04.02 // Module II: Politics and Power Lecture
We began this new module by discussing Carl Schmitt’s — conservative German political theorist— take on politics, the political, and sovereignty. For Schmitt, politics is the domain of practice that deals with the political, and the political is based on the distinction of who is my kind and who is the other, and our instinct to act in favor or in the best interest of who we consider to be our kind.
The concept of the political becomes then intertwined with the idea of sovereignty. A sovereign is the one who has the power to decide and delimitate the bounds of the self and the other, by creating norms (e.g. laws) and exceptions, producing ideological, economical, and political grounds. In this sense even in contemporary democracy the political exist because the nation-state includes some and exclude others.
Some of the reflections and discussions brought up by the students included:
What entities hold certain political power even though they are not ‘officially’ part of the nation-state?
How is sovereignty embodied today in terms of materials and artifacts?
Are there designed things that allow for the bending or evolution of norms?
Then we moved on into an analysis of Louis Althusser —French philosopher — and how as a neo Marxist he was interested in the relationship between the base (modes of production) and the superstructure (cultural and ideological aspects of society). As opposed to Marx, Althusser believed that throughout history the superstructure has affected the base through two mechanisms:
- Repressive State Apparatus (RSA): Mostly employed in “premodern” societies in which the state would exert power through violence, punishment, and coercion
- Ideological State Apparatus (ISA): the state rules through the promotion and internalization of ways of acting and being via persuasion and seduction
Some of the discussion points were about:
What are current examples of RSAs? Police, army, the prison system
What are the strongest promoters of ideology?
What are our conceptions of being American? What is the good life nowadays?
Finally, deepening into matters of ideology we talked about Slavoj Zizek and Michel Foucault. Zizek highlights that ideology everywhere, all around us. This is important for design because according to Zizek, every designed artifact is the embodiment of an ideology, telling you what to think, and how to feel, therefore, designers contribute to the creation of ISAs, our aspirations, desires, and values.
We then talked about Foucault’s concept of biopolitics/biopower, in which the state controls through the rhythms of everyday life. To provide some context, Ahmed brought up Foucault’s example of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon prison, in which the prisoners had a sense of being constantly under surveillance therefore they conformed to the norms, even though the reality was different. Foucault then asserted that if you can make people feel like they are constantly watched, you don’t need an authority to step in and correct them, this is what he called panopticism basically predicting the society in which we live today.
Talking points included:
Can we engage in design that de-conditions current ideologies? Or invites a critique to our ideology?
How would we design anti-ideological things? Is it even possible?
How are biopolitics enacted in our everyday lives? Could acts such as standing in line to wait for something or obeying traffic signs be taken as a form of biopolitics?
