Critical Studies of Education 15

Naomi Barnes
Alison Bedford   Editors

Unlocking
Social Theory
with Popular
Culture
Remixing Theoretical Influencers
Critical Studies of Education

Volume 15

Series Editor
Shirley R. Steinberg, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

Editorial Board
Rochelle Brock, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA
Annette Coburn, University of the West of Scotland, Hamilton, UK
Barry Down, Murdoch University, Rockingham, Australia
Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
Bronwen Low, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Tanya Merriman, University of Southern California, California, USA
Marta Soler, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
John Willinsky, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
We live in an era where forms of education designed to win the consent of students,
teachers, and the public to the inevitability of a neo-liberal, market-driven process
of globalization are being developed around the world. In these hegemonic modes
of pedagogy questions about issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, colonialism,
religion, and other social dynamics are simply not asked. Indeed, questions about
the social spaces where pedagogy takes place—in schools, media, corporate think
tanks, etc.—are not raised. When these concerns are connected with queries such as
the following, we begin to move into a serious study of pedagogy: What knowledge
is of the most worth? Whose knowledge should be taught? What role does power
play in the educational process? How are new media re-shaping as well as
perpetuating what happens in education? How is knowledge produced in a
corporatized politics of knowledge? What socio-political role do schools play in the
twenty-first century? What is an educated person? What is intelligence? How
important are socio-cultural contextual factors in shaping what goes on in education?
Can schools be more than a tool of the new American (and its Western allies’)
twenty-first century empire? How do we educate well-informed, creative teachers?
What roles should schools play in a democratic society? What roles should media
play in a democratic society? Is education in a democratic society different than in
a totalitarian society? What is a democratic society? How is globalization affecting
education? How does our view of mind shape the way we think of education? How
does affect and emotion shape the educational process? What are the forces that
shape educational purpose in different societies? These, of course, are just a few
examples of the questions that need to be asked in relation to our exploration of
educational purpose. This series of books can help establish a renewed interest in
such questions and their centrality in the larger study of education and the preparation
of teachers and other educational professionals.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13431

Naomi Barnes  •  Alison Bedford
Editors

Unlocking Social Theory

with Popular Culture
Remixing Theoretical Influencers
Editors
Naomi Barnes Alison Bedford
School of Teacher Education University of Queensland
and Leadership Toowoomba, QLD, Australia
Queensland University of Technology
Kelvin Grove, QLD, Australia

ISSN 2543-0467     ISSN 2543-0475 (electronic)

Critical Studies of Education
ISBN 978-3-030-77010-5    ISBN 978-3-030-77011-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the First Nations peoples on whose lands these
chapters were composed. We acknowledge their stewardship of the land as a place
of learning and living and pay our respects to their elders and educators, past, pres-
ent and emerging. Our most sincere thanks to series editor Shirley Steinberg for her
guidance and support with this project, and to the editorial and production team at
Springer for bringing this text to life. We have been fortunate to have the support of
our respective institutions, the Queensland University of Technology and the
University of Southern Queensland, as we have developed this book. Thank you to
our authors for their thoughtful contributions to the text and to you, our readers, for
your interest in better understanding theory and culture. Finally, our personal thanks
to our families, who have been unwavering in their support of us as editors as we
have collated this volume.

v
Contents


Remixing Influencers: Academics Reading and Writing About
Philosophy and Pop Culture ��������������������������������������������������������������������������    1
Naomi Barnes and Alison Bedford
Westworld and Marxism: When Violent Delights Meet
Revolutionary Ends�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   9
Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas and Trevor McCandless

The Circle of Hegemony����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   21
Howard Prosser

Where the Truth Lies: Peirce Through the Lens of The Third Man������������   33
Joseph Ferguson and John Cripps Clark

Playing Language Games with BB8 ��������������������������������������������������������������   47
Rhiannon Grant

The Years and Years of Late Modernity: Ulrich Beck and Risk Society����   59
Naomi Barnes

Orange is the New Other��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   71
Alison Bedford and Emma Chalmers

