Lemke Textual Politics: Discourse and Social Dynamics

+++ Notes from class -
Lemke - "force" what is the nature of the relationship? ideology and violence
Violence is not the extraordinary - ideology in the service of violence = and this is social control
politics --cover of  "democracy" - labor practices of US - ideology of "free trade" - results in physical harm to a lot of people.
So...we aren't controlling people through ideaology - the physical violence is there.

Whose voice do we get? Drone - dominant voice - CIA - we hear their standpoint "surgical strikes" "suspected militants"
Don't hear voices of drones "hovering" - surveillance

We can't separate words from deeds 14-15
 THE POWER TO INFLICT PAIN WITHOUT IMPUNITY MUST CHANGE!
What needs to be changed is power to inflict impunity
"
Chapter 6 will argue that we cannot understand human social and cultural
systems of action and meaning apart from the material ecosystems in
which we are participants, nor the dynamics of ecosocial systems without
taking into account the beliefs and values of human communities. Modeling
human social systems on many scales, from individual development to long
term sociai and culturai change, requires understanding the nature of complexity
in self-organizing systems, both material and semiotic." (17)


Lemke - ideology
Concern - ideology and self reflexivity

6 - dimensions that matter
self-reflexivity - identity (white male...etc. etc.)
critical analyses - inform the critique - position by which I am critiquing (deconstructing knowledge claims) is this good?

Broad- all discourses are ideological-
 vs. narrow conception of ideology - common sense assumptions that serve privileged interests
Asks us to adopt more narrow distinction
Discursive acts that contribute directly to the maintenance of power and privilege -
12
"So it is also useful to have a narrower view
of ideology, or more precisely of the ideological functioning of discourses.
Some discourses contribute directly to the maintenance of social relations of
power and privilege (e.g. overtly sexist, racist or homophobic discourses).
Other discourses may do so sometimes, but usually just index the existing
relations, weakly reinforcing them merely by remaining in general circulation
and so readily available for their more directly ideological uses (e.g.
discourses about cognitive abilities that can be used to rationalize ideological
views about racial inferiority;"
Systems of intertextuality -
 "They may of course be used as tools of power to
further projects and agendas of some already dominant group, and they may
have been created in part for this reason, but what they say about their
subjects may not be specifically shaped by these wider social functions."

Rhodes speech (handout)- promotes ideology - contributes
vs.
May 4th handout - "a call by the cities mayor to governor for assistance" - paragraph missing
"messy" stuff has been swept away - CSI crime scene account
May 4th heteroglossic - BUT some events are purposefully not included (such as mayor's speech)
 all events related temporally vs. casually

How do the two work together?  Functions ideologically - oblique ideological function/ does not contribute directly to an ideology - indexes

1

"Texts; record the meanings we make: in words, pictures and deeds. Politics
chronicle our uses of power in shaping social relationships large and small."
...
"The language we speak to
others can enlist their aid or provoke their enmity. The language others
speak to us, from childhood, shapes the attitudes and beliefs that ground
how we use all our powers of action ."

".Jhe textual, in the broad sense of all the meanings we ma!}e, whether in
w~s or by deeds, is deeply political. Our meanings shape and are shaped
by our social relationships, both as individuals and as members of social
groups."
2
"The power of actions and events is grounded both in their
material effects on us and in their cultural meanings for us."
"ideaology" - many different meanings
" The central insight which the concept of ideology tries to sum up is
simply this: there are some very common meanings we have learned to make,
and take for granted as common sense, but which support the power of one
social group to dominate another."

bias of common sense

rise of faith in logic (Europe - escape from radical skepticism)
- philosophy, math, science..."our modern common sense" - New "religion"! (reminds me of debate)
Who is "we"?
3
 "The modern European quest for a universally valid method of inquiry
was a particular historical response to a particular historical need by a very
small fraction of the population." Complicates how we look at teaching language

" The makers of our modern intellectual common sense were Euro eans.
They were main y upper-middle class. T ey were mostly middle-aged (for
their times). They were nearly all males. They shared common intellectual
problems, they belonged to social groups and communities that shared common
political problems, and they would hardly have seen the one as being
very much separate from the other."
transform - BODY & SOUL to BODY and MIND - universal truth of science 
dialectic: ?
"What about our cultures and subcultures? Wiii not whatever I write also
be a product of my position in the system of social relationships that have
shaped my attitudes and values, my beliefs and interests? Will not your responses
to what I write also depend in part on your position in the social
system? Yes, indeed they will - or so it seems to me from where I stand."

