Difference between Foucault, Derrida and Said

“And yet, the geographical and cultural parameters for Said’s poststructuralist ‘demonstration’ are, as I have been arguing, radically different from those deployed by Foucault and Derrida in their revisionist critique of Western epistemology and cultural hegemony. For while these poststructuralist luminaries challenge the conceptual boundaries of the West from within Western culture, they are, as Homi Bhabha writes, notoriously and self-consciously ethnocentric in their refusal to push these boundaries ‘to the colonial periphery; to that limit where the west must face a peculiarly displaced and decentred image of itself “in double duty bound”, at once a civilizing mission and a violent subjugating force’ (Bhabha, 1986, p.148).”

(Ghandi, Leela, 1998:72)

 

Ghandi, Leela, 1998. Postcolonial theory: a critical introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 

 

Re-membering the Colonial Past

In his comments on Frants Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, the postcolonial critic, Homi Bhabha, announces that memory is the necessary and sometimes hazardous bridge between colonialism and the question of cultural identity. Remembering, he writes, ‘is never a quiet act of introspection or retrospection. It is a painful re-membering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of the present’ (Bhabha, 1994, p.63).

(Ghandi, 1998:9)

 

- Bhabha, 1994. The location of culture. London: Routledge.

 

Ghandi, L. 1998. Postcolonial theory: a critical introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Barthes and Intertextuality in Place-Making

“Barthes claims that he coud not have written about a truly fictive place because he does not possess sufficient agency independent of the structure of language to create anything strictly original. He is left to choose among the elements of a place that already exists from which to produce his imagined geography. [...] Barthes’ descriptions… as he claims, in truth, they do not represent the reality… Instead these selected images represent the difference which Barthes desires from his engagement with the non-western cultural system; they are the favoured aspects of a plethora of signification whihc produces the place/idea…” (Sharp, 2000:330)

Sharp, J., 2000. Towards a critical analysis of fictive geographies. Area, 32(3):327-334.

On (Assumptions/Limits of) Normal Biopolitical Body

“The various techniques of power/knowledge assume individuals to be normal also in the sense that they can be normalized. To be normalizeable, a person must fulfill a very particular biopolitical condition. Techniques of biopower and governmentality presuppose that individuals will be susceptible to the inducements and deterents of various sorts that authorities use to try to shape behaviour.” (Hannah, 2006:629)

Hannah, M., 2006. Torture and the ticking bomb: the war on terrorism as a geographical imagination of power/knowledge. Annals of the association of American geographers, 96(3):622-640.

On Terrorism and Threat

“It is this world of compulsory freedom, a vast, differentiated, and complicated regulatory and self-regulatory life of modern populations composed of disciplinary institutions, social statistics, welfare and public health legislation, insurance technologies, self help schemes, neoliberal responsibilization programs, as well as the material infrastructures for all of these, that is threatened by terrorism.” (Hannah, 2006:628)

Hannah, M., 2006. Torture and the ticking bomb: the war on terrorism as a geographical imagination of power/knowledge. Annals of the association of American geographers, 96(3):622-640.

Cultural Differences & Violence

“The emphasis on cultural differences – the attempt to hod the Other at a distance while claiming toc ross the interpretive divide – produces a diagram in which violence has its origins in ‘their’ space… while the impulse to understand is confined to our ’space’, which is constructed as open, unitary and generous” (Gregory, 2008:37)

Gregory, D., 2008. The rush to the intimate: counterinsurgency and the cultural turn in late modern war. Available from: http://web.mac.com/derekgregory/iWeb/Site/The%20cultural%20turn%20and%20late%20modern%20war.html/. [27 Aug 2008].

On Body Politics and Liveable Life

“Bodies undo us because their significance exceeds our reach; their meaning derives from the norms of gender and sexuality, norms that get (re)articulated in culture, in society, in politics. Butler’s politics centres on the operation of norms, not because she ignores bodies, but precisely because she recognises the role that norms must play in any body politics [...] And the struggle to be conceived as persons – that is, the struggle to make possible a liveable life – cannot take the body for granted. While such a politics will grant that the body is ‘ours’ (i.e. that one has rights to it), this politics must insist that the body also proves to be ‘not ours’. And such a politics must focus attention on how those norms that make life liveable in some bodies and unliveable in others.” (Chambers & Carver, 2008:71-72)

Chambers, S., A.; Carver, T., 2008. Judith Butler and political theory: troubling politics. London: Routledge.

Transforming and Suggesting Metaphors

“A more liberal view of metaphor as thought and action will enable human geographers to develop a fuller appreciation of human action in space. [...] The geographical interpretation of metaphors as they are thought and acted out in the realms of politics and ideology can do much to delineate the praxis of everyday life. Indeed, by critiquing and transforming established metaphors or by suggesting new ones, geographes might provide alternative and more provocative ways of thinking and acting in space.” (Cresswell, 1997:343)

Cresswell, T., 1997. Weeds, plagues, and bodily secretions: a geographical interpretation of metaphors of displacement. Annals of the associatoin of American geographers, 87(2):330-345.

On Metaphors, (Out-of-)Place and Common Sense

“People act as they think they are supposed to; they do what they think is appropriate in places that are also appropriate. It is therefore essential for powerful groups in any given context to define common sense and that which goes unquestioned. When individuals or groups ignore this socially produced common sense, they are said to be ‘out-of-place’ and defined as deviant. Frequently, this labeling of ‘out-of-placeness’ is metaphorical, based on analogies which themselves refer to common sense expectations.” (Cresswell, 1997:334)

Cresswell, T., 1997. Weeds, plagues, and bodily secretions: a geographical interpretation of metaphors of displacement. Annals of the associatoin of American geographers, 87(2):330-345.

