Abstract
This article takes issue with Zygmunt Bauman’s thesis that physical exclusion depends on the hindrance of cognitive associations, emotional quandaries, and moral inhibitions, hence victims and their lot remain out of sight. It is counterargued that conscious engagement in directly physical forms of exclusionary behaviour is possible insofar as victims are known in ways that provoke emotional disdain and moralise violence. Such knowledge consists in the relegation of others to the status of morally lesser human beings, and is produced via prior symbolic mediations. To the extent that mediations operate according to the power differentials they both reflect and help to sustain, there is a need to shift analytical attention from exclusion to the ‘meta-category’ of domination.
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Notes
The etymological origin of the term anthropos has been debated of late, yet the point remains. Whether anthropos actually derives from ano throsko or, as critics argue, ano throsko is the origin of anthropos according to folk etymology alone, humans have long taken comfort from the underlying belief that they are uniquely predisposed towards higher things.
That we need to make such a conceptual leap is corroborated by the fact that classificatory definitions may exist and persist, not only against, but also independently of the direct visibility of the stigma in question. Inner-city blacks in the US, for example, fail to qualify as ‘good’, middle-class-oriented employees by virtue of their place of residence alone, even as many shed the territorial taint by adept techniques of impression management (Wacquant 2008). Similarly, people who have served time in prison, commonly assume a despised collective status, although most tend to conceal this fold of their personal identity from strangers, acquaintances, and even intimates (see, for example, Murray 2007). Note that in either example the stigma itself has a strong spatial connotation.
This is not necessarily to imply conscious manipulation for private gain on the part of the powerful. Drawing on Erich Fromm’s work, I have argued elsewhere, first, that inherent to the exercise of power is a normative conception of self-respect, combined with the stakes and consequences of losing it, and second, that the standards by which the powerful gauge their moral performance follow directly from their social character, that is, the sum total of unconscious psychic traits typical of individuals in a given social class. Inasmuch, then, as the powerful attempt to instigate particular public perceptions to suit their own class interests, they first assure themselves that ‘they are right, that their aims are justified and, in fact, beyond doubt’, precisely because they occupy a dominant position within social space (Fromm 1962/1990, p. 83; see further Cheliotis, under review).
When stressing the generative role of discourse and formalised bodies of knowledge laying claims to absolute truth, however, Bourdieu, unlike Foucault, does not go so far as to refer to subaltern categories such as the criminal and the mentally ill, only more generally to the state apparatus, its agencies, functionaries, and missions (Wacquant 2005). Nor, at any rate, does he pay sufficient attention to instances of direct physical violence, rather treating such instances as uneconomical, unnecessary, less efficient, and surely less legitimisable modes of domination, this time joining company with Foucault (see further Cheliotis 2011, forthcoming).
Contrary to what Foucault tells us, the birth of the prison did not result in the abandonment of corporeal punishment as such (indeed, imprisonment itself entails physical pain), or even in the disappearance of corporeal punishment from public sight. This, as I elaborate elsewhere with particular reference to mass-mediated representations of the prison, is because those subject to corporeal punishment are previously deemed to have defied social morality, and are therefore classified as less than fully human (see further Cheliotis 2010, forthcoming). Not unlike Bauman more recently, Foucault points to the emergence of a criminal class in terms of a social construction, as well as to the role of the prison in maintaining and enhancing such constructions. Ironically, however, he fails to acknowledge that socio-moral taints make it possible for corporeal punishment to take place in the open; in fact, they necessitate that corporeal punishment be open in order for public illusions of restoring morality to be validated (ibid.).
On the important issue of susceptibility to hegemonic manipulation, see further Cheliotis 2011, forthcoming.
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Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this article was presented at a guest seminar organised by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research and the Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Applied Social Sciences, Glasgow University, on 29 October 2008. Thanks are due to all respondents on the day, especially Sarah Armstrong, Michele Burman, Lindsay Farmer, Fergus McNeill, and Mike Nellis. I have also benefited from comments by Katja Franko Aas, Maria Archimandritou, Andrea Brighenti, Lilie Chouliaraki, Roger Cotterrell, Spiros Gangas, Loraine Gelsthorpe, Alison Liebling, Shadd Maruna, John O’Neill, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Marilyn Strathern, Loïc Wacquant, Nicholas Xenakis, and Sappho Xenakis. The responsibility for any shortcomings rests fully with me.
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Cheliotis, L.K. The Sociospatial Mechanics of Domination: Transcending the ‘Exclusion/Inclusion’ Dualism. Law Critique 21, 131–145 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-010-9069-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-010-9069-7