Colonialism and Class Division

In Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth" a new sets of political divisions are discussed that haven't garnered nearly any attention in by our other authors. Their is a strong class like division seen between the rural masses and the urban colonized intellectuals that Fanon describes. Although they seemingly should both be together in their strong opposition to Western colonial power, Fanon describes a division between the two. A distrust between tribal divisions is played upon by colonial powers to protect their strength as is the division between the urban proletariat and bourgeoisie and the rural peasantry. Those colonized who have rubbed shoulders and worked the colonial system to their advantaged are not trusted by the rural masses nor do they trust them either. (p.67) Although the sponteniety of a violent revoult by the rural masses is cheered by the urban colonized, they have made little effort to work them into a political framework or to honor traditional authority. They have themselves become simular in ideology and in class to the colonist. These divisions spillover into to a post-colonial liberation. I think that the political divisions of which Fanon speaks are interesting yet tragic because you can see the damaged left in African because of them today.

Shame and Gender

Reading Sandra Lee Bartky's essay on shame and gender, I was confronted with a number of social aspects which interested me. The unassertive nature before the "other" that many women have is seen as a result of society standard of normalcy. A societal normative standard is set and all that do not fit within the threshold of normalcy are put to shame. That many women would feel inadequate in many setting because of this is a result of a sexist society. I think that Barky's classroom examples of men being more assertive, women talking in "women's language", and the difference in the confidences of both groups does paint an interesting picture of the gender shame consciousness gap. I wonder however if this same phenomenon is still as prevalent today. I remember reading many news articles about young boys falling behind in academic performance while many girls and rising in standard. Does this lead to a a change in confidence or is it completely unrelated to performance and is more socially created as Bartky implies? Still I think society is definitely changing. Social controls are is not uniform in their ability to use identity transforming power.

Pastoral Power-- The Rise of Secular Salvation

As Michel Foucault begins his discussion with the relationship between rationalization and excessive power, he wanders away from an individual apparatus of power but moves on to talk about struggle. He describes a series of examples of opposition to traditional authority that he describes as transversal and puts them all into three categories: social, ethnic, and religious. He then goes on to discuss the root power form of this identity subjugation. Pastoral power, as he calls it, is the emphasis on forced conformity to one norm or another as a means of a sort of secular salvation. It is a distinctly different power model than the royal model in that it requires sacrifice of itself "for the life and salvation of the flock" (333). This new pastoral power sets state as a "modern matrix of individualization"(334). Its goal is to globalize and quantify the large population into a privilege of knowledge and then to analyse the individual by this "knowledge standard". What I think is somewhat ironic is that Foucault starts by speaking about rationalization and excessive power and then moves on to rationalize these new forms of power themselves. He sees them everywhere as there are numerous examples throughout his writing here and elsewhere. I see what he is describing but I also feel to some degree that identity needs to developed from somewhere and while he may describe the power of knowledge and its pastoral power application , I don't necessarily disagree with this power form.

The State on Power Relations

I think that it is very interesting that Foucault turns the question not centrally to the power of the state bu to already existing power structures that he sees. I also am intrigued by the idea that he began an in part rejection of simply seeing this power as repressive. To see the state merely as an apparatus for large power struggle relations between various sets is to see much more of what occurs in society. To view the state as a "codification of a whole number of power relations" (123) and to suggest that "revolution is a different kind of codification of the same relations" brings into light the more complex relation of the state to power. This manner of thinking allows the government to be a structure by which power relations fight to exert themselves while the state is no longer merely taking on the role of adversary but as conduit. I think this a far more accurate representation of state's role in the power relationship dialogue. It reminds me that in American, different political groups are often struggling with each other far more than with the state because if a long disenfranchised group finally takes some state power they often leave the state's authoritarian power intact. That is "one can perfectly well conceive of revolutions that leave essentially untouched the power relations that form the basis for the functioning of the state."