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| 9/11 - breaking the trance |
| When the first declaration of the hidden transcript succeeds, its mobilizing capacity as a symbolic act is potentially awesome. At the level of tactics and strategy, it is a powerful straw in the wind. It portends a possible turning of the tables. Key symbolic acts are, as one sociologist puts it, "tests of whether or not the whole system of mutual fear will hold up." At the level of political beliefs, anger, and dreams it is a social explosion. That first declaration speaks for countless others, it shouts what has historically had to be whispered, controlled, choked back, stifled, and suppressed. If the results seem like moments of madness, if the politics they engender is tumultuous, frenetic, delirious, and occasionally violent, that is perhaps because the powerless are so rarely on the public stage and have so much to say and do when they finally arrive.
from Domination and the Arts of Resistance James C.Scott 1990 |
| James C. Scott sees power relations expressed through two kinds of stories that we tell ourselves and others— dominant elite stories, and subordination, victim stories. ('transcripts' in academespeak)
Dominant elite stories justify and rationalize existing power relations and suppress or invalidate subordination stories. When hidden, denied, or ignored subordination stories break into the dominant consciousness, the result can seem like a psychic lightning strike.When |
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Last updated 5th September 2004 |