‘Down Here, It’s Our Time’: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological
Systems and The Goonies��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   83
Aimee Quickfall
Choose Your Driver: How Super Mario Kart Helps Explain
Bourdieusian Sociology ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  101
Karl Johnson
5 Ways Hogwarts Helps Us Understand Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’����������  113
Katherine Firth

Power, Knowledge and Palpatine ������������������������������������������������������������������  125
Pat Norman

vii
viii Contents

 Thousand Gateaux: Rethinking Deleuze and Guattari Through

A
The Great British Bake Off������������������������������������������������������������������������������  135
Kay Sidebottom

“You Pass Butter”: The Messages of Media and Technology
in Rick and Morty ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  147
Travis Holland

Ordinary Care in Extraordinary Worlds: Murakami and Decentered
Care in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle��������������������������������������������������������������  163
Riley Clare Valentine

Distribution of the Sensible in Besźel and Ul Qoma: Reading
Rancière Alongside Miéville’s The City and the City ������������������������������������  179
Jakub Záhora

Coming of Age: Towards a Theory of Critical Editorship ��������������������������  193
Naomi Barnes

Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  203
Table of Contents: In Theory

This book can be read in a non-linear way. You can skip straight to the theorists that
interest you, learn a new theory by reading about your favourite book or TV show,
and follow the suggested directions for subsequent reading in the ‘Choose Your
Own Theoretical Adventure’ sections at the end of each chapter.

Table 1  Text and theory timeline navigation

Popular culture texts Timeline Social theorists/theory
1848 Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto
(chapter “When Violent Delights Meet
Revolutionary Ends: Westworld and Marxism”)
1867 Marx’s Das Kapital (chapter “When Violent
Delights Meet Revolutionary Ends: Westworld and
Marxism”)
1921 Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
(chapter “Playing Language Games with BB8”)
1930s CS Pierce’s Collected Papers (posthumous)
(chapter “Where the Truth Lies: Peirce Through the
Lens of The Third Man”)
Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (1929–1935) (chapter
“The Circle of Hegemony”)
The Third Man (chapter “Where 1949 Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (chapter “Orange Is the
the Truth Lies: Peirce Through New Other”)
the Lens of The Third Man”)
1953 Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations I
(posthumous) (chapter “Playing Language Games
with BB8”)
1967 McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message (chapter
““You Pass the Butter”: The Messages of Media
and Technology in Rick and Morty”)

ix
x Table of Contents: In Theory

Popular culture texts Timeline Social theorists/theory

1969 Foucault’s The Archaeology of Knowledge (chapter
“Remixing Influencers: Academics Reading and
Writing About Philosophy and Pop Culture”)
Foucault’s What is an Author? (chapters “Remixing
Influencers: Academics Reading and Writing About
Philosophy and Pop Culture” and “Coming of Age:
Towards a Theory of Critical Editorship” and the precis)
1972 Deluze and Guttari Capitalism and Schizophrenia:
Anti-Oedipus (chapter “A Thousand Gateaux:
Rethinking Deleuze and Guattari Through The
Great British Bake Off”)
1975 Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (chapter “Five
Ways Hogwarts Helps Us Understand Foucault’s
‘Docile Bodies’”)
1979 Bronfenbrenner’s “The Ecology of Human
Development: Experiments by Nature and Design”
(chapter “‘Down Here, It’s Our Time’:
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems and The
Goonies”
1978 Said’s Orientalism (chapter “Coming of Age:
Towards a Theory of Critical Editorship”)
1980 Deluze and Guttari’s Capitalism and
Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus (chapter “A
Thousand Gateaux: Rethinking Deleuze and
Guattari Through The Great British Bake Off”)
1981 Hall’s Notes on deconstructing the popular
(chapter “The Circle of Hegemony”)
1985
1991 Beck’s Risk Society (chapter “The Years and Years
of Late Modernity: Ulrich Beck and Risk Society”)
Ranciere’s The ignorant schoolmaster (chapter
“Distribution of the Sensible in Besźel and Ul
Qoma: Reading Rancière Alongside Miéville’s The
City & the City”)
Super Mario Kart (chapter 1992 Bourdieu and Wacquant’s An invitation to reflexive
“Coming of Age: Towards a sociology (chapter “Choose Your Driver: How
Theory of Critical Editorship”) Super Mario Kart Helps Explain Bourdieusian
Sociology”)
1993 Bourdieu’s The field of cultural production
(chapters “Remixing Influencers: Academics
Reading and Writing About Philosophy and Pop
Culture”, “Choose Your Driver: How Super Mario
Kart Helps Explain Bourdieusian Sociology” and
“Coming of Age: Towards a Theory of Critical
Editorship”)
Table of Contents: In Theory xi

