’ paradigm, service users may be denied any opportunity to influence the framing of the questions that will be at the core of any consultation: this expertise tends to be retained by agencies and professionals (Ward 2000). In this way, people may be asked about waiting times but not given any formal opportunity to comment on the validity of treatment or care options being considered when a meeting does take place. Similarly they would tend to have limited involvement in any ‘action system’ determining outcomes – thereby reducing any likelihood of co-operative power emerging through working alliances. At the other end of the spectrum, there are examples of service users ‘exiting’ from professionally run service provision, or being


enabled to construct their own self-help groups, care plans, service organisations or networks of mutual support (Beresford and Harding 1993; Adams 1996). Through the model of Family Group Conferencing, the family and social networks that may exist around a vulnerable or needy child may be facilitated in devising and implementing their own care or protection plan (Morris and Tunnard 1996). Through models of Independent Living, public funds may be disbursed to service users to enable them to employ professionals or care workers on their terms. For some, this has enabled them to organise their personal assistance without having to be situated as a needy and incapable victim, whose life could be maintained only by the paternalistic intervention of care services (Morris 1993; Ungerson 1997). However, for others, taking the ‘separatist’ route has meant forgoing access to services that could be valuable, but where the terms of engagement, in terms of loss of control or selfesteem, could be too great a price to pay. Thus, the downside of disengagement from mainstream services can be the loss of any opportunity to influence how they may be delivered. In between, there are models of partnership in which service user and professional both contribute to the planning of service provision, or to the design and delivery of more individually focused ‘action plans’. (It may be important to avoid the implicit assumption in the term ‘care plan’ that people experiencing difficulties in their current living situation automatically require to be ‘cared for’, with all the overtones of non-mutuality, passivity and paternalism that can go along with this.) This approach has the potential to embed user perspectives at the core of service organisation and delivery, and may thus be most effective, in the longer term, in influencing practice outcomes (Marsh and Fisher 1992; Braye and Preston-Shoot 1993; Thoburn et al. 1995). However, set against this, such an approach may necessarily risk some dilution or compromise of users’ perspectives, given the inherent structural weakness of their position within processes of negotiation. What is needed for a critical practice is an integration of these various approaches to working with power relations. Suzy Braye and Michael Preston-Shoot (1995) argue for a synthesis of structural and anti-oppressive perspectives on the one hand, and understandings of professional or agency power, and of user participation, on the other. This would locate practice within a context where both the existing social order, and current configurations of professional practice and welfare provision, may be seen as problematic and in need


of transformation (Phillipson 1992; Thompson 1998). Any integrated notion of empowering practice would need to take account of the full constellation of power relations within which a service user may be situated, with interventions aiming to shift the balance from more limiting to more productive deployments of power.

8 Systems, Instabilities and Change

From the previous chapter, it may be seen how critical understandings of power relations and the dynamics of change or transformation may interconnect. Inherent within the definitions of power relations discussed so far are dynamics of conflict, opportunity or transformation. Power itself may be defined as the capacity to bring about, or prevent, shifts in positioning with regard to pre-existing discursive, material or emotional contexts. In this chapter, I explore how processes of change have been understood within (and at the margins of) modernist thought – for example, within systems theory – and within those critical approaches that have identified conflict and contradiction as a motive force for personal and social transformation. This sets the scene for a discussion of how different modes of power may relate to particular trajectories of change. Some trajectories may involve more fluid or incremental modes of change, while others may build up to some form of ‘crisis’ which may, or may not, open up the possibility of emancipatory transformations of personal or social organisation. These processes of generative tension are mapped using systems, psychodynamic and power relations perspectives, and points of similarity and difference between these are explored. These theoretical models form the basis for a discussion of practice strategies, in terms of both preventative/developmental work, and crisis resolution.

Systems, harmony and change Change and transformation, like power, are concepts which sometimes fit uneasily with modernist thought, although modernity has been characterised by rapid processes of social transition within an industrialising and globalising economy. While lived experience of social 177


change may unsettle the notion that current arrangements are inevitable, modernism has tended to prioritise the study of social systems in terms of their consistencies and regularities, seeking to fix social relations on an orderly and predictable basis, and sometimes to idealise these as functional for, and in the interests of, all of society. Somewhat on the edge of a positivist mapping of timeless social laws, and potentially giving a rather different account of agency and change, lies systems theory. Given its importation from natural science and control systems engineering, its credentials would seem safe enough for modernism: The basic thought form of systems theory remains classical positivism and behaviourism… . It offers nothing new to … the problem of Cartesian dualism. There remains no point at which one can say that there is a link between subjectivity and material processes. (Lilienfield 1987: p. 250) Nevertheless, central to systems theory is a potentially radical focus on relationships rather than things-in-themselves, and implicit within this is the possibility that relationships and forms of organisation may not be fixed for all time. Social systems are seen as being defined and maintained by their rule structures, comprising immediate (and sometimes explicit) sets of expectations, attributions, attitudes, ways of seeing, and behavioural ‘custom and practice’. In turn, these may be located within the context of overarching (and often implicit) ‘meta’-rules that govern the overall trajectory, role structure and orientation of the system as whole. In this way, regulation becomes posed as an issue, rather than something that may be taken for granted. Systems theory provides a framework both for analysing current forms of organisation, and of deviations from them. Within its more conservative applications, the emphasis has been on using systems theory to delineate the proper place, and appropriate boundaries, of elements of social organisation within the modern social order (see Parsons 1960; Craib 1984). While empirical existence of deviations from the norm may be recognised, they are understood within the context of policies, procedures and processes whereby aberrant shifts in role or behaviour are turned around and returned to the bounds of acceptability. Circular patterns of breaking out, and being steered back in, may be conceptualised, within systems terminology, as processes of homeostatic regulation. Such an approach, predicated on an assumption of essential social harmony, is only comfortable with ‘first order’ change: shifts and transitions that fit within, and are guided by, the

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prevailing pattern of social rules (Watzlawick et al. 1974). Thus, children may be allowed to grow up, be a little rebellious, and then settle down to reproduce an essentially similar pattern of social and familial roles for the next generation. Similarly, the global logic of ‘market forces’ may be seen to dictate processes of industrialisation and deindustrialisation, and cycles of ‘boom’ and ‘bust’, without the basis of capitalist social relations being troubled in any way. Such formulations of systems theory have tended not to be able to accommodate any concepts of oppression or the possibility that some members may be located in positions of inequality. It ‘provides a seemingly coherent account while actually leaving out critical variables [of] … who has power over whom’ (Goodrich et al. 1988). Relying instead on notions of ‘equal interactional influence’, all members are seen as equally constrained by the power of the system (rules, shared expectations and assumptions), or as equally capable of agency in their own right (Speed 1987). In this way, for example, responsibility for systematic violence or abuse may become diffused within relationship patterns, and seen to be held equally between victim, perpetrator and other members of the system. If family members are treated as equals, no account may be taken of power differentials in determining who takes decisions and is in a position to reinforce them (Nelson 1987). However, lurking within systems theory is an alternative narrative within which notions of power and inequality may fit more easily: that of morphogenesis. Just as there is the possibility of negative feedback mechanisms in which deviations are automatically countered by processes that restore conformity to existing patterns of organisation, so there is also the possibility of positive feedback in which one shift in a social relationship may trigger knock-on (and potentially greater) changes in other social relationships around it. Such a process may spiral out of control for a time, resulting in ‘second order’ change: an irreversible transformation of the metarules or structures of a particular element of social organisation. In turn, if systems are, to some degree, open and interlocking, then transformation in one system may serve to destabilise other related systems, leading to further ripples of transformation affecting the social whole. It is this aspect of systems theory which has tended to be underplayed within modernism, but is the one that has the potential to link in with other more critical approaches to understanding the operation of power within the mechanisms of social and personal change (see Cromwell and Olson 1975).


A systemic practice that is conducted within an essentially conservative organisational framework is likely to focus only on mobilising forces that can bring about first order change: a potentially more sophisticated set of strategies for suppressing deviancy and maintaining existing patterns of injustice and oppression (MacKinnon and Miller 1987; Jones 1990). However, with its ability to focus on instabilities in patterns of relationships, and on the possibilities for knock-on changes reverberating through wider contexts and leading to lasting shifts in regulatory structures, it also has the potential to guide interventions aimed at promoting empowerment and emancipation (Leonard 1975; Evans and Kearney 1996; Gorrell-Barnes 1998).

Agency and subjectivity Unlike positivism, humanism offers a circumscribed possibility for change through the notion of individual agency. It defines a particular version of history in which social transformations may take place, and in which the ‘rules’ may be changed under certain circumstances. Such ‘second order’ change may generally be seen to come about through the individual agency of the ‘great men’ of western culture: the innovation, vision and industry of people such as monarchs, political leaders, judges, scientists and entrepreneurs. Subordinated groups are largely excluded from this history: it is only those situated in positions of social responsibility who are seen as having the capacity to determine whether change is necessary and, if so, what its direction should be. Supposedly being under the thrall of wild and uncontrolled feelings, and lacking sufficient ability to reason, women, ‘black’ or colonised peoples, children and others have tended to be disallowed from making history. Thus, Lord Wilberforce, acting as a pure subject, is seen to have brought about the abolition of the western slave trade, whereas the struggles of enslaved peoples tend to be written out of the history. Similarly, it has tended to be suffragettes from privileged backgrounds who have been given the credit for bringing about women’s political emancipation in Britain, whereas the social transformations brought about by working-class women’s involvement in munitions and other wartime factory work tend to be systematically ignored. It is only with Marx, and the subsequent development of critical theory, that different conceptions of change and transformation began to emerge explicitly, ones that did not relegate most ordinary people to a life governed by supposedly natural and inevitable social laws, while


