Have you ever stopped to think about
the boundaries of your consent? In theory we all have limitations, but do those
limitations manifest themselves in what you do/don’t support?
This conversation about the nature
of consent was spurred by the Omi and Wanant discussion we had this week. In
their essay, they establish that the consent of the governed is vital to any
structure of hegemony. Hegemony is “rule constituted by a combination of
coercion and consent that establishes and maintains power.” (Bernasconi 199)
Coercion is the amount of force employed by the ruling group and consent it the
degree of acceptance of imposed power by those who are ruled.
By design there exists a binary
between the privileged and the underprivileged. Lying at the foundation of the
relationship is power. Both groups possess it, however, only one group’s power
and privilege is obvious mainly due to claims of legitimacy. Nonetheless, there
is power that lies within the underprivileged group; the power to maintain or
upset the unequal power structure, and I’ll argue that the power manifests
itself in the form of consent.
As of recent, we have been
introduced to the notion that a racist person can only exist within a racist
culture. Yet, this truth still baffles me and I think it is because I deflect blame
away from myself. Living in a racist culture means that everyone reared in that
culture at some point has racist thoughts or posits racist presumptions, and
the only way this is maintained is by my consent to allow society to continuously
pretend that racism is abnormal. Because of this, I also consent to maintain and
perpetuate the structure of racial oppression that I fall victim to.
This realization is extremely
powerful in recognizing my own hand in various spheres of oppression – mine and
others alike. Just because one may find themselves as victim in one situation does
not negate the potential to be perpetrator in another. Someone in class on Tuesday
remarked that “we like to think that the world’s various systems of oppression
are run by a mastermind or a group of masterminds. The truth is…we, citizens of
society, run them ourselves.”
What is your
reaction to this? What social structures of privilege or oppression have you
lent your consent to? Does your consent have boundaries or limitations? What is
the significance of this in the existence/non-existence of reverse racism?
I'll leave with this....
The points you bring up concerning the power of the underprivileged group is interesting. If this power does manifest as consent, I wonder how effective it really is. If the oppressed group was to cease offering consent, what would happen? In a way I think this can relate back to Thursday's class about revolutions. Most people prefer to maintain some level of peace among society and therefore end up consenting to more than they probably want to. However, we justify this by looking at what we get in return. This pro/con system that we use to measure our decisions perhaps influences us too much. Maybe if in general we were less concerned with maintaining the status quo even if it doesn't work in our favor, more radical change would result. But in our every day lives, most of us find it easier to go with the flow to an extent and consider our desire to keep the chaos in our lives to a minimum as much as possible.
ReplyDeleteWhat social structures of privilege or oppression, you asked, have we lent our consent to?
ReplyDeleteThe number of social structures which reify and uphold systems of oppression in our society are countless. Some are more apparent than others, but they affect us all. And, as you mentioned, our individual social locations will likely mean that we almost all exist as both oppressor and oppressed. Sometimes, our social location places us at the top and at others we find ourselves on the bottom side of these hierarchies.
Male > Female
White > non-white
Christian > non-Christian
Heterosexual > homosexual
Upper class > lower class
Etc.
I would posit that our "consent" has boundaries in the sense that some of these structures are more apparent to us and therefore easier to respond to than others. Race, for example, is typically at the forefront of people's minds when they think about inequalities that exist in our country. However, there are other divisions which are equally as powerfully/oppressive that we rarely ever consider. Class, for example, still seems to be a relatively taboo topic within our society. Regardless of our individual awareness, however, if we agree with Omi and Winant, the mere fact that we live in this type of society implies that we do consent. But, this consent is a psychological effect of coercion. In other words, though we may be consenting to this reality, it is because of the force which we feel (consciously or subconsciously) coercing us to conform.
I think an important aspect that you forgot was when Dr. J mentioned that there are limits to what we will consent to. When a power structure is such that it relies too much on coercion, there will be revolution. Civil rights movements, the feminist movement, and now the LGB(T) movement have each revolted when conditions were such that the people involved were or are consenting very little about their situation. I think the unfortunate aspect of this is that it takes A LOT for revolution. Black people have to be treated as less than human, women have to not be able to vote, queer identified people have to have very obviously fewer rights, each of these groups are STILL oppressed, yet, less is being done about it because they have more rights than they once did.
ReplyDelete