The Microphysics of Power and Microphysics of Resistance in the Depiction of Social Queer Theory Cover Image

The Microphysics of Power and Microphysics of Resistance in the Depiction of Social Queer Theory
The Microphysics of Power and Microphysics of Resistance in the Depiction of Social Queer Theory

Author(s): Jacek Kochanowski
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Instytut Stosowanych Nauk Społecznych Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego

Summary/Abstract: "Private is politica": the most essential procedures of power consist in the production of subjectivity, submissive identity and submissive bodies. Power is the process of normalisation of everyday gestures, thoughts and desires. That is why the question about the political, the question posed from the perspective of social queer theory, is a question about the rules of reproduction of the social system of domination (gender, sexual, racial, etc.), about the mechanism of involving bodies in normative simulations. Subjectivity from this perspective is a 'simulation of simulation', but is not an illusion. Subjectivity produces real, material effects on the surface of bodies and also real effects in the social systems of gender or sexual segregation. Resistance therefore consists in querying ('queering') the normative subjectivity, its obviousness, its 'naturalness'. It consists in liberating bodies from the normative obligations. In this paper I attempt to explain that the practice of queer fight consists in transforming stable, socially constructed subjectivities into unstable, changeable, 'crossing out', open, non-logical, inconsistent (non)subjectivities. Power achieves its goals due to the subordination of bodies. The practice of resistance must be the practice of insubordination.

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 18 (2b)
  • Page Range: 143-164
  • Page Count: 21