members of an elite had the exclusive privilege of being placed above such laws, potentially able to ‘rewrite’ what was to be taken as natural and inevitable. Instead, a more complex picture of historical subjectivity is proposed in which the very experiences of subordination and oppression may themselves generate collective energies of resistance and transformation. Social change is not seen as being brought about through visionary leaders acting as pure subjects, but by significant shifts in identities and subjectivity, in attitudes and practices, that may take place, somewhat unevenly, among members of oppressed social groups. In this way, many current regularities in social organisation may be seen as being in no way inevitable, but as being fixed, uneasily and temporarily, by the strategies of dominant groups. ‘Second-order’ change becomes no longer the privilege of individuals in positions of superiority, but as arising out of emancipatory struggles involving personal and collective shifts of subjectivity. Conventional humanist accounts of historical agency have also come under attack from psychoanalysis, which has destabilised the notion of the consistent rational subject. Instead of the individual being situated as the autonomous agent of change, exerting a determining influence over future events, the individual becomes the site of operation of processes of change of which they are not, in any clear sense, the author. The individual is presented as potentially impulsive and erratic, driven by conflicting drives, repressed memories and introjects from parents and authority figures. The rational ego becomes, at best, the ringmaster of the circus, just about keeping the ‘show’ on the road. Following developments in poststructural theory, a more complex and contested notion of agency emerges. Rather than the subject representing a point of consistency that can make its mark upon the world, it becomes a location of instability at which power is acted out. Dissatisfaction and resistance, or desire and connection, may take on some degree of directionality, but one that cannot be assumed to represent a conscious or rationally conceived sense of intention. Furthermore, the trajectory of a subject does not unfold in isolation: it is enacted with, against and through others, through complex processes of confluence and dissonance. In the spheres of cultural and political activity, subjectivity may present as fluid and shifting: identities may be reiterated, copied or subverted; they may fuse together in the formation of wider collectivities; or they may ‘play off’ against other identities to (re)construct power differentials or to emphasise diversity. Individuals may still be seen to have some potentiality to ‘make a difference’, but not in any


straightforward way: the process may equally be read as that of a difference being made for them. Oppressions may be contested, and life choices may emerge, but in ways that may be continually surprising and which refuse to fit with any straightforward notion of authorship. In this way, personal or collective subjectivities may be understood, not as the locus for intentional agency in the world, but as one crucial site at which change may emerge, through a continual interplay between internal (potentially conflicting) energies and awarenesses, and wider shifts taking place in the various discursive, material and emotional structures in which the subjectivity is located.

Generative tensions: power and contradiction Where power is deployed in order to enforce aspects of the modernist status quo, its very application may be seen to generate the possibility of antagonism and resistance. The transformative potential of such antagonisms was first theorised by Marx in his reworking of Hegelian dialectic: instead of a focus on the generative potential of contradiction at the level of intellectual ideas and propositions, Marx relocated this discussion in terms of the contradictory interests of social classes at the level of material relations. Lenin took this further and identified the dialectical resolution of contradiction as a universal dynamic underlying all processes of change. He defined dialectical materialism as: The recognition of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes… . This alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything in existence. It alone furnishes the key to … the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new… Dialectics is the study of the contradiction within the very essence of things. (Lenin 1961: pp. 359–60) Instead of a modernist understanding of phenomena as static thingsin-themselves, defined by their ‘essential’ characteristics, Lenin privileges a focus on their inherent instabilities. However, in developing these ideas within Marxian thought, there has tended to be some confusion between two usages of the term ‘contradiction’. In one sense, the term has been reserved for the logical inconsistencies that may exist within the structuring principles of any system that embodies inequality and exploitation (see Giddens 1979). For example, it has been suggested that as capitalism expands its operation, the rate at which the surplus value generated by the working class may be


appropriated by the capitalist class may inevitably diminish. Broadening this out, it may be seen that there are many instances in which the logics of capitalism, patriarchy and imperialism may be in contradiction to one another. While maximal exploitation of the working class would theoretically be achieved by the equal participation of women in the wage labour process, this runs counter to any attempt to subjugate women within the domestic sphere. It is proposed that such logical incompatibilities are historically unstable and will lead to the inevitable collapse of aspects of current social structures, and the emergence, through processes of dialectical transformation, of new social forms of social arrangement. Alternative readings of the concept of contradiction, while allowing it to retain its centrality in terms of driving historical change, have identified it with a working through of the underlying antagonistic interests between social groups. In this sense, contradiction may be understood as underlying tensions or incompatibilities of interest which may or may not erupt as overt conflicts between groups. Such tensions are seen as inevitable within any social formation that is structured on the basis of systematic deployment of oppressive power by one group over another. However, ‘grand narratives’ of logical contradiction or structural antagonism have proved insufficient as explanations of the course of historical change. Despite a century that has seen moments of substantial awareness by working-class people of the mechanisms of their exploitation, they have not been able to act decisively to wrest control of the means of production from the capitalist class. Women have tended not to feel able to follow through collective campaigns for ending patriarchy, and have settled for forms of ‘post-feminism’. Despite achieving independent nationhood and nominal access to citizenship in the West, ‘black’ and colonised peoples have tended to remain subservient to continued forms of economic and cultural domination. Thus, a focus on singular contradictions (such as simplistic binaries of class and gender) has shown itself not to be sufficiently sophisticated in understanding the dynamics of social change. Instead, it has come to be recognised that there needs to be a more complex analysis of multiple, and overlapping, structural antagonisms (Negri 1989). An analysis of contradiction may need to encompass, not just material conflicts of interest, but relatively autonomous tensions and oppositions arising within discursive and emotional structures of social relations – although they may all be mutually interdetermining in their


effects. In this way, the analytical frame of structural theory may be seen to move closer to more complex poststructural visions of oppositional politics (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). Another element in a more sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of structural or local change is a focus on the internalisation of oppression within people’s identities and subjectivity. Anthony Giddens argues that emancipatory politics involves not only challenging the ‘illegitimate’ use of power by individuals or groups over others, but also a need to deal with, and shed, ‘the shackles of the past, thereby permitting a transformative attitude towards the future’ (1991: p. 210). Just opening up opportunities may not be sufficient in itself: people have to feel ready and confident in themselves to grasp them. Exploring the dynamics of change at the level of individual subjectivity as well as social systems requires an examination of the internalised residues of previous experiences of conflict and change, and suggests the need for more complex strategies of ‘unconsciousness raising’, of dealing with individual and collective histories of suppression and exclusion. Collaborations between structural perspectives and psychoanalysis have suggested processes of individual and collective transformation which focus on how contradictory power-loaded elements within the psyche come to bear upon one another: personal histories of realised and violated desire, introjected messages, identities and definitions, and current experiences of oppression and opportunity. The experience of psychoanalysis suggests that, even though underlying conflicts between these elements may be disabling, there may be strong resistances to bringing them into awareness. There may be a great build-up of internal tensions, with any immediate possibility of transformation being blocked by an overwhelming fear of catastrophic consequences if repressed issues are allowed to come to the fore. This insight offers an appreciation of why generative tensions may often appear to fester or go underground for so long, rather than drive forward some process of dialectical resolution.

Power relations and the dynamics of change Structures of power and identity may be seen as comprising many of the ‘rules’ that govern interactions. In situations where configurations of power relations are limiting, maintenance of these relations may require a measure of rigidity – or pent-up contradictions may spill out into open conflict. By contrast, the productive operation of power may


be seen not to require the continual reiteration of norms, but may unfold through performances that can more readily embrace elements of the new. This suggests very different dynamics of personal and social change (or resistances to change), whose characteristics may depend on the prevailing mode of power relations. If they are to be emancipatory in their longer-term effects, relations of protection must continually be seeking to negotiate their demise, a built-in instability that continually questions whether the ‘power over’ relationship implied by protection continues to be necessary. Unless there is a space for continually revisiting the contradiction between protection and patronage or paternalism, there is an ever-present potential for a protective relationship to slide into one of oppression, one that relocates the vulnerable person as a victim in need of perpetual rescuing, obligated by never-ending debts of gratitude. Relations of cooperative power, if they are not to wither away, must ride a ‘roller-coaster’ of valuing difference and seeking common ground: dissonances and challenges must be allowed to stimulate continual positional shifts and open up new forms of opportunity. For this form of power to create new choices or challenge oppressions and collusions, it must display an inherent fluidity. It must negotiate a dialectical interplay of solidarity and diversity, or risk becoming stale or ineffective. An inability to find common ground stands against any possibility of cooperation, while a denial or devaluation of difference may remove possibilities for mutual learning and challenge. Such generative tensions may drive processes whose trajectories may not be linear, and may be punctuated by moments of conflict and uncertainty. And there remains the ever-present possibility that challenges may be too great for some participants, perhaps due to unresolved legacies from the past, leading them to collude against a difference that they cannot bring themselves to recognise or tolerate. Within the context of the productive deployments of power, ongoing transitions may therefore be understood as ‘part of the territory’, with the continual discovery of new forms of protection, solidarity and opportunity that value and build on diversity within and outside (the person, group or social category). Although profoundly threatening to those with an investment in maintaining more limiting versions of power relations, such processes of deepening solidarity and the productive resolution of issues of difference may be seen to be consonant with the implicit meta-rules of social relations that are structured around the productive operation of power. This suggests a dynamic that in some ways may be seen to connect with systems


notions of first order change: emancipatory shifts in position may be possible within current constructions of meta-rules. However, unlike some readings of a systems perspective, this understanding of dynamics rests on notions of continual transition, of moving and being moved. It does not rely on any underlying notions of negative feedback or assumptions of the desirability of homeostasis. It is when generative tensions come up against barriers posed by the rigidities or inflexibilities of limiting configurations of power relations, that an alternative dynamic may be seen to come into operation. Continuation of relations of domination requires tight control so that a space may not be opened up in which resistance may be articulated. The maintenance of collusive power relations will depend on an assiduous policing of boundaries, so as to prevent the excluded other from being seen ‘in a different light’, or offered any lifeline of connection. Instead of any flexibility allowing incremental shifts in identities and in the organisation of social relations, pressure for change may be resisted, leading to underlying tensions becoming less and less containable. The more that discursive, material and emotional resources are deployed in processes of surveillance and control, and energies are siphoned off into ‘not dealing’ with underlying contradictions and conflicts, there may be a decreasing ability to carry off what may be expected in terms of social and economic functioning. In this way, the pressure on a particular ‘fault-line’ may build up to the point where cracks appear within current forms of patterning, culminating in a point at which processes of reiteration may be subject to temporary rupture: performativity may break down and there is a crisis.