4

 Ummm...so awesome!
" the
relative power of non-European cultural traditions, of women, the elderly
and the very young, gays and lesbians, subordinated social classes, and all
the Other cultures, subcultures and communities in our world has increased
significantly in the last few decades."...
"Their growing power enables them to
challenge more effectively the universal pretensions of modern European
assumptions about logic, truth, science, mind, individuality, culture, gender,
age, education, politics, literacy etc. Their challenges open up the intellectual
space in which all of us can entertain a greater diversity of possible ways
of making sense of life."


very explicit about the role of the author w/ a limited viewpoint
relativism: "I will try to show what I think myviews are useful for, to whom, and why."

Commentary on "adversarial intellectual dialogue" "I also believe that the adversarial
approach reinforces a traditional view of the masculinity of the writer as a
fighter who can best his opponent."

6
questions definition of discourse (makes me think of Bakhtin)
 "I will also have in mind the
participants in the discourse, whether they speak and write or only listen and
read, and whether they are considered actually present in or only potentially
relevant to the situation. As a writer, I address many sorts of potential readers,
including other writers I have read. As a 'thinker', various viewpoints within
me address other viewpoints that I may or may not identify with or even
!
r agree with, but that are also in a way parts of 'me'."

7
 "On each occasion when the particular meanings characteristic of these\
discourses are being made, a speci~c text ~s produced. Discourse~, ~s social
actions more or less governed by sooal hab1ts, produce texts that Will m some
ways be alike in their meanings. They may be alike in the content of what
they say about topics and subjects. They may be alike in their values, attitudes
and stances toward their subjects and audiences. They may be alike in the
sequence, structure and form of organization of what they say. These texts
will always also be different as well, each will be in some ways unique. The
notions of text and discourse are complementary. When we want to focus on]
the specifics of an event or occasion, we speak of the text; when we want to
look at patterns, commonality, relationships that embrace different texts and
occasions, we can speak of discourses."

making meaning beyond words - sounds/ gestures

"Even more obviously, we cannot write without using a visual system of
communication whose signs and symbols always allow us to make more than
merely linguistic meaning."
8
so...can't figure things out simply by "semantics of language alone." b/c words change in contexts..."Just as the meanings of words change in their
verbal contexts, in the phrases and sentences that contain them, and the
meanings of sentences change in the contexts of paragraphs and larger units
of textual organization, so do all of these also change their meanings when
they are juxtaposed with a picture or a graph, or when they are said by· (or
to) one person rather than another, or when they are said in one social
situation rather than another."

" Language does not operate in isolation. Meanings always get made in
contexts where social expectations and non-linguistic symbols play a role."


"One of the most important things we can say about language is that it
has evolved, biologically and culturally, as part of patterns of motor activity
that integrate the organism into its social and material environment. Language
and speech are specialized components of this activity." EVOLUTION

not autonomous
"Gesture, drawing and writing are not so different from one another as we
might think"
9
Semiotics - meaning making
"I use the term social semiotics as a reminder that all meanings are made
within communities and that the analysis of meaning should not be separated
from the social, historical, cultural and political dimensions of these
communities. This approach is useful for studying meaning in a way that
then enables us to see how the meanings we make function to sustain or
challenge the relationships of power in our communities."

mentalist discourses??? beyond meaning making done by minds.

“A theory of meaning must be essentially social, historical, cultural I and political, because the unit of meaning is a human action 'addressed' to

real and potential others. It is an act-in-community, a material and social

process that helps to constitute the community as a community.”

Semiotics  meaning making

“I use the term social semiotics as a reminder that all meanings are made

within communities and that the analysis of meaning should not be separated

from the social, historical, cultural and political dimensions of these

communities. This approach is useful for studying meaning in a way that

then enables us to see how the meanings we make function to sustain or

challenge the relationships of power in our communities.”

“Later in this book, I will argue that

:nentalist discourses, by creating a separat: mental real~ and locat~ng mean- \

mgs there, are not useful for understandmg the matenal and social aspects

of meaning-making. Mentalist discourses depend on a common sense view of

the separation of mind from body, and individual from society, which has

ideological functions in our society. Particular aspects of these discourses

deflect attention away from the social, cultural, historical and political dimensions

of the meanings we make.” – ok – common sense

“In this sense we can speak of a community, not as

a collectionof interactmg mdr:1duals, but as a system of interdependent \

sooal practices: a system of domgs, rather than a system of doers.”

10

intertexuality: “We are all constantly reading

and hstenmg to, wntmg and speakmg, this text in the context of and against

the background of other texts and other discourses.”

“Each community and

every subcommunity within it has its own system of intertextuality: its own set of

important or valued texts, its own preferred discourses,”

citations?

11

Interesting – citations

“In the course of this book I will be citing a very large number of texts,

from a wide range of discourses about meaning and power. The citations and

the list of references they refer to are an intertextual resource, but they are

also visible traces of many political acts of meaning-making in a community.”

questions of  ideology: “All meaning-making can be

seen as having what I will call an orientational dimension…”

12

“Not all acts of meaning-making contribute equally to the maintenance

of power relations or to social privilege for one group and social exploitation

for another, however. Some acts of meaning-making, and some discourses,

directly contest existing or dominant social relations, challenging their legitimacy

and the discourses that rationalize them, or directly opposing them

materially as well as symbolically. So it is also useful to have a narrower view

of ideology, or more precisely of the ideological functioning of discourses.

