coursework > CI 744 > resistance
The major themes of the course fit together, I think, in a very neat and ominous manner. They outline a structure of society that systematically, promotes specific discourses and practices (regimes of truth) that are enforced and reinforced through repeated performances of accepted identities.
"Neatness" is one of the preferred aspects of the hegemonic regime of truth, and it cleverly allows for Bakhtinian notion of Carnival resistance by encompassing it and walling it into specific formats. Why do the Simpsons get away with mocking their own Fox network? Because it lets off steam in a controlled fashion. You want to resist the mainstream? You can choose among 10 alternate identities that have been "blessed".
I don't know the best way to resist, but like the little white boy Calvin, I find myself railing against the very structure that supports me. In a dubious letter of recommendation written for me in 1990, a supervisor wrote, "John likes to 'rock the boat' but never has mutiny in mind," and I suppose that thread has wound itself through much of my life as I negotiate the communities I inhabit. While not mutinous (a capital offense), bending Discourse promotes a broadening of acceptable discourses and practices that allow for a greater acceptance of individual and cultural expression into the structures of societies. I expect that as they are "bent" the forces of capitalism will adjust and assimilate them, and perhaps through those forces, rather than resisting through force, we can resist with subversion.
In an ArtForum interview, Bhabha notes,
I have always believed that "small differences" and slight alterations and displacements are often the most significant elements in a process of subversion or transformation (Bhabha 1995).
In my term bending Discourse, using the verb root "bend" conforms (mostly) to the "slight alterations" that Bhabha promotes in his view of subversion. Hybrids are created in replication of the "colonial text" when certain details become distorted. It's like a photocopy of a photocopy, or a game of telephone.
I view Discourse as a stiff but pliable social substance that tends to protect itself through what Bhaba terms repetition, and Butler calls performativity, but I do not feel that it is as impervious to change that the connotations of regimes of truth suggest.
Hybridization, I feel, is a powerful force of change, but it must continue to evolve or it will become watered down. When water stops moving, it becomes stagnant and unpleasant things grow within it. So it is with culture, societies, and even systems. This is what gives me hope, because the kid on the street corner will never stop innovating.
The final "paper" for my Fall 2004 "Multicultural Perspectives in Education" class with Gloria Ladson-Billings.