Crisis and resolution Crisis may be conceptualised as a current mode of organisation being poised on a ‘knife-edge’, when underlying tensions and contradictions emerge to the surface and current frameworks of control may be seen to be breaking down. This may occur at the scale of the individual psyche, or involve wider social groupings. It is a situation which may either be resolved by falling back into a reiteration of familiar patterns, or may result in some form of transformation, emancipatory or otherwise. Whatever may be their genesis, ‘the dominant feature of … crises … is conflict’ (O’Hagan 1991: p. 140). For a time, the energies driving the opening up of such conflict may surpass any existing regulatory mechanisms. Such a status of breakdown may, in many instances, invite the possibility of external intervention (professional or informal).


Such crises do not happen ‘out of the blue’: they have histories of predisposing and precipitating factors, and they take place in here-andnow contexts of social and personal relations. Conventional accounts of crisis theory indicate the importance of both a longer-term predisposing history and a more recent ‘trigger’ (Golan 1978). Sometimes, a precipitating event may not seem particularly momentous in itself: it may represent ‘the last straw’ which destabilises an already tottering edifice. Often it may be an event that in some way resonates with, adds to, and brings into sharper focus, those underlying issues that have remained unresolved. Such histories may be collective as well as individual, implicating whole families, workplaces or communities. Using different theoretical perspectives, I will chart some schematic histories in which underlying issues may eventually emerge in the form of a crisis. All models suggest a process of build-up which may then help to explain how a trigger event may come to have the impact that it does: for example, how an assassination in Sarajevo may have destabilised an imperialist balance of power and precipitated war across Europe in 1914. These schemata are illustrative only: real crises typically may involve an interplay between the simultaneous operation of a number of such sequences. Furthermore, in practice, each sequence is itself unlikely to follow such a neat linear path, and situations may move backwards as well as forwards as energies for change, and those for holding on to the status quo, may ebb and flow. Figures 8.1–8.3 set out some alternative readings of the build-up to a crisis from, respectively, systems, psychodynamic and power relations perspectives. While the first two do not name the issues in political terms, there may nevertheless be seen to be significant points of correspondence between all of the sequences. While the linearity of Figure 8.1 may be somewhat misleading, in that any system is likely to be in ongoing interaction with other Figure 8.1

Schematic History of Crisis Formation from a Systems Perspective DISRUPTIVE ISSUE: THE ‘PROBLEM’ ATTEMPTED SELF-REGULATION: THE ‘SOLUTION’ RIGIDITY OF ‘SOLUTION’ IMPAIRS SYSTEM FUNCTIONING TRIGGER EVENT

SWITCH FROM HOMEOSTATIC TO MORPHOGENETIC PROCESS CRISIS


systems, this sequence may nevertheless be useful in showing how responses to internal or external events may pose difficulties that have longer-term ramifications. It starts with an issue that is potentially disruptive to the current order, a ‘problem’ that threatens to throw the system out of balance. With the example of a family, this might be an issue such as redundancy or illness – or children challenging the authority of parents. In some instances, such issues may be resolved or accommodated, if existing processes of regulation are able to steer the situation back to equilibrium, or along a path of orderly evolution. However, the possibility of crisis emerges if balance cannot be restored easily, and more extreme applications of existing regulatory mechanisms are imposed. Although such attempts at ‘cracking down’ may, in the short term, restore a degree of stability, they may, in the longer term, create knock-on difficulties of their own for the system as a whole. Excessive rigidity may impair the effectiveness of the system in delivering what may be expected of it, and render it less flexible in adjusting to subsequent events. In this way, the attempted solution may now become the most pressing problem for the system. Its brittleness and potential under-performance render it vulnerable in reacting to pressures that might previously have been ‘taken in its stride’: hence the potential impact of a ‘trigger’ event. Faced with a further issue, the system may run out of strategies by which to respond. A relatively ordinary situation may be sufficient to precipitate a breakdown of an already weakened regulatory structure, with processes of positive (morphogenetic) feedback becoming dominant as the situation gets increasingly ‘out of hand’. Unless the existing set-up is quickly shored up by external intervention, such a crisis may well provoke second-order change: a shift in the rules by which the system operates (for better or worse). However, mechanisms may not always emerge to sustain the new arrangements – and there remains the possibility of the system falling back into more familiar, but potentially dysfunctional, ways of operating, with some (temporary) restoration of previous rigidities. The dynamics of a psychodynamic account of intra-psychic or group crisis bear some similarities to the systemic view. However, in this model (Figure 8.2), the focus narrows down from an examination of dysfunctional patterns of relationships in themselves, to the identification of repressed and unresolved traumatic issues that may underlie these (issues that may implicate an individual or a wider group). Crises are seen to relate to the breakdown of psychic ‘regulatory mechanisms’, leading to the subsequent irruption of such ‘smouldering’ issues and their enactment in the present.

Systems, Instabilities and Change 189 Figure 8.2 Schematic History of Crisis Formation from a Psychodynamic Perspective UNRESOLVED TRAUMA REPRESSION AS UNCONSCIOUS EMOTIONAL MEMORY DEFENCE MECHANISMS/NEUROTIC SOLUTION NEUROTIC SOLUTION IMPAIRS ABILITY TO FUNCTION IN NEW SITUATIONS TRIGGER EVENT RE-PRESENTATION OF THE REPRESSED/ESCALATION OF DEFENCE MECHANISMS BREAKDOWN/CRISIS

Within this account, the original trauma may involve experiences such as abandonment or abuse that, for whatever reason, cannot be dealt with at the time. ‘Neurotic’ solutions may be seen to function as a defence mechanism or survival strategy, largely developed outside awareness, by which to repress and dissociate from the emotional residue from the trauma – and thereby manage to carry on with life, as well as can be managed, as if the trauma had not taken place. These may involve specific distortions of emotionality, thinking or behaviour, which may, in turn, serve to hint at the particular form of the underlying distress that is to be concealed: for example, self-harming behaviour may suggest the possibility of past physical or sexual abuse. Although once a basis for psychic survival, such strategies may appear inappropriate or seriously dysfunctional when they are replayed within new social contexts. They may also not be entirely effective, and securing the ongoing suppression of the underlying distress may come to absorb a greater and greater proportion of emotional energies. There may continue to be heightened sensitivity around the area of the underlying injury – hence a particular vulnerability to current events that may connect with this. For example, a relatively ‘minor’ incident of sexual innuendo may connect with hitherto repressed feelings of rage, terror or loss associated with a previous history of sexual abuse – and this may trigger a (temporary) disruption of survival and coping mechanisms. Following on from this, crisis may be understood as the eventual breaking through of previously repressed experience, paralleled by a desperate escalation of defence mechanisms. There may be a spilling


out of elements of raw feeling and memory relating to the original trauma, interspersed with increasingly extreme reiterations of strategies of distraction and dissociation. These may escalate to the point where they may seriously interfere with any ability to carry out normal functioning. There may be parallels between psychoanalytic understandings of defence mechanisms and homeostatic processes within systems theory. Both represent strategies for containment but, within the psychoanalytic account, their implications are detached from any naturalistic notions of ‘balance’ and ‘harmony’ – and instead point to the continuance of an unresolved psychic injury. Similarly there are parallels between morphogenetic processes of change and the urgency of the representation of the repressed, as defence mechanisms break down. Both construct crisis as a moment of openness and fluidity in which both original issues, and the pent-up tensions that have built around them, may be addressed – although the mode of resolution may seem very different within each approach. However, in practice, these may often be seen as alternative routes to similar destinations: on the one hand, changing a rule structure may open up the possibility of dealing with a past trauma and, on the other, addressing repressed issues in a context of therapeutic safety may lead to an ongoing relaxation of rule structures originally constructed as somewhat desperate neurotic solutions. While some of the factors that may lead on to a crisis may seem to have little direct connection with power as such (for example, bereavement or health problems), their social and personal meanings are likely to be embedded within a current context, and history, of power relations. The significance of a loss may relate to past experiences of deprivation or exclusion, and to current positioning within networks of social support (or lack of them). Similarly, being able to manage a health problem may depend crucially on access to material resources, knowledge and information. It may be factors such as these that will determine whether adverse or distressing events may be dealt with within the current organisation of everyday life, or whether they may lead to destabilisation and crisis. Other types of life event, such as instances of abuse, violation or neglect, may more explicitly suggest a power dimension. Again, however, it may be wider sets of power relations (past and present) which may influence the subsequent trajectory of the issue. It may be these that determine whether the implications of the trauma may be dealt with openly at the time (if effective networks of support are available), or whether they have to be hidden away, perhaps for fear of


shame or retribution. Contexts that dictate that repression is the only option would tend to be ones structured by relations of oppression and collusion – and it is these that may be crucial in setting the scene for some later form of crisis or breakdown. Figure 8.3 presents a third schematic outline of a build-up to a crisis, one that sees the momentum for change coming from conflict and contradiction within the current operation of power relations. The principles of such a model would be equally applicable to small-scale (and intra-psychic) as well as to larger-scale social situations. There may be seen to be connections between this sequence and the models of crisis deriving from systems and psychodynamic perspectives. There are associations between the idea of ‘struggle’ fuelled by social contradiction and both the systems account of morphogenetic change and the psychoanalytic notion of ‘the return of the repressed’. In each account there is an underlying dissonance that may, outside any form of conscious control, impel individual or group towards some form of crisis that may be potentially transformative. From a power relations perspective, the build-up to a crisis may be seen to start with experiences of abuse, injustice, exclusion or oppression. These may either be so acute as to invoke immediate forms of awareness and protest, or be more diffuse and intangible, resulting in a growing, but relatively unfocused sense of unease, discomfort and distress. Either way, if no space can be negotiated to deal with these issues, and if any moves towards resistance or speaking out are met with punishment and suppression, then there emerges the potential for the situation to move towards crisis. Allowed to fester, increasing energies may need to be devoted to controlling the discontent, either through an escalation of oppressive or regulatory forces, or by more extreme strategies of collusion designed to deny the reality or Figure 8.3 Schematic History of Crisis Formation from a Power Relations Perspective INJUSTICE/OPPRESSION (THREAT OF) RESISTANCE COLLUSION/RIGIDITY/SUPPRESSION INHERENT CONTRADICTIONS BUILD UP PRESSURE FOR CHANGE TRIGGER EVENT CRISIS


