W10: EVERYDAY DECEPTION and RESISTANCE De Certeau’s Strategies and Tactics
Are acts of ‘consumption’ like watching television necessarily mindless and conforming (p. 31-2)? Provide examples of people, viewers or consumers subverting from within or reworking the dominant order to make it function in another register? What are strategies and tactics (pp. 34-7)? Provide examples of strategies (in the market, politics, culture or society) that seek to define and control time, place and knowledge. Provide examples of tactics which manoeuvre ‘within the enemy’s field of vision’ but which are defined by their trickery or ruses. What advantages do the weak have over the strong (p. 37)? Can you apply these ideas to warfare? What would Gramsci have to say about de Certeau’s ideas and his understanding of tactics? What sort of intellectual is de Certeau? What do you make of his writing style? Explain the 7 reasons for why subordinates don’t rebel or resist (Tilly p. 594). Provide examples. Do theses reasons apply in advanced societies like Australia? Are there really dominant and subordinate groups with conflicting aims?
Scott’s Hidden Transcripts
Why might subordinate groups endorse the terms of their subordination rather than speak the truth to power? Why does the slave Old Tiennon feign stupidity (p. 2)? Explain Scott’s notion of the hidden transcript (p. 4). Provide examples from subordinate and dominant groups of ‘offstage’ activity in accordance with the hidden transcript. Why does Orwell feel compelled to kill the elephant and to act out the public transcript of British colonialism? What’s going on in his hidden transcript? What might inspire a hidden transcript to storm the stage and take over the public transcript? How might subordinate groups and society suffer from such an explosive revolution (the shift from outward compliance to open rebellion)? Can you conceive of circumstances where public slavery with some hidden agency is better than public liberation with all the retribution that it entails? What are the epistemological problems of determining what’s happening in hidden transcript? What does the existence of hidden transcripts mean for intellectuals and activists who want to write a new public transcript? What questions and problems does Tilly have with Scott’s ideas about domination and resistance? What questions and problems do you have?