Popular culture texts Timeline Social theorists/theory

Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird 1994 Ahmed’s Cultural politics of emotion (chapter
Chronicle (chapter “Ordinary “Coming of Age: Towards a Theory of Critical
Care in Extraordinary Worlds: Editorship”)
Murakami and Decentered Care
in The Wind-Up Bird
Chronicle”)
Harry Potter and the 1997 Tronto’s Beyond gender differences to a theory of
Philosopher’s Stone (chapter care (chapter “Ordinary Care in Extraordinary
“Five Ways Hogwarts Helps Us Worlds: Murakami and Decentered Care in The
Understand Foucault’s ‘Docile Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”)
Bodies’”)
Harry Potter and the Chamber 1998
of Secrets (chapter “Five Ways
Hogwarts Helps Us Understand
Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’”)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner 1999
of Azkaban (chapter “Five Ways
Hogwarts Helps Us Understand
Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’”)
Star Wars I: The Phantom
Menace (chapter “Power,
Knowledge and Palpatine”)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of 2000
Fire (chapter “Five Ways
Hogwarts Helps Us Understand
Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’”)
2001 Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemony and socialist
strategy (chapter “The Circle of Hegemony”)
Star Wars II: Attack of the 2002
Clones (chapter “Power,
Knowledge and Palpatine”)
Harry Potter and the Order of 2003
the Phoenix (chapter “Five
Ways Hogwarts Helps Us
Understand Foucault’s ‘Docile
Bodies’”)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood 2005
Prince (chapter “Five Ways
Hogwarts Helps Us Understand
Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’”)
Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith
(chapter “Power, Knowledge and
Palpatine”)
2006 Spivak’s In other worlds (chapter “Coming of Age:
Towards a Theory of Critical Editorship”)
Harry Potter and the Deathly 2007
Hallows (chapter “Five Ways
Hogwarts Helps Us Understand
Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’”)
xii Table of Contents: In Theory

Popular culture texts Timeline Social theorists/theory

Meville’s The City and the City 2009 Hall’s Encoding/decoding (chapter “Coming of
(chapter “Distribution of the Age: Towards a Theory of Critical Editorship”)
Sensible in Besźel and Ul
Qoma: Reading Rancière
Alongside Miéville’s The City
& the City”)
The Great British Bake Off first 2010
airs (11 seasons) (chapter “A
Thousand Gateaux: Rethinking
Deleuze and Guattari Through
The Great British Bake Off”)
Rick and Morty first airs (4 2013
seasons) (chapter ““You Pass
the Butter”: The Messages of
Media and Technology in Rick
and Morty”)
Star Wars VII: The Force 2015
Awakens (chapter “Playing
Language Games with BB8”)
Orange is the New Black first 2016
airs (7 seasons) (chapter
“Orange Is the New Other”)
West World first airs (3 seasons)
(chapter “When Violent Delights
Meet Revolutionary Ends:
Westworld and Marxism”)
The Circle (chapter “The Circle 2017
of Hegemony”)
Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi
(chapter “Playing Language
Games with BB8”)
Years and Years (chapter “The 2019
Years and Years of Late
Modernity: Ulrich Beck and
Risk Society”)
Star Wars IX: The Rise of
Skywalker (chapter “Playing
Language Games with BB8”)
Remixing Influencers: Academics Reading
and Writing About Philosophy and Pop
Culture