significance of what was experienced and the feelings that this may have engendered. Tendencies towards resistance or connection may be met with further strategies of suppression and escalating tensions may build up beneath ever more rigid configurations of power. The deployment of collusive power may often aim to preserve existing patterns of privilege and exclusion, but only on the basis of a potentially unstable suppression of aspects of experience. Just as individual processes of psychic repression are never total, and uncomfortable awarenesses, emotions or flashbacks may threaten to irrupt into consciousness at any point, collective processes of colluding against difference may break down if particular connections start to be made between people and the ‘other’ whose value, significance or existence is denied. Indeed, in the same way that the very process of ongoing repression may paradoxically give increasing energy to that which is repressed, so too may increasingly draconian attempts to suppress resistance or opposition serve to fuel discontent and render the status quo increasingly fragile and shaky. Specific conflicts, each with their attendant repressions and struggles, may occur within intra-psychic, interpersonal or societal contexts, and at the level of discursive, emotional or material relations. It is their particular interrelationships that may determine how a particular situation may, or may not, ‘come to a head’. Following Gramsci, revolutionary social changes may be seen as coming about, not through the building up of pressure in relation to one particular contradiction or antagonism, but through the simultaneous eruption of a number of separate lines of struggle and resistance. Economic, ideological and political contradictions may all come to the surface at a similar moment; one rupture of the fabric of domination may create a weakness that allows other urgent and unresolved issues to spill over as well. Those elements previously suppressed may emerge, perhaps in a somewhat incoherent refusal to reiterate that which is expected, or perhaps in a more organised and connected transformatory strategy. Such a notion of crises being overdetermined by the dialectical unfolding of a number of distinct, but potentially related conflicts and tensions, may provide a useful model for analysing crises in general. In practice, the crises that affect individuals, families, communities and other social groups may tend to have a multi-dimensional quality – as separate sets of issues may erupt at the same time. For example, emotional inequalities within a heterosexual couple relationship may interconnect with personal histories of abuse, differential access to economic power, and wider discursive representations of gender. On


their own, each of these might have provoked a situation of simmering tension; all together, they may set up a volatile situation of crisis in which more fundamental shifts in behaviour, identity and external connection may (or may not) take place. For strategies to be effective in bringing about some form of transformation, struggles may need to be articulated around pre-existing emotional, material and discursive positions, perhaps building on representations and awarenesses already generated in other movements. History suggests that it is hard to construct an entire revolution from scratch. Solidarity requires a shared awareness of that which is currently unfair or damaging, and a collective identification with some vision of justice or aspiration. It also involves assuming identities, ways of being viewed by self and others, that situate people as possessing the capacity to bring about change – as potentially ‘revolutionary’ individuals or collectivities. Such identities may be borrowed, subverted or assembled from already established positions. Social movements may ‘draw people into collective action through known repertoires of contention and by creating innovations around their margins’ (Tarrow 1994: p. 1). Individuals may adopt or play off a position of ‘leader’ from within a culturally available repertoire of identities; collectivities may ‘work’ or subvert preexisting geographical, religious, ethnic, national or cultural identities, mobilising symbols ‘based on real or “imagined” ties’ (ibid.: p. 5), or tapping into collective memories enshrined in glorious narratives of past struggles and historical destinies (Selbin 1997). However, if solidarity is to be sustained and deepen, these organising principles must not be allowed to become rigid or restrictive, stifling the emergence of difference within; it is working with such difference that may provide the energy and stimulation for ongoing emancipatory development. Whether or not transformatory change may come about does not only depend on the activity of those in subordinate positions. However energised and organised they may be, and however great may be the magnitude of their oppression and injustice, it may be the effectiveness of the collusive organisation of those already in power that will determine the outcome of any crisis. Contradictions within modes of domination or exploitation, and internal splits and inconsistencies within individuals or elites in positions of power may greatly reduce their ability to ‘hold the line’ against uprising and insurgence (see Lachmann 1997). Thus, crises may be seen to pose the possibility of emancipatory transformation, a real shift in positionings through a re-writing,


however small, of codes of identity and relationship that serve to diminish the operation of oppressive or collusive power and open up opportunities for more productive formations of power. This may be seen to constitute a second-order change – but it is important to recognise that not all second order changes may necessarily be emancipatory. It is equally feasible for forces of oppression and collusion to use the point of rupture to regroup and establish new rule structures that secure their positions even more effectively – as, for example, in the aftermath of the British miners’ strike in the 1980s. In practice, the outcomes of most situations of crisis may comprise some uneasy combinations of both emancipatory and repressive elements. The direction that is taken by a process of ‘second order’ change may be influenced by factors outside the immediate system in crisis. By their very nature, crises open up a situation to wider scrutiny and, by appearing to be in some way out of control, invite the involvement of others – neighbours, relatives, police or human services professionals on a local scale, and armed forces, political apparatuses or international organisations in relation to wider-scale disruptions. It may be the impact of outsiders witnessing what emerges, and their responses to this, that may determine eventual outcomes and their attendant shifts (or otherwise) in the organisation of power relations. If abuses or injustices are heard and taken seriously, leading to underlying issues being addressed, this may be crucial in promoting some emancipatory form of resolution. However, if responses are dismissive or punitive, or if outsiders on a ‘rescue mission’ invade and take over the situation insensitively, the outcome is unlikely to be empowering to those experiencing distress or disadvantage.

Strategies for emancipatory change: towards a critical practice Within a critical approach to human services work, the aims of practice are likely to involve the ‘provocation of change’ (Healy 2000: p. 3) in situations where, without some form of external intervention or support, the operation of oppressive or collusive power might become ever more damaging to those in positions of vulnerability. Crucial to this process is the selection of strategies whereby ‘to facilitate the liberation of the voices and the energies of the oppressed for the processes of change’ (ibid.: p. 33). A critical practice aims to engage with processes of generative tension and contradiction in order to steer energies for change in an emancipatory direction.


However, figuring out where these forces, tensions and contradictions may be located may be far from straightforward. Unlike the showdown in a western (or the more naïve application of oppositional social activist approaches), the forces for ‘good’ will not conveniently line up on one side against the reactionary ‘baddies’ on the other. These dynamics may be played out as much within subjectivities or collectivities as in the relationships between them. There is no neatly available subject position, like that of a modernist ‘hero’, which the worker may occupy and lead everyone along some clearly defined path towards empowerment. The reality is likely to be somewhat messier. All protagonists, including workers, will be subject to their own historical accumulation of internalised contradiction, and the relational context between service users and workers may have its own history of unresolved or suppressed power issues. A critical practice may be able to draw upon a range of models and methods. On the one hand, there are structural and poststructural approaches that explicitly seek to engage with certain aspects of power – from the generalities of systems of domination to the specifics of injustices and local antagonisms embedded within personal narratives. Alongside this, there are techniques and orientations that were not specifically formulated in order to address questions of power, but may nevertheless be deployed to ‘provoke’ forms of change and achieve the liberation of previously excluded voices and energies. This suggests some possibility for a cautious and critical appropriation of certain elements of thinking and strategy from traditions such as those of systemic and psychodynamic practice. Each of these perspectives may be seen to have a capacity to address some, but not all, aspects of the operation of power. In the development of a more comprehensive basis for practice, there is a need to work on the continuities and discontinuities between each of these partial approaches, drawing out that which may be transformatory from that which, however inadvertently, serves to reiterate oppressive or collusive aspects of current arrangements. In this discussion, I will look at two sets of strategies that seek to promote empowerment within human services work. First, there are proactive, capacity building, or developmental strategies of critical social action that seek to engage with people who may currently be subjected in situations of powerlessness and distress. These would aim to challenge the imposition of limiting forms of power and open up opportunities for solidarity, emancipation and opportunity. Second, and just as importantly, there are more reactive approaches that engage with people at the point of crisis, seeking, through strategies of


conflict resolution, to steer volatile situations towards outcomes that shift the matrix of power and open up possibilities for previously suppressed or subordinated elements. Many social action approaches may be seen to be rooted in the conscientisation approach of Paulo Freire (1970) and in the consciousnessraising practice of the women’s movement. They seek to combine an educational practice that may provoke awareness and develop critical thinking, with a political practice that involves, often at a very local scale, enabling people to come together in forms of solidarity. They involve ‘direct work with people … who are identified as having, or join together because of, mutual interests and oppressions’ (Coulshed and Orme 1998: p. 215), and aim to bring about change, not just in wider structures of power, but also in ‘the personal’, in attitudes, perceptions and in the renegotiation of identities (Becker and MacPherson 1988). Working in partnership is crucial to a social action approach, with the role of the professional being primarily that of facilitator or participant, and not ‘expert’ or ‘leader’ in relation to any process of change. Freire suggests a model of dialogue in which the worker helps to problematise the current situation by continually asking why things may be as they are, and challenging ‘common sense’ legitimations of inequitable or oppressive arrangements. It is not for the worker to offer any answers to these questions, only to stimulate an attitude of curiosity, a continually critical approach to accepted versions of reality. The aim should be for an open dialogue without preconception, one in which worker and user learn and construct understandings together and, out of these, generate particular agendas and strategies for change (Williamson 1995; Fleming et al. 1998). This dialogue would need to include a recognition and discussion of perceptions of how power may be operating between user and worker. Where critical social action approaches may be distinguished from structural practice and ‘identity politics’, is in their use of techniques of conscientisation, not only to tease out commonalities, but also differences, within people’s experience of oppression, vulnerability and powerlessness. While coming to understand one’s experience as a ‘woman’ or a ‘black person’ may be liberating in establishing connections with others, it may also become oppressive in its own way if it implicitly assumes a particular and exclusive vision of what it is to be a ‘woman’ or a ‘black person’ – perhaps one structured around middleclass or heterosexual identities. Potentially influenced by poststructural as well as structural perspectives, practitioners would need to avoid a practice which seeks to ‘unmask’ some realities of oppression but not


others, and the implicit ‘tyranny’ of offering, as a template for understanding, a framework that is ‘one-dimensional’ and may reflect the concerns of workers rather than those experiencing the oppression (Healy 2000: p. 32). An approach that seeks to engage with issues of difference may enable much deeper and more sustainable possibilities for co-operative power. Solidarities that can only exist on the basis of internal sameness suggest both an inability to challenge a politics of collusion, and a failure to look wider in terms of mobilising potential connections with other ‘stakeholders’ and ‘partners’: In identifying the different and diverse ways in which oppression is experienced, we can move closer towards alliances of difference as a form of collective action. (Ledwith 1997: p. 43; my emphasis) It may be possible to create dialogues and connections across traditional boundaries of hierarchy and difference, as in the practice of transversal politics (Yuval-Davis 1999). The negotiating of such alliances of difference may be harder to construct and sustain than straightforward ones based on identity of interest, but they may also be more rewarding and effective in securing emancipatory outcomes. However, in any partnerships of ‘unequals’, the experience and implications of power differentials must be acknowledged before any shared agenda for change may emerge. There may be a particular role for group and community focused strategies in bringing people together, not just to identify experiences in common, but also to explore and build on diversity, within an ethos of the non-hierarchical construction of difference. Similarly, within the context of more personal work, it may be productive not just to stay with presented images of coherence, but also to work across internal splits and differences within constructions of subjectivity. Although building up defensive walls against the infiltration of external forces may be a necessary stage in order to protect the vulnerability of newly emerging identities, keeping these barriers up may work against the emancipatory possibilities of reaching out to elements of difference outside (including those in positions of ‘power over’). Depending on the responses of existing ‘blocs’ of oppressive or collusive power, such strategies may lead to emancipatory transitions through the mutual discovery of connections and cooperative solutions, or to a more confrontational route involving overt conflict and crisis – which may nevertheless bring about some possibilities for transforming power relations.


