Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
Extending Gaventa: A Foucauldian Reading of Power and Powerlessness
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
John Gaventa’s Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley uses political science’s “three faces of power” literature to investigate the fraught relations between residents of the Clear Fork Valley (CFV), a subregion of central Appalachia, and the American Association (AA), a multinational corporation holding most of the valley’s land and coal resources. Each face of power describes a different way actors may behave in a power relationship. Gaventa focuses on what Steven Lukes terms the third face of power, which emphasizes how elites use ideology to make the powerless voluntarily act against their own interests to the benefit of the powerful. Gaventa uses the third face to explain how, despite the AA’s exploitation of the valley’s people, ideological manipulation prevents the CFV’s residents from consistently opposing the corporation. I argue that Foucault’s notion of power, sometimes called the “fourth face,” allows for an even richer examination of the CFV’s power relations. The fourth face entails power relations producing actors’ subjectivities. This essay deploys Foucault to extend Gaventa’s explorations of 1960s and 1970s community media projects in the CFV and Appalachian welfare politics. The community media projects exemplify what Foucault calls Parrhesia, or “eruptive truth speaking,” because they establish new subjects, truths, and power relations through the act of free speaking. Gaventa could have probed rebellion surrounding welfare politics more deeply by (as have some Foucauldians) framing welfare fraud as a form of resistance to state administrators’ attempts to mold welfare recipients’ subjectivities.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Judson Abraham is a PhD student studying political thought in Virginia Tech's ASPECT program.
Extending Gaventa: A Foucauldian Reading of Power and Powerlessness
John Gaventa’s Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley uses political science’s “three faces of power” literature to investigate the fraught relations between residents of the Clear Fork Valley (CFV), a subregion of central Appalachia, and the American Association (AA), a multinational corporation holding most of the valley’s land and coal resources. Each face of power describes a different way actors may behave in a power relationship. Gaventa focuses on what Steven Lukes terms the third face of power, which emphasizes how elites use ideology to make the powerless voluntarily act against their own interests to the benefit of the powerful. Gaventa uses the third face to explain how, despite the AA’s exploitation of the valley’s people, ideological manipulation prevents the CFV’s residents from consistently opposing the corporation. I argue that Foucault’s notion of power, sometimes called the “fourth face,” allows for an even richer examination of the CFV’s power relations. The fourth face entails power relations producing actors’ subjectivities. This essay deploys Foucault to extend Gaventa’s explorations of 1960s and 1970s community media projects in the CFV and Appalachian welfare politics. The community media projects exemplify what Foucault calls Parrhesia, or “eruptive truth speaking,” because they establish new subjects, truths, and power relations through the act of free speaking. Gaventa could have probed rebellion surrounding welfare politics more deeply by (as have some Foucauldians) framing welfare fraud as a form of resistance to state administrators’ attempts to mold welfare recipients’ subjectivities.