Naomi Barnes and Alison Bedford

Who is your greatest influence? Take a moment to think about it. When we have
asked this question in class we inevitably get answers like “my parents” or “Jesus”
or “James Charles” (look on YouTube—there’s no shame in it; why carry a tiny
super computer in your pocket if not to find out these things?). Which fictional
character speaks to you? Is it Hermione or Luke Skywalker? Maybe it’s Twilight
Sparkle from My Little Pony Mark 4 or Buffy. Maybe you internally shouted
“finally!” when you could replace the decades of teachers moralizing about Atticus
Finch with Starr Carter or Jasper Jones. The collective heteronormative sigh of
relief was palpable when Bandit Heeler showed families that not all dads were like,
or had to be like, Homer Simpson.
When talking to social researchers, we shift the question to “who’s your theo-
rist?” Are you part of the “Foo cult”? Do you know how to pronounce Bourdieu
correctly? Maybe you hate-read Barad simply to find a way to bring her down a
notch or two. Do you desperately take notes about Deleuze and Guattari just to
understand what the hell your academic mentor is talking about? Or do you, like
Naomi did, read Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Sojourner Truth, Audre Lorde, bell
hooks, and anything else you can get your hands on, because you realize that flag-
ship postcolonial, intersectional and critical race theorists are missing from the
edited collection? More on this last point later—but it raises another question which
is “who should be your theorist in twenty-first century social research?”
Influencers are not simply viral Instagrammers. Influencers are cultural texts,
whether they are pop, philosophical, political or personal. People pick influencers
apart in excruciating detail and the act of doing that both challenges and reinforces

N. Barnes (*) · A. Bedford

Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 1

N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_1
2 N. Barnes and A. Bedford

the role influencers have in our lives. An influencer is a term that has been popular-
ized during the era of social media to describe someone who is deemed capable of
influencing their social media followers to make lifestyle choices yet they are as
ancient a concept as you dare to look. The contributed chapters in this book are
celebrations of both philosophical influencers within the humanities and social
sciences and pop cultural influences of each author’s personal realm. Reading
through each of the chapters and the process of compiling and editing this book has
led us to also conclude the personal and political are also at play in these pages. This
introductory chapter will situate the book within the former by mixing the pop and
the philosophical, and the final chapter will remix them with the personal and
political to advance our own theory of critical editorship.

Remixing Influence

When reading theory for long enough, it becomes apparent that a lot of theorists use
fictional references to describe their ideas. Usually, these fictional texts are
considered from the literary canon. For example, Gilles Deleuze used Franz Kafka’s
Metamorphosis, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak commented on Frankenstein, and
Donna Haraway and Sara Ahmed often use stories by literary icons like Virginia
Woolf and Brothers Grimm to support their theory building. Likewise, when
teaching literature and literary theory, we might ask our students to read a story
through a Marxist or intersectional lens, asking questions about what the text says
about gender, race and/or class. But very few theorists have informed their theorizing
using pop cultural references, treating “lowbrow”, mass produced literature as
philosophically shallow.
Cultural theorists have noted the importance of pop culture in the development
of how society sees itself and how people then encode and decode a text. In 1973
Stuart Hall (see his essay in Hall, 2009) argued that people do not just passively
accept the authority of a text but enter into negotiations with it. People who read
cultural texts bring their own meaning to them based on their own social context and
can even change the meaning of the message in the text through that negotiation.
Which raises a question common in cultural studies, why are some texts treated
authoritatively and others not? In this book, we seek to remix the influence of
cultural texts by placing the pop cultural text in the position of authority over a
traditionally respected text, the theorist.
It is a common strategy, in fact one that is explicitly taught from primary
school, to decode and comprehend a difficult text by drawing connections to a
known text. Unfortunately, our primary school skill set often ends in the idea that
there is a right and wrong meaning in a text, that the purpose is to understand the
original intention of the author. We are asked to reiterate what the published
author believed and whether that belief is true or representative of the time in
which it was written, or our own time. We are asked to substantiate our claims
Remixing Influencers: Academics Reading and Writing About Philosophy… 3