Critical social action approaches may involve a variety of strategies for provoking or nurturing change at different levels of social relations. At the level of discourse, practice may involve creative processes of narrative (re)construction, and the democratisation of processes of knowledge acquisition and construction, focusing on research and theorising that arises out of the situated knowledges of participants (Oliver 1996; Beresford and Evans 1999; Fleming and Ward 1999). At the level of material relations, it may involve engaging with tensions, commonalities and differences in relation to accessing and mobilising resources (Bricker-Jenkins et al. 1991). At the level of emotional relations, it may involve strategies to stimulate motivation and energy for change, working with the generative potential of underlying tensions and injustices (Ernst and Goodison 1981). A critical approach to social action may be able to move beyond both structural approaches to collective identity and humanist visions of personal empowerment, using poststructural insights into the complexity of human subjectivity to explore how practices around subverting or transforming identities may play a crucial role in any process of transformation. Successful orchestration of change may often be seen to require an interlinking of struggles to overcome oppressive outer realities with practices to transform inner realities and identities, ‘that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us’ (Lorde 1984: p. 123). Such more complex notions of agency move beyond any simplistic humanist reading of ‘the personal is political’; it is far from straightforward to transform one’s identities and orientations within social relationships. There may be continual tensions between playing off the productive aspects of available identities that may also contain limiting or oppressive forms of self-definition, and seeking to construct more fluid and dispersed forms of subjectivity that may be challenging for dominant structures – but may run the risk of being written off as incoherent or bizarre. The formation of emancipatory strategies may need to move beyond just an engagement with individuals or groups experiencing oppression. A critical appropriation of systemic practice may be helpful in providing a framework for engaging with all those involved in a situation, in order to shift the terms of the relationships within which people may currently be subjected. Rather than challenge issues of injustice ‘head on’, questions may be asked, and experiments set up, which help to develop an awareness of power and how it may impinge differently on each member of a relational system (Jones 1990; Urry 1990). An approach of persistent curiosity, as opposed to any


imposition of an external agenda for change, may be more effective in provoking a lasting renegotiation of power relationships (Jones 1995). Such approaches to working with a relational system may be seen to link with practices of conscientisation: the crucial difference being that they open up the possibility of working, at the same time, with people in positions of differential power – and potentially complex constellations of overlapping relations of limiting and productive power. In practice, significant transformations may come about more readily if people situated in oppressive and collusive relationships to one another are all engaged in the change process – although dealing with the various ‘sides’ together may be particularly challenging for the worker. If those already in positions of power may be enabled to see that change may have something ‘in it for them’, then transformation may take place through the operation of co-operative power in a way that does not entail some form of ‘I win’/‘You lose’ showdown. As much of human service practice may involve direct engagement with people who are close to, in the midst of, or unable to resolve some situation of crisis, critical approaches to crisis resolution may also have an important role to play that is distinct from, but complementary to, the more proactive stance of social action approaches. People may be located in positions that mean that the basics of survival and social participation are in jeopardy, that they (or the public at large) may be at acute risk of harm, or that they are experiencing an unbearable degree of mental or emotional distress. Typically, within modernist organisation of services, crises may be individualised, although they may, in fact, involve and impact upon wider networks or groups of people, such as families, communities, workplaces, cultures, and so on. Although it may not always be recognised as such, most crises may be seen to relate, on some level, to oppressive or collusive configurations of power, and the lack of immediate access to more productive modes of power. Injustice may be so acute that there may already be considerable, but unfocused, forces unleashed against the existing ‘rules’ governing what has been going on, resulting in refusals to reiterate that which is expected, or more explicit articulations of subversion or resistance. Within such a scenario, there may be little need for any active ‘provocation’ of change, since suppressed voices and energies may already be breaking through as control mechanisms break down. Instead, the practitioner role may be more one of hearing and allowing dissonance, of ‘holding’ emerging conflicts and fragments (and the fear, distress and pain that may go with this), and of enabling new


forms of negotiation which take seriously and are moved by those elements that have previously been subordinated or excluded. Practitioners may feel tempted to take sides with or ‘rescue’ those in positions of greatest oppression, but this is unlikely to be empowering – although building in some degree of external protection may be necessary to ensure an acceptable level of safety in the short term while work on crisis resolution continues. Effective advocacy does not involve taking over, but opening up new possibilities for people within the situation to express dissident experiences, narratives and identities, and setting the scene for these to be heard or acknowledged by others. If such expressions can be validated and allowed to be influential, they may engender knock-on shifts and transformations within contingent relationships and subjectivities. Previously collusive networks and forms of psychic organisation may be jolted and destabilised, undermining the basis for continued patterns of oppression and abuse. Unlike some consciousness-raising or therapeutic approaches, change and empowerment may be seen not to rely on achieving some prior rationalisation of, or insight into, a situation: emancipation may involve direct participation in an array of previously prohibited discursive positions, emotional connections or material relations. Postmodern perspectives may be valuable in moving the debate beyond a mere collision of binaries and instead playing off the subtleties and paradoxes of power relations. Experiential and narrative approaches may open up horizons beyond rigid perceptual and definitional structures and enable a co-construction of new patterns of relationship and identity. By situating the work within a more comprehensive mapping of power, in both its limiting and its productive aspects, it may be possible to explore shifts and transformations of power relations that may be seen to have the potential to offer something positive to all participants, a transcending of the ‘zero sum’ mentality in which ‘my gain’ has to be balanced by ‘your loss’. In terms of practice with individuals, such a perspective connects with those psychodynamic approaches in which splits and suppressed conflicts may be expressed and re-experienced in more active ways, leading to a focusing of energies towards processes of internal and external transformation. Through the various engagements of socialist, feminist and anti-colonialist perspectives with psychoanalysis, there have developed therapeutic traditions which have been influential in challenging conventional ‘adjustment’ paradigms


in psychotherapy. ‘Symptoms’ of distress may be read as signalling outrage at past and present experiences of abuse, neglect and oppression. Through practices of ‘holding’ and ‘enlightened witnessing’, chaotic and destructive emotional energies may be refocused on a quest for justice. Productive resolution of inner conflicts and crisis may also open up a readiness to explore new forms of co-operative connection with others. Similarly, in relation to working on a wider scale, there have been moves to wrest systemic practice away from either a functionalist paradigm which restored ‘natural’ patterns of hierarchy and authority (Minuchin 1974), or ‘strategic’ approaches which sought to induce second order change, but without giving those experiencing oppression any say in defining the agenda or strategies for change (Haley 1976; Selvini Palazzoli et al. 1978). Feminists and others have sought to marry a systemic focus on patterns of relationship with an explicitly emancipatory agenda, arguing that ‘systems theory provides feminism with a more developed understanding of the processes of problem formation and resolution’ (Pilalis and Anderton 1986: p. 105). Through its ability to focus on how ripples of disturbance may resonate through a whole relational system – and potentially bring about a lasting transformation in its meta-rules – systems theory has the potential to provide a detailed understanding of change processes. Its concern with the nature of, and interconnections between, relationships offers a vision of transformation that does not privilege humanist ideas of the autonomous agency of individuals in the construction of ‘solutions’. Within a critical practice, workers must be particularly vigilant as to how they position themselves within agency and institutional discourses, and any messages around power that these may give out. Concepts of ‘need’ and ‘care’ can be particularly seductive in placing workers in positions of implicit superiority over users who are rendered somehow inadequate or victim-like. Specific roles, such as ensuring short-term safety for participants, while sometimes necessary in themselves, should not be allowed to creep into any wider take-over of working relationships. Similarly, any appropriation of systems or psychodynamic approaches must divorce itself from methodological heritages that may set up the worker in a position of oppressive ‘expert’ power. It would be arrogant to assume that workers have some monopoly on the right questions to ask in order to get closer to what may be the real issues of concern – these may only emerge through processes of exchange that break down


traditional barriers of institutionalised power and authority (Smale et al. 2000). Countering such modernist internalisations within professional practice may be seen as an ongoing struggle. However, some leverage may be obtained by playing off currently available discourses which may give some space to more emancipatory practice, such as those of ‘user participation’, ‘partnership’, ‘values-based practice’ and ‘stakeholding’.