Some discourses contribute directly to the maintenance of social relations of

power and privilege (e.g. overtly sexist, racist or homophobic discourses).

Other discourses may do so sometimes, but usually just index the existing

relations, weakly reinforcing them merely by remaining in general circulation

and so readily available for their more directly ideological uses (e.g.

discourses about cognitive abilities that can be used to rationalize ideological

views about racial inferiority; or discourses about human development that

can function in the same way for views about children or the elderly).”

Social Institutions

“If we want to ask how a particular discourse functions ideologically, we

need to look with both the broader and the narrower view of ideology. We

need to see how the discourse is situated in the social and political relations

of various communities and their interests vis-a-vis one another, and we need

to ask specifically what it says about its subject that somehow works to the

~ro~t of a dominant soci~l grou~ ... I will .g:ner~l~y ~se th~ terrr: ide_ological

ror tne narrower sense, and terms like social, political or onentat10nal for the

more universal sense in which discourses participate in social relations of

power and privilege.”

13

“Discourses do not just function ideologically as identity kits or to obtain \

'goods'. They also function to legitimate, naturalize or disguise the inequities

they sustain. They function to get us thinking along particular lines, the lines

of a common sense, which are not as likely to lead to subversive conclusions

as using some other discourses might.”

“These discourses encourage us to feel that it

is not us that is being bought, and controlled by others, but something else,

just our 'labor', when otherwise we might well imagine that what we do and

how we live is the very essence of who and what we are. Finally there is the

root harm, the physical violence done to those who too actively rebel against

this order of things (strikers, whistleblowers, labor organizers), a violence

which is justified and legitimated in law and 'common sense' by means of

these same discourses (of ownership, property rights, contractual obligations).”

Power – expanded – Not just about goods – also about: “Viewing harm only as

the absence of a 'good', even of a 'necessity·', would fail to direct our attention

to the most painful realities of power, the most shameful aspects of

human relationships”

“discursive, ideological modes of power”…modern alternatives

14

she moves to discuss FORCE in conjunction with ideology

violence

“Human beings as social persons, as~ects' (i.e. as opposed

to the objecis they often seem to become in social science accounts of human

behavior), are shaped by the way in which we are 'igterpellat~d' (hailed, or

interrogated) by the discourse habits of others, that is by the assumptions

about what it is to be a person (and specifically a person of a certain gender,

age, class, culture and subculture) that are projected onto us as we participate

in social interaction with others in our community. This view makes it

possible to analyze the social construction of personhood and subjectivity

itself (cf. Chapter 5).”

Habermass – “overly optimistic” – change the way we talk will change

15

wolf and sheep - language

"We need a theory of politics inthe large to talk about the role of discourse, and of the theory of politics in the large to talk about the role of discourse, and of the symbolic values of actions generally, in society. I believe that to combine social theory and social semiotics effectively we need a social theory that recognizes its own status as just another discourse from some particular social viewpoint. We need a social theory that sees all social phenomena, including itself, as being partly the product of how people in a community deploy semiotic resources: how we mean, and what we mean, by every meaningful act.

Fairclough, Hodge and Kress - neo-Marxist - social injustice
two way relation between social events and social structure
16

" But both Wertsch and Gee do so by invoking the psychological
notion of mental cognition as a sort of bridge between the two. Cognitive
psychology sees discourse as a product of the speaking subject, an expression
of more fundamental mental states (beliefs, attitudes, feelings) and processes.
Cultural anthropology sees discourses as characteristic of cultures and subcultures,
of communities rather than individuals. This double view leads Gee
to distinguish, as I have above, two senses of the word discourse: discourse
as what we are actually saying (and doing), and Discourses (capitalized) as
our social habits of different people saying (and doing) the same sorts of
things in the same ways time and again."

Gee - identity concepts - American individualism- complicates
 "Wertsch struggles with this same key problem. His view of mind is radically
transformed from the traditional concept. Following Bateson, he sees mind
as inherent in human interaction with the social and material environment,
as shaped by social processes ( cf. Vygotsky 1963), and as embedded in the
systems of meaning which Geertz (1973, 1983) and many others see as defining
cultures. He usefully appropriates the insights of Bakhtin to fill out this
picture, but leaves out one important element in the Bakhtinian model: the
social habits that shape the discourses of different social 'voices' are themselves
the product of larger sociological relationships (Bakhtin's principle of
heteroglossia, to be discussed in Chapter 2)."



Gee/ Wertsch  - "does not emphathize need for social theory" cultural anthropology