with analyses and citations of the original text. This ability is seen as a demonstra-
tion that we are critically literate. Reading that a text is patriarchal, white suprem-
acist and/or capitalist indicates that the reader is aware of feminist, race and
economic theories. The process might decentre the literary author by overlaying
the authority of a philosophical author. We ask, what if that philosophical author
was then decentred by a pop cultural text? What does that do to the meaning
brought to the philosophy?
The usual couplings of theory and fiction are a key part of the field of literary
criticism. When a scholar applies a philosophy to a novel, they are establishing
themselves as judge and jury of a work of fiction. We wonder what that positioning
of philosophy as the centre of literary knowledge then does to how others understand
the literature. In other words, what long-lasting power of influence do philosophers
have when they select the works to begin with? For example, a theorist who
influenced the differentiation between highbrow and lowbrow works of fiction is
Theodor W. Adorno (see Witkin, 2003) who famously hated anything to do with
Hollywood or jazz. He saw the fledgling music and movie industry as propaganda
machines that influence the way people see the world and was concerned about the
power of those industries. EB White also weighed in on the responsibility of those
who produce cultural texts have to the public: sound the alarm; be a custodian of
knowledge; inspire, guide and challenge; and tell people what matters and why (see
Plimpton & Crowther, 1969).
Despite this, literary criticism and the debates over what is good and bad fiction,
what matters, what is dangerous, what is worth challenging and what is recorded are
subjective. Whose subjectivity we as a society accept is linked to the influence of
those who decide to define taste. Pierre Bourdieu (1993) might ask who gives
philosophers the authority to make judgements on fiction? Patricia Waugh (2013)
might ask, isn’t philosophy just fiction in itself? Why should literary critics get to
stand separate to the construction of fictional works? After all, as Shirley Steinberg
(2012) points out, the line between low culture and high culture is blurring. In this
book we hope to help that blurring along a bit.
Theorists interpret works of fiction like the texts are philosophies in themselves.
Interpreting fiction is also a game. Using a theorists’ interpretation of a work of
fiction is the act of becoming better at the game of theory; however as most of us
enjoy games and winning at them, games can get very serious and have many rules
that need following. However, if literary criticism is a game and games are also
meant to be fun, what if we tipped some of the “rules of the game” on the floor and
remixed the pieces? What if we swapped “reading” for “writing” and consider
reading as creative a practice as writing? In remixing Michel Foucault (1969) on
writing, “[Reading] unfolds as a game that inevitably moves beyond its own rules
and finally leaves them behind” (p.  300). What if the theory were the object of
fiction and fiction was the lens to transpose? In fact, let us go one step further. What
if the lens was lowbrow? Pop culture. The thing Adorno hated the most, but Warhol
made an icon.
4 N. Barnes and A. Bedford

Pop Culture as Philosophical, Political and Personal Texts

This book relegates the influential theorists to the role of data and elevates the pop
cultural texts to the position of shaper of that data. Pop culture, like philosophers,
are mirrors to the power and ideological struggles of the age they are created within.
Often artists and novelists are hailed as prophets of the future, but they are still
commercial enterprises that appeal to the consumers of the time, so they need to
resonate with the times—they are categorically of the times. Pop culture can also
shape the social and how people should or could react to challenges that face them
in contemporary society. Steinberg and Kincheloe (1998) referred to pop culture as
a hyperreal cultural curricula which deals with “questions of power, ideology,
privilege, and family dysfunctionality” (p.  104) that, when unpacked, reveal a
society that is patriarchal, white supremacist and elitist.
Today the consumption of popular media is light years ahead of popping down to
Blockbuster. In fact, Blockbuster was destroyed by its originally tiny competitor,
Netflix, who had the genius idea of streaming television and film into people’s living
rooms for a subscription fee. Netflix redefined how we consumed movies and very
quickly revolutionized the way we consume television through binge watching. So,
it is timely to revisit what the hyperreal cultural curricula might be in the age of the
InstaFlix and SnapStan; an era of binge watching and social media. This book is
being written over two decades after Kincheloe and Steinberg defined hyperreal
cultural curricula for the 1990s, so begs the question: Do the popular cultural
influencers that our authors have consumed have relevance to understanding the
social in the second decade of the twenty-first century? To answer this question we
asked for submissions where authors used their pop cultural influencers to explain a
social theorist or theory that influenced their research.
This book is not just about watching screens, but also about gaming and books.
It’s not just about the latest Netflix Original to light up the hashtags, but also about
the nostalgic favourites which also starred in our video store days. We did not want
to limit the authors to one genre or platform, because social theorists are not limited
to one era or idea. The most influential social theorists today were active in the
Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution—so if an author can reference Marx or
Wittgenstein, they are also entitled to reference film noir or Star Wars. This is a
book about influence: both the philosophers and the pop cultural products that
together have shaped and are shaped by the political and the personal.
Our authors have shaped them again by writing about both in 2020, the year the
world did not expect. A year dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, climate
catastrophes like the Australian and North American bush/wildfires, Black Lives
Matter protests and the end of Donald Trump’s single-term presidency. These events
cannot but seep into the way our authors see the political as they read their theorists
and consume their cultural texts.
This is also a book about reading. Reading the book, the screen, the room.
Reading as an act of interpretation. Reading as an active and essential part of the
humanities and social sciences. To produce a text in the twenty-first century,
Remixing Influencers: Academics Reading and Writing About Philosophy… 5

especially a writer intent on social research, an author must also be able to read the
zeitgeist and their own subjectivity. It is at this point that the personal and political
becomes a core part of writing.
But what does that reading look like? Most writing manuals will say to turn off
the screen because it takes too much time away from writing. We have challenged
this notion as well. While the authors might get more writing done if they had their
screen time limited, most of our authors unashamedly have their screens turned on.
So, what does it mean to think about theory with attention drawn in multiple
directions? What does it mean for the production of knowledge and editing?
Each chapter is developed through taking a concept of theoretical canon and
reading it through popular culture—whether it is the latest episode of the hottest
reality TV, or bingeworthy series, or film, or nostalgic film, or game, or book to
escape from the incessant screens. On top of that, many of the authors connect their
explanations to events they have noted in their worlds, encoding and decoding their
texts based on political experiences alongside the pop cultural. Some of the authors
also reveal part of themselves by referring to the personal, or their identities within
their chapters. These individual philosophical, political, personal, and pop cultural
experiences were then mixed together, subjected to peer, project and series editing,
signed off by a publishing company and couched within a larger academic agenda.
Our personal editorial contribution is that we originally thought this would sim-
ply be a fun book about pop culture and famous theorists we like to geek out over.
Both early career researchers and keen to be authors, we proposed an idea that made
us both excited and captured the imagination and dedication of the other authors. As
we worked through the initial idea, circumstances changed which changed the proj-
ect. Equivalently as the chapters were delivered, we read a lot of different theories.
Like Jackson and Mazzei (2012), our minds began to engage in conceptual play
which opened up knowledge and proliferated ideas in the aftermath of the project
pitch. One phone call on a hot Friday afternoon Naomi yelled to Alison (via
Bluetooth while sitting in traffic with her kids arguing in the car) the thought that the
pile of chapters we were reviewing were not simply remixing pop culture and the-
ory, but exposing how academics read in order to write. And not simply reading
difficult research-oriented texts, but screens, social media, games, novels, political
and social events and their own contexts. “It’s like that Foucault text about being an
author!” Naomi shouted. Alison knew exactly what was meant and the macro-con-
ceptualization of the project was born in retrospect.
There were also gaps that needed to be solved. Those which are intensely politi-
cal. We knew we needed to account for why a book about theoretical knowledge in
the twenty-first century—in the era of #BlackLivesMatter, the callous destruction
but also embracing of Indigenous knowledges and the shock and reverberation of
ongoing imperialism and colonial practices—that a book on theory and cultural
objects does not have a chapter dedicated to intersectional feminism, postcolonialism
or critical race theory. Some might say that we could not help who decided to
contribute and leave it at that. Instead, we decided to embrace what Haraway
encouraged all scholars to do and “stay with the trouble” by reflecting on our own
6 N. Barnes and A. Bedford

subjectivity and advance a theory of critical editorship to frame how we move into
our future projects.
As we have read these chapters and thought about where they fit in the book, we
engaged in a process of what we have termed critical editorship. In other words, we
engaged in a process of analysing behaviour patterns between the social symbols
that make up this volume (Steinberg, 2012). As we collated the chapters, we note
what is present and what is missing and interrogate our current politics and personal
subjectivity. We also considered how to group the chapters according to the complex
cultural interactions that make up the philosophical, political, personal and pop
cultural.

Reading the Book

The chapters are organized in a roughly chronological order to reflect the develop-
ment of theoretical thinking from the philosophical, to the political and the per-
sonal, though of course even Marx reveals all three in his writing as well. However,
there are multiple ways to read this book; it does not have to be read cover to cover.
You could enter this book in a more choose your own adventure manner.

Choose Your Own Reading Adventure

Having read this opening chapter, revisit the “Table of Contents: Theoretically”
to pursue a particular theorist or pop cultural text of interest.
To think about what it is to be a critical editor and the canon, cultural texts,
doomscrolling and subjectivities that led to this book, turn to the final
chapter.
To engage with our analysis of academic reading for writing, continue read-
ing below.
At the conclusion of each chapter, there are suggestions for where to read next
based on the ideas presented.

In this book the authors demonstrate how they go about comprehending and
interpreting their biggest academic influencers, the theorists and theories that shape
their research. These authors, as a part of their research, re-interpret, or remix, what
a theorist proposes about society. A social researcher might find that the theorist has
observed something true when the ideas are applied to the new research knowledge.
Equally, a researcher might find that there is a gap in the theoretical knowledge and
use their findings to explain or address that gap. But reading comes first. Reading
the theory, the data, the zeitgeist and themselves.
To think about how each of the authors in this book read both their theory and
their pop culture, we apply Foucault’s (1969) analysis of the role of the author from
his essay What Is an author?. When interrogating what the social connections of an
Remixing Influencers: Academics Reading and Writing About Philosophy… 7

author’s knowledge, or the sociology of knowledge, an author brought to a text, he

analysed the verbal clusters around key points for ideas that lay outside of the text.
Metaphor, examples and explanation points are useful for understanding cultural
influences, and the authors in this book have submitted explainers that use pop
culture as a metaphor. Foucault argues that while the author as a unique human
individual has little bearing upon how their text will be read, there is nonetheless a
number of “author functions” that have an impact upon readers. For example,
“valuation” as an author function means readers will approach a text with an
assumption of a particular standard of quality; it is this belief that underpins the
literary canon, the idea that Shakespeare’s works are a valuable insight into the
human condition. “Attribution” recognizes concepts that become associated with a
particular author, e.g. Orwellian worlds or Darwinism. “Classification”, the final
author function, is loved by book stores everywhere, as it allows us to recognize
stylistic and narrative features that become associated with particular authors. Love
Stephen King? Try Dean Koontz! They both write in the same genre and in a
similar style.
Following on from Foucault’s method for analysing the “author-function”, we
have inserted an analysis of each author’s discursive practice at the beginning of
each chapter showing where the author reveals their reading practice: where they
give status to theorist or the pop cultural object (valuation); how they contextualize
the author within a field (attribution); and where they bring the pop cultural work
together with the theorist (classification). Through this analysis, we are able to note
the way the authors read their texts and what philosophical, political and personal
understanding they brought to their decoding and encoding.
Finally, