Research

Question: Looking at the forms of power that exist within the public space, and how affects the private. Invisible power structures such as social norms that we all abide by.

Forms of power:

• Visible
• Hidden
• Invisible
• How forms of power work together

Foucault on Power:

• It is built into our relationships and is a determining factor in how we operate as human beings, it makes us what we are.
• Power is everywhere meaning that it is comes from everywhere, it is neither an agency nor a structure, instead a metapower or regime of truth that pervades society and is in constant flux and negotiation.
• Power/knowledge – a term used to signify that power is constituted through accepted forms of knowledge, scientific understanding, and truth
• Each society has a regime of truth, a general politics of truth – this becomes the result of scientific discourse and institutions and are reinforced and redefined constantly through the education system, the media and the flux of political and economic ideologies
• Power is a major source of social discipline and conformity. There is a disciplinary power that could be observed in the administrative systems and social services that were created in the 18^th century Europe e.g. prisons, schools, mental institutions. Their systems of surveillance and assessment no longer required force or violence, as people learned to discipline themselves and behave in expected ways.

Video: Chapter 2.5: Michel Foucault, power

• Normalising vs repressive power
• We are mainly controlled by normalising power (e.g. this power shapes our behaviour by our own volition)
• Sceptical of the idea that there is a “true you “underneath what society has made of you
• w/o society we wouldn’t be a person at all, we are always normalised to a large extent
• the construct of “the right thing to do” – this is normalised power
• sources of normalising power: the family, the school/uni, the hospital/mental institution, the commercials on tv
• power is not wielded by a few individuals over the many, rather everyone is subjected to normalising power. E.g. whilst normalising power has given the employee an idea of how the employee should behave, it has also given the boss and idea of how he/she should behave
• science cannot be separated from power – Institutions which generate and spread scientific knowledge are themselves sources of normalising power
• A uni is turning a student into a person who thinks and acts in certain ways, by the time they leave, you would have incorporated an entire way of thinking so deeply ingrained that it becomes impossible to get rid of.
• Based on science, doctors decide whether I’m sick or healthy, and thus whether it is normal for society to expect me to work for my money. A psychiatrist can decide whether I’m normal or not, an economist can decide what age I retire, historians decide what history we learn 
• By being aware, we can be a little more autonomous

Foucault on Heterotopia:

• Literally meaning “Of Other Spaces”
• Heterotopia is a term coined by Foucault to describe spaces that contain more layers of meaning or relationships to other places than immediately meet the eye
• It is a physical representation of a utopia
• Or it is a parallel space that contains undesirable bodies to make a real utopian space impossible.
• Emplacement in relations between locations in space are the constitutive principle of space perception
• Examples of heterotopia – a real space which stands outside of known space. E.g a zoo, a mirror

Expansion:

1. Violent space
2. Less to do with social norms more to do with discipline and power – how discipline is shaped within spaces
3. Public space is a sham – there is no freedom of space, we are all subject to power
4. Public spaces relating to private spaces in an invisible way
5. Tying the reality of the public space with its power structures, reimagining it without normative power
6. creating a virtual space
7. Alienation of space
8. Creating a heterotopia which highlights the power structures at play