9 Conclusions for Theory and Practice

Any conception of critical theory and any definition of critical practice must necessarily be provisional: it is a question of grasping and consolidating the current moment, while recognising that this is a moment within processes of ongoing generative change, involving theoretical developments, shifts in policy and practice, and continual transformations within social formations. A critical approach may be seen to denote ways of thinking and working that continually challenge the taken-for-grantedness of modernism (and the potential for nihilistic relativism within postmodernism), and open up possibilities for movement wherever oppression and collusion may currently be embedded. It may remain in an uneasy relationship with modernity (or postmodernity): it cannot occupy a territory that is entirely separate from dominant cultural, material or emotional formations, nor can it stand totally apart from their legacy as a context of thought and practice. It must therefore locate itself on the margins – sufficiently outside the mainstream so as to retain a critical edge, but not so far away as to lose contact and leverage. From such a position, it may also have the potential to engage with and ‘turn’ elements of modernist and postmodern approaches, as part of a wider emancipatory strategy. What have emerged from the discussions that have been developed in the preceding chapters, have been particular ways of integrating and extending various bodies of critical social theory, and augmenting these by the appropriation of certain modernist concepts and ideas. Taking account of poststructural as well as structural developments in theory, it is possible to proceed on the basis of a more integrative ‘mapping’ of power relations, one that does not assume ultimate precedence of ‘local’ or ‘societal’ in determining priorities and processes of change. Similarly, ‘material’, ‘discursive’ or ‘emotional’ levels of social relations may be 203


seen as potentially of equal importance in their own right, and each may be seen as mutually implicated in and influencing of the other. Such an inclusive approach opens up the possibility of drawing together elements from a range of practice traditions that each have the potential to engage with certain aspects of the operation of power. While these perspectives do not always knit easily to form some seamless whole, significant points of linkage may be established, and tentative frameworks may emerge by which to understand limiting and productive operations of power, the construction of identity and subjectivity, and the trajectories by which emancipatory transformations may take place. However, such marriages are not straightforward. Many approaches are partially defined around a rejection of alternative viewpoints, and may also incorporate within them more reactionary elements of modernist thinking. They may rest on particular narrow understandings of power and be implicitly collusive in their nonrecognition of other registers of power issues. It thus becomes important to worry away at the generative tensions that may exist between different approaches. In this way, it may be possible to move beyond the competing claims of alternative perspectives, and to build on each of them in order to assemble a fuller vision of the operation of power in particular instances. What emerges from this is a way of approaching social reality that is very different from that of modernism. Instead of presupposing a duality of objective (and relatively fixed) entities and regularities, set against ethereal notions of subjective experience and individual agency, there opens up a world of dynamic instabilities, in which everything may be seen to depend on everything else, and all relationships and positionings may potentially be imbued with power and generative tension. By problematising the illusory separateness of ‘society’ and ‘individual’, a more fluid account of identities, subjectivities and social structures emerges which can provide a basis for transcending simplistic notions of agency and determination. Change may be seen to come about through much more complex processes of interconnection and interdetermination, where power may be seen to operate both within and between subjectivities and structures. Within this, rationality may no longer be seen as the authority that guarantees the orderly progress of social relations, as conflicts and tensions at material, emotional and discursive levels of social relations may be seen to be key drivers of change. It has been argued that much of human service practice may be seen to involve engaging in some way with situations of deprivation, dis-

Conclusions for Theory and Practice 205

tress or crisis which relate to oppressing or limiting configurations of power, and/or the inability to access more productive modes of power. Given the typical locations of human services practice, direct engagement with large-scale political or economic structurings of power may often not be feasible. Nevertheless, these may need to be acknowledged as part of the context out of which more localised issues may arise, and, conversely, it may need to be recognised how shifts achieved at local levels may have the potential to adhere, in the longer term, so to bring about wider transformations in social relations. If practice is to move beyond a reactive formulation of resistance within the parameters of current regimes of oppressive or collusive power, it becomes necessary to work within a broader framework, one that recognises the potential for productive as well as limiting deployments of power. This marks the transition from structural and anti-oppressive paradigms to ones which open up explicit possibilities for people to generate new forms of power for themselves. In this way, it may be possible to develop a more comprehensive ‘tool-kit’ for working with the variety of issues of power that may be present in a particular situation – including those affecting workers as well as service users. In this book, I have only been able to sketch out some of the parameters and possibilities for applying critical theoretical perspectives to practice. More detailed work is needed in order to carry forward the development of critical theory and critical practice in tandem: each must be enabled to feed off and challenge the other. If theory is to develop in the light of experience, there is a need for a practice which is critically reflective, alert to how power may feel ‘deep down’, as well as to how it may appear to be manifested on the surface, and continually learning from the ongoing experience of seeking to provoke or support emancipatory change in particular situations. Finally, there is a need to move beyond some naïve belief that change will come about just because people want it to. Strategies such as consciousness raising may be seen to be important but not sufficient. A clearer analysis of the shifting balancing of forces within a relational system is required if emancipatory change is to be brought about, and if such transformations are to be sustained and built upon, rather than simply providing new clothing for the re-emergence of previous patterns of injustice and exclusion. Such an analysis must include the worker her/himself as part of the various relational systems within which transformation may or may not take place. If the personal organisation and orientation of the worker’s subjectivity is not moved through their relationship with what is happening, it is unlikely


that they will be of any real value to others struggling with their experiences of conflict and contradiction. What many workers may have learned as constituting their professional expertise may not be seen as particularly relevant or helpful by service users, if all that it does is to create distance, privilege certain world-views over others, or set in train processes of intervention over which people feel little ownership or control. Training around values and attitudes may be at least as useful as knowledge bases if workers are to be enabled to make personal connections with people, to witness with them their oppressions and distresses, and to struggle alongside them in the discovery of the transformatory solutions that best address their circumstances. Particularly crucial may be workers’ abilities to connect with and make sense of their own experiences of power and powerlessness: There is clear evidence that people who have been through traumatic crisis or suffered long-term oppression do not want to be helped by those with no direct relevant experience. (Smale et al. 2000: p. 111) This suggests a particular vision of ‘professionalism’ for any critical practice in human services work. It is a vision in which people who have lived experience of abuse, disability or distress, or who are in touch with their own experience of being subjected within oppressive or collusive situations, may be seen to have the potential to offer something very special to others, in terms of their situated knowledges and their abilities to empathise and connect with experiences. The discussions in the foregoing chapters may be seen to throw up some fragments that may belong in an emancipatory approach. How they may fit together, and, just as importantly, how they may upset and argue with one another, may be seen to set the scene for their ongoing development. It would not be helpful to set down some ‘grand narrative’ that seeks to fix the theoretical and practice foundations for working towards empowerment in the human services (even if that were possible). However, as has been the intention of this book, it may be productive to promote frameworks for dialogues between traditions that have not been good at connecting with one another. By doing so, it may aim to set out markers for addressing and engaging with the full complexity of the operation of power within social relations, and the possibilities arising out of this for smaller- and largerscale processes of emancipatory change.

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Index Abuse, 50, 53, 55, 89, 98, 101, 107, 112, 115–16, 118–20, 132–5, 137–8, 143, 145, 149–51, 153, 157, 165, 170, 172, 179, 189–92, 194, 200–1, 206 Action theory, 155 Activism, 60–2, 90, 95, 147, 171, 195 Adaptation, 104–6, 119 Adjustment, 92, 108, 200 Advocacy, 200 Affirmative identities, 145–6, 148 Age, 67, 92, 115, 141 Ageism, 45, 47, 53 Agency, 122–3, 128, 163, 168, 178–82, 198, 201, 204 Althusser, L., 22, 43, 66–7, 71, 85, 115, 123, 130–1, 136 Androcracy, 45 Anger, 107, 111–12, 114, 117, 127, 139, 174 Antagonism, 159, 161–2, 182–3, 192, 195 Anti-oppressive/anti-discriminatory practice, 4, 31, 158, 171, 175, 205 Assessment, 25 Authority, 101, 111–12, 130–2, 152–7, 165, 170, 173, 181, 201 Autonomy, 122, 124, 145, 147, 181 Baker Miller, J., 99, 111–12, 132, 139, 162, 165 Barnes, M., 168, 173, 174 Barrett, M., 46, 50, 52 Barthes, R., 71–2 Baudrillard, J., 20 Beck, A., 91 Behaviourism, 104, 117 Beliefs, 91–2 Beresford, P., 88, 168, 172–4, 198 Body, the, 99, 102, 108, 140–4, 149, 158 Bourdieu, P., 44–5, 156 Bradley, H., 39

Braye, S., 168, 174–5 Breakdown, 149, 186, 188, 191 Buber, M., 103 Butler, J., 46, 122–3, 127–9, 142, 144 Bytheway, B., 45, 47, 53 Capacity-building, 195 Capital, theories of, 34–5, 40, 44–5, 156 Capitalism, 11, 41, 48, 60, 68, 123, 179, 182–3 Care, 26–7, 48, 114, 132–3, 173–5, 201 Caring for/caring about, 172–3 Change, 94, 98, 101, 106, 116, 119, 125, 151, 162–4, 168, 170–1, 177–86, 193–201, 203–6 first order, 178, 180, 186 second order, 179–81, 188, 194, 201 Character, 129 Child protection, 26, 170 Children, 53, 165, 179, 188 Chodorow, N., 132 Choice, 165, 168–9, 182, 185 Citizen(ship), 11, 16, 26, 28, 41–2, 47, 99, 102, 122, 136, 146, 148, 152–4, 167, 183 Civilisation, 56, 99, 103, 110, 126 Cixous, H., 80–1 Class, 35, 38, 39–45, 46, 51, 55, 58–62, 65, 67, 70–1, 73, 99, 107, 115–16, 118, 133, 136–7, 142–6, 148, 162, 168, 182–3, 196 Class fraction, 42, 44, 58, 167 Cognitive theory, 104–5, 117 Cognitive therapy, 91–2 Coleman, R., 31, 88, 93 Collective identities, 129, 144, 147, 181, 193, 198 Collusion, 139, 164, 185, 191, 195, 197, 199–200, 203–4, 206 Colonialism, 11, 33, 53–8, 60, 73–4, 110, 183 Common sense, 66, 68, 86, 171, 196

227

228 Index Community, 62, 67, 138, 145, 163, 187, 192, 199 Community work, 60, 62, 197 Compulsion, 173 Conflict resolution, 196 Connection, 101, 115, 119–20, 131, 134, 143, 162–5, 171, 181, 186, 192–3, 196–7, 200–1, 206 Conscientisation, 196, 199 Consciousness, 140, 192 Consciousness-raising, 61, 110, 163, 196, 205 Consumer, 167, 174 Contradiction, 50, 55, 59–60, 67, 80, 89, 93–5, 100, 105, 108, 111, 130, 132, 137, 143, 146–7, 154, 162, 169, 182–6, 191–5, 206 Control, 162–4, 168–9, 171, 173–5, 186, 194 Cooperation, 164, 197, 201 Counselling, 28 Coward, R., 51, 76, 144 Criminal justice, 25–6, 83 Crisis, 186–94, 197, 199, 205 resolution, 199, 200 Critical practice, 19, 89, 194–203, 205–6 Critical realism, 36 Critical theory, 2, 17–19, 31, 33, 36–7, 65, 71, 76, 82, 110, 122, 153, 180, 203, 205 Cultural capital, 44, 142, 156 Cultural turn, 67 Culture, 44–5, 47, 51, 54, 56, 58, 61, 65, 67–9, 76, 90, 94, 96, 98, 100, 106–7, 111, 116, 123, 128, 134–6, 143–6, 158, 162–3, 171, 180–1, 183, 193, 199, 203 Davis, A., 61–3 Deconstruction, 65, 75–86, 88, 149–50 Deconstructive practice, 95, 149–51 Defence mechanism, 189–90 Depression, 111, 117, 134, 149 Derrida, J., 2–3, 22, 65, 71, 76–9, 86, 95, 123 Desire, 50, 80, 98, 101, 108–10, 115–16, 127–8, 130–8, 144–5, 149, 156, 165, 181, 184

Dialectic, 182–4, 192 Difference, 74–5, 77–9, 81, 125–6, 142, 148, 157, 164, 169, 171–2, 181–2, 185, 192–3, 196–198 dialogue across, 172, 197 non-hierarchical principle of, 22–3, 126, 164, 197 Disability, 52, 61, 115, 141–2, 165, 168, 206 Disablism, 45, 52–3, 73 Discipline, 24, 53, 85, 92–3, 112, 129, 140–1, 143 Discourse, 27, 35, 50, 57, 65, 68–96, 100, 103, 106–11, 115, 123–9, 140–4, 147–50, 156–64, 166, 169, 182–3, 186, 192–3, 198, 200, 202, 204 of caring professions, 172–4 entry into, 133–6, 138 legal, 27, 83, 117, 141 medical, 27, 30, 83, 117, 141 Discrimination, 31, 55, 63, 120, 149, 158, 168, 171 Distress, 101, 107, 112, 115, 117, 119, 139, 149–50, 189, 191, 194–5, 199, 201, 205–6 Dominelli, L., 62 Drives, 103, 105, 108, 130–1, 143, 181 Dualism, 13–14, 18, 21, 68, 76, 80, 99, 105, 108, 122, 153, 178, 204 Economic, 14, 20, 35, 38, 40–4, 47–9, 55, 61, 67, 113–14, 123, 128, 147, 171, 177, 183, 186, 192, 205 Ego, 103, 122, 130–1, 181 Eliot, T.S., 102 Elites, 39, 46, 85, 159, 181, 193 Ellis, A., 91, 117 Emancipation, 2, 12, 19, 30–1, 66, 85, 88, 91–2, 94, 116–17, 119, 125–6, 147, 151, 164–5, 168, 172, 180–1, 185–6, 193–5, 197–8, 200–6 Emotion(ality), 1, 13, 97–120, 122–3, 129–30, 140, 143, 148, 156, 159, 161, 163, 166, 169, 182–3, 186, 189, 192–3, 198, 200–1, 203–4 Emotional work, 113, 114 Empiricism, 14, 33

Index 229 Empowerment, 1, 30, 72, 85, 92, 148, 150, 163–4, 167–70, 180, 194–5, 198, 200, 206 Energy, 98, 119, 130–1, 143, 163, 171, 181–2, 186–7, 189, 191–5, 198–200 Enlightened witness, 117, 119, 201 Enlightenment, the, 10, 20, 46, 54–6, 83, 113, 122, 153 Epston, D., 90–3 Equality, 2, 41, 125 Ethics, 78–9, 85, 95, 172 Ethnicity, 53–4, 58, 61, 67, 146, 193 Evidence-based practice, 30 Existentialism, 15, 28, 103–4 Fairbairn, R., 131 False memory syndrome, 118 Family, 134, 138, 145, 149–50, 163, 173, 175, 179, 187–8, 192, 199 Family Group Conference, 175 Family wage, 59 Fanon, F., 110, 113, 141, 145 Feminine/femininity, 45–6, 51, 109, 111, 124, 127, 133, 137, 141, 161 Feminism, 23, 45–51, 73–4, 109–10, 113, 161, 200–1 Feudalism, 11, 47, 124, 152, 157 Fordism, 20 Foucault, M., 24, 31, 65, 82–6, 90, 100, 124, 140–1, 147–8, 150, 155, 159–62 Frankfurt School, 18, 110 Fratriarchy, 45–6 Freedom, 122–4 Freire, P., 163, 196 Freud, A., 138–9 Freud, S., 18, 38, 80, 103, 108, 110, 118, 128, 130–1, 140 Frosh, S., 135, 137 Functionalism, 37, 76, 201 Gay, 51–2, 60–1, 83, 128, 145, 158 Gender, 38–9, 45–52, 62, 65, 67, 87, 92, 107, 109, 115–16, 118, 132–3, 136, 138, 141–2, 144–5, 148, 162, 183, 192 Genealogy, 84, 140 Gestalt, 105

Giddens, A., 2, 20, 39, 98, 146, 155, 182, 184 Gilligan, C., 37, 82 Gilroy, P., 54, 56 Glass ceiling, 42, 158 Goffman, E., 91 Gramsci, A., 38, 42, 44, 66, 71, 94, 160, 192 Groupwork, 63, 149, 197 Habermas, J., 12, 85 Hall, S., 11, 20, 73–4 Harré, R., 106 Healy, K., 63, 90, 95, 194, 197 Hegel, G., 34, 54, 182 Hegemony, 44, 57, 66, 94, 156, 159–60 Heterosexism, 45, 53, 128 Heterosexuality, 45–6, 51, 128, 137, 142, 192, 196 Hierarchy, 120, 157, 162, 201 Hobbes, T., 153 Holism, 147 Homeostasis, 178, 186–8, 190 Homophobia, 138–9 Homosexuality, 46, 51–2, 83 hooks, b., 57, 124, 144–5 Housework, 47 Humanism, 10, 15–16, 22, 28, 34, 42, 75–6, 83, 85–6, 102–3, 123–4, 146, 153–5, 160–3, 168–9, 180–1, 198, 201 Humanistic psychology, 104–5, 118, 155 Hume, D., 102 Id, 130 Identification, 134, 145, 193 Identity, 12, 57, 61, 67, 69, 92, 121–4, 126–30, 135, 137–8, 140, 143–7, 159, 162, 164–6, 169, 181, 184, 186, 193–4, 196–8, 200, 204 Ideology, 34, 43–4, 50, 54–8, 61, 65–7, 69–70, 72, 75, 100, 110, 118, 123–4, 131, 135–6, 192 Impairment, 52 Imperialism, 55–9, 68, 74, 158, 183, 187

230 Index Independence, 163, 169 Independent living, 175 Individual, the, 13, 22, 95, 122–3, 130, 136, 140, 144, 147, 153, 155, 163, 167, 181, 204 Individualism, 103–4, 146, 162 Inequality, 1, 11, 19, 31, 39, 41, 47, 66, 68, 70, 79, 153, 156, 159, 161, 171, 179, 182, 192 Inheritance, 48 Instability, 17, 50, 83, 180–2, 204 Instinct, 108, 130 Interdependence, 144, 164, 169 Internalisation, 134, 137, 143–4, 149, 168–9, 184, 195, 202 Interpellation, 123 Interpretive sociology, 91 Intimacy, 137, 172 Intuition, 98, 109, 116, 119, 132, 135, 151 Irigiray, L., 80–1, 109, 142 Jackson, S., 107 Jouissance, 109 Justice, 2–3, 12, 78, 80, 95, 165, 172, 193, 201 Kant, I., 13, 54, 102 Klein, M., 131, 133 Know-how, 30 Knowledge, 3, 11, 14–16, 18, 21, 30, 66, 82–3, 85–8, 161, 169, 198 Kristeva, J., 80–1, 100, 108–9, 135, 143 Labour domestic, 35, 47–9, 157 wage, 40, 47, 59, 123, 157, 183 Lacan, J., 38, 71, 80, 109–10, 131, 134–6, 141, 143 Laclau, E., 2, 43, 66, 160, 184 Language, 35, 57, 65, 68, 71–2, 74–5, 77, 79–82, 88, 107, 109, 116, 123–4, 126, 134–5, 149, 159, 174 Lash, S., 20, 22 Learning difficulties, 52 Lenin, V.I., 182 Leonard, P., 62, 162, 164, 169, 171, 180 Lesbian, 51–2, 60–1, 83, 145

Levels of social relations, 66, 97, 114–16, 129, 192, 198, 203 Lévi-Strauss, C., 38, 71, 75–6 Life story work, 91 Listening, 89 Locke, J., 153 Logocentrism, 76, 79, 81, 109 Love, 101, 107, 113 Lovell, T., 21, 36, 51 Lukes, S., 155–6 Lyotard, J-F., 19 Marx, K., 18, 34–5, 40–4, 75, 108, 110, 180, 182 Marxism, 1, 40, 66 Masculinity, 45–6, 51, 112, 124, 127, 137, 154, 162 Material(ism), 20, 34–6, 40–3, 47–9, 55, 58, 61, 66–7, 75, 110, 113–15, 128–9, 140–3, 148, 161, 163, 166, 178, 182–3, 186, 190, 192–3, 198, 200, 203–4 Meaning, chains of, 3, 77, 84, 129, 159 Medicine, 26, 30 Mental health, 26, 27, 83, 89, 93, 110, 117, 173 Miller, A., 53, 117–18, 140, 157 Millett, K., 49 Mind, 108, 140 Modernism/modernity, 3–5, 10–25, 33, 38, 46–7, 53–5, 63–6, 70–1, 76, 79, 81–3, 92, 98–102, 105–14, 117, 122–30, 137, 140–1, 144, 149–58, 163, 167–8, 177–9, 182, 195, 202–4 Modernist practice, 24–9 Morphogenesis, 179, 187–8, 190–1 Mothering, 132–4, 136 Mouffe, C., 43, 66, 148, 160, 184 Mullaly, R., 63, 171 Multi-culturalism, 58, 75 Mutuality, 137, 163–4, 169, 172, 175 Narrative, 29–30, 65, 67–70, 87–95, 107, 138, 148, 179, 193, 195, 198, 200 Need, 26, 130, 165, 169, 173, 201 Neurotic solution, 189–90

Index 231 Nietzsche, F., 85, 103, 105, 130, 140, 154, 161 Neo-liberalism, 22, 26, 31, 70, 85, 167 Networking, 63 Object(ive), 13–15, 18, 21, 25, 27, 29, 34–6, 40, 68, 86, 94, 102, 104–5, 132–3, 139–40, 153–4, 158, 165, 204 Object relations, 131–4, 136, 143 Older people, 47, 53, 165 Oliver, M., 52, 88 Ontological security, 146–7 Ontology, 13, 33–7, 68, 87, 159 Oppression, 1–5, 11, 16, 19, 23–4, 30, 37–40, 47–62, 68, 72–3, 79, 87, 89, 99, 103, 107, 110–11, 115–18, 129, 134, 138, 141–4, 147–50, 153–61, 165–6, 170–2, 179–85, 191, 193, 195–201, 203, 206 Organisation, 178–81, 186, 190, 194, 205 Parsons, T., 37–8, 154, 178 Partnership, 4, 28, 120, 162, 168, 175, 196, 202 Parton, N., 26, 30 Paternalism, 173, 175, 185 Patriarchy, 45–52, 59–60, 68, 79, 81, 109, 132–4, 136, 141, 146, 161–2, 165, 183 Patronage, 165, 173, 185 Performance, 127–8, 143, 185 Perpetrator, 170, 172–3, 179 Person-centred practice, 28 Personality, 131, 147 Personality disorder, 117, 151 Phallocentrism, 81–2 Phallus, 124, 136 Phenomenology, 28 Policing, 49, 165, 194 Political correctness, 74 Pornography, 50 Positivism, 10, 14–15, 21–2, 28, 31, 34, 86, 102, 104, 106, 153, 155, 162, 168, 178 Postcolonialism, 55–7 Post-feminism, 183 Postmodern politics, 148

Postmodern practice, 29–32, 78 Postmodernism/postmodernity, 19–24, 29, 33, 39, 58, 70, 90, 107, 110, 171, 200, 203 Poststructuralism, 4, 21, 29, 38, 51, 63–4, 68, 71, 79, 88, 90, 125, 128, 147, 161, 181, 184, 195–6, 198, 203 Poulantzas, N., 66, 72 Poverty, 31, 41, 48 Power collusive, 166–7, 170–1, 173, 186, 192–4, 197, 199, 205 cooperative, 166–8, 170–4, 185, 197, 199 covert, 155 differentials, 181, 197, 199 discursive, 156 economic, 156 emotional, 156 individual, 153–4 latent, 156 limiting, 166, 169, 176, 184, 195, 199–200, 204–5 local, 126–7, 130–1, 133, 159–61 matrix, 166–7, 170, 196 operation of, 1–2, 14, 18, 68, 82, 153–4, 159, 166, 169, 179, 195–6, 204, 206 oppressive, 166–7, 170–1, 173, 183, 194, 197, 199, 205 over, 163–4, 166, 168, 171, 185, 197 professional/expert, 4, 69, 159, 167–8, 172–5, 201 productive, 84, 115, 125, 161, 166, 169–70, 176, 184–5, 194, 199–200, 204–5 protective, 166–8, 170, 173, 185 relations, 35, 61, 68, 71, 79, 99, 115, 123, 139–40, 142, 155, 157, 160, 166, 170, 172, 176, 184–5, 190–1, 194, 200, 203 and resources, 39, 156 structural, 38–64, 126–7, 130–1, 157, 160–1, 184, 196 submission to, 123, 144 together, 163–4, 166, 168, 171–2, 174

232 Index Powerlessness, 2, 131–2, 137, 168–9, 195–6, 206 Prejudice, 138, 171 Preston-Shoot, M., 168, 175 Problem, the, 93–4 Professional expertise, 89 Projection, 138–40, 149 Protection, 120, 132, 134, 159, 165, 170, 175, 200 Psyche, 115, 130–2, 138, 184, 186 Psychiatry, 28 Psychoanalysis, 29, 65, 80, 91, 103, 105–6, 110, 118, 130, 138, 181, 184, 190, 200 Psychodynamic approaches, 92, 118, 188–91, 195, 200–1 Psychology, 28, 104–6 feminist, 132 Psychosis, 149–51 Psychotherapy, 105, 119, 150, 201 Queer Studies, 51, 72 ‘Race’, 38–9, 53–62, 65, 67, 86–7, 92, 107, 115, 118, 127, 133, 136, 138, 141, 144–5, 148, 162 scientific study of, 14–15, 56, 141 Racism, 33, 53, 56–61, 73, 93, 99, 110, 138, 145–6, 168, 171 Rational Economic Man, 14 Rationality, 12–17, 27, 29, 54, 56, 65–6, 70, 82, 85, 98–9, 102–3, 105–8, 112–14, 118, 124, 130, 135, 139–40, 154, 158–9, 168–9, 180–1, 204 Rattansi, A., 12, 20 Real/realism/reality, 18, 35–7, 40, 43, 86, 90, 110, 116, 124, 132, 158, 191, 196–7, 204 Reason, see Rationality Recovery, 30 Rehabilitation, 25, 27, 125 Reiteration, 89, 127–9, 147, 150–1, 153, 159, 161, 181, 185–6, 190, 192, 195, 199 Relativism, 32 Representation, 20, 23, 33, 35, 37, 39, 50–1, 66–9, 72, 81, 109–10, 129, 132, 149, 156, 193

Repression, 103, 109, 115, 117, 130, 138, 161, 189–92, 194 Research, 85–7, 198 Resistance, 38, 50, 63, 67, 70, 72–4, 82, 86, 93, 114, 117, 119, 129, 143, 147, 156, 160–1, 169–70, 181–2, 184–6, 191–2, 199, 205 Respectability, 44, 146 Responsibility, 122, 147, 164, 173, 180 Return of the repressed, 190–1 Risk, 26, 120, 165, 199 Romanticism, 103, 105 Rousseau, J–J., 153–4 Rules, 178–180, 184–6, 188, 190, 194, 199, 201 Safeholding, 173 Said, E., 56 Saussure, F. de, 38, 71 Self, 105, 133–4, 143–6, 161 Self-harm, 111, 149–50, 157, 189 Self-help, 63, 175 Semiotic, the, 81, 100, 135 Sex, 51, 127, 131, 137, 142 Sexism, 45, 53, 168 Sexual orientation, 46, 51, 67, 115, 133, 136, 138, 144–5 Sexuality, 50, 83, 92, 100, 141, 148 Signification, 20, 58, 67, 71, 77, 79, 109–10, 131, 135–7, 142–3 Situated knowledge, 87–8, 198, 206 Skeggs, B., 143, 146, 156 Slavery, 11, 55, 60 Social action, 195–6, 198 Social activism, 60–4 Social constructionism, 86–7, 89–90, 106 Social contract, 11, 153 Social exclusion/inclusion, 1–2, 16, 25, 41, 52–3, 59, 61–2, 157, 168, 191 Social science, 13–14, 17, 21, 28, 102 Social work, 62–3, 167 Society, 13, 22, 122, 204 Sociology, 39, 91, 106 Solidarity, 63, 126, 164, 171–2, 185, 193, 195–7 Spirituality, 98

Index 233 Splitting, 102, 116, 130–4, 136–9, 150, 193, 197, 200 Standpoint epistemologies, 87–8 State, 159–60, 165, 167, 173 Stories, 69, 91–3 Structuralism, 33, 37–9, 65, 68, 71, 75–6, 79, 83–4, 184, 203 Structural approaches to practice, 62–4, 171, 175, 195–6, 205 Subject(ive), 13, 15–16, 19, 24–5, 35–6, 40, 43, 68, 76, 85, 102, 105, 118, 121–5, 130–1, 133, 135–7, 140, 144–5, 147, 150, 153–4, 161, 163, 168–9, 181, 195, 204 Subjectivity, 16, 25–7, 37, 121–37, 141, 143, 147–9, 151, 154–5, 159, 161, 164, 166, 168–70, 173, 178, 181–2, 184, 195, 197–8, 200, 204–5 Surrey, J., 162–3 Survivor, 93 Symbol(ic), 69, 71–2, 80, 109, 125, 128, 132, 135–7, 143, 158 System, 151, 154, 170, 174, 178–9, 182, 184–5, 187–8, 191, 194, 198–9 Systemic practice, 180, 195, 198–9, 201 Systems theory, 178–9, 186, 201 Text, 2–4, 68, 77, 81, 89 Therapy, 28, 91–2 Thompson, N., 158, 171, 176 Transformation, 19, 119, 125, 148, 169, 176–177, 179–84, 191–3, 195, 198–201, 203–6 Transversal politics, 172, 197

Trauma, 92, 133, 143, 188–90 Treatment, 26, 174 Truth, 23, 36, 66, 86–7, 92 Unconscious, 80, 131, 136, 184 User movement, 167 User participation, 174–5, 202 Users of services, 30, 87–8, 95, 168, 171, 173–6, 195–6, 201, 205–6 Values, 128, 143, 202, 206 Venn, C., 13, 16, 99, 144 Victim, 93, 118, 139, 172, 175, 179, 185, 201 Violence, 35, 38, 49–50, 55, 62, 79, 95, 110, 115, 118, 127, 129, 137, 139, 140, 150, 157–8, 172, 179 Voices, 93 Vulnerability, 112–15, 117, 137–40, 150, 164–5, 168, 173, 189, 194, 196–7 Walby, S., 39, 47 Weber, M., 42–4, 155 Weedon, C., 71, 77–8, 124 Welfarism, 31 Welfare, 165, 167, 173–5 White, M., 90–3 Will, 85, 112, 140, 154, 160–1, 163 Winnicott, D.W., 131 Women’s Movement, 60, 164, 196 Women’s therapy, 132 Writing, 2, 77, 109 Young, I.M., 38, 157–8 Yuval-Davis, N., 58, 75, 146, 169, 172, 197

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