On Culture Industry, Designs to Naturalize Contraditions

“The culture industry implements designs for making contested political, economic and social practices appear as if they are natural and inevitable parts of society. Focusing on the idea of culture allows to theorize these designs, to understand how the idea of culture functions in a differentiated society to naturalize and smooth out differences in the name of a certain social order; how contradictions inherent within the various social systems that govern our lives are subsumed under the realm of ‘culture’; how they are figured to be naturalized, slowly changing, rooted in people themselves.” (Mitchell, 1995:111)

Mitchell, D. 1995. There’s no such thing as culture: towards a reconceptualization of the idea of culture in geography. Transactions of the Insititute of British Geographers, 20:102-116.

Problematic Use of ‘Culture’

“Culture is everything, so culture cannot work as a useful abstraction except at the most banal levels – as a means of indicating a whole range of life. Or when the abstraction is narrowed, to indicate ‘culture’ as a sphere, thing, level, medium or idiom, it slips away into meaninglessness. It becomes overly narrow.” (Mitchell,1995:109)

Mitchell, D. 1995. There’s no such thing as culture: towards a reconceptualization of the idea of culture in geography. Transactions of the Insititute of British Geographers, 20:102-116.

On Fear and Place

“A central concern is how powerful groups use this association between fear and place in order to dominate via the threat of violence, harrassment, surveillance and other means of exerting power over the spaces others.” (Shirlow & Pain, 2008:23)

Shirlow, P.; Pain, R., 2008. The geographies and politics of fear. Capital and class, 80:15-26.

On Fears and Power

“There is a collective responsibility to understand that the west, via political, economic an cultural control. is implicated in the processes by which the fears and despairs of non-westerners are transformed into violent acts. Yet such understanding is obscured partly by growing fearfulness and its deployment by western regimes.” (Shirlow & Pain, 2008:18 )

Shirlow, P.; Pain, R., 2008. The geographies and politics of fear. Capital and class, 80:15-26.

On Body, Peformance, Look

“What is sought today is not so much health, which is an organic equilibrium, as an ephemeral, hygienic and promotional radiance from the body – much more a performance than an ideal state. In terms of fashion and appearances, what we seek is less beauty or attractiveness than the right look. [author's own emphasis]” (Baudrillard, 1993:22)

Baudrillard, J., 1993. The transparency of evil: essays on extreme phenomenon. London: Verso.

Troubling Politics

“‘Troubling politics’ therefore must not be taken as another name for deconstruction, or some other so-called sceptical project, since the process of disrupting and reorganizing human relations goes well beyond the notion of doubting their naturalness.” (Chambers & Carver, 2008:10)

Chambers, S., A.; Carver, T., 2008. Judith Butler and political theory: toubling politics. London: Routledge.

Caught in Between Cultures

“To be ‘caught in between cultures’ assumes that cultures and their boundaries can be mapped. Indeed, in order for us to find those conjunctural spaces, someone has to map them. Distinctions have to be made. To be ‘caught between cultures’ insider/outsider and observer/observed dichotomies must be reinforced, in spite of the best intentions to do away with them. Culture ‘itself’, then, does not construct difference. Instead, the idea of culture allows us to turn differences into something orderly, mappable and controllable. The very idea allows us to reify transformation and struggle as culture.” (Mitchell, 1995:107)

Mitchell, D. 1995. There’s no such thing as culture: towards a reconceptualization of the idea of culture in geography. Transactions of the Insititute of British Geographers, 20:102-116.

Phantom nature of Culture

“Even so, powerful social actors continue to behave as if there is something called ‘culture’, for it is precisely the phantom nature of ‘culture’ that provides the idea’s power.” (Mitchell, 195:104)

Mitchell, D. 1995. There’s no such thing as culture: towards a reconceptualization of the idea of culture in geography. Transactions of the Insititute of British Geographers, 20:102-116.

On Homogeneity of Culture

“When culture is defined as the active force and the individual the passive recipient, homogeneity will be assumed, for individuals must be blank pages upon which the culture pattern is imprinted.” (Duncan, 1980: 194)

Duncan, J. S., 1980. The Superorganic in American Cultural Geography. Annals of the association of American geographers. 70(2):181-198.

On Superorganic Culture

“The most serious consequence of attributing causal power to culture is the fact that it obscures many important issues as to the origin, transmittal, and differentiation within a population of various ‘cultural characteristics’. [...] Thus the unintended consequence of the superorganic theory has been to discourage inquiry into important questions of social interaction by rooting explanation in a transcendental realm.” (Duncan, 1980: 191)

Duncan, J. S., 1980. The Superorganic in American Cultural Geography. Annals of the association of American geographers. 70(2):181-198.

On (Ontological) Culture

“… dispense with the notion of an ontological culture and begin focusing instead on how the very idea of culture has been developed and deployed as a means of attempting to order, control and define ‘others’ in the name of power or profit.” (Mitchell, 1995: 104)

Mitchell, D. 1995. There’s no such thing as culture: towards a reconceptualization of the idea of culture in geography. Transactions of the Insititute of British Geographers, 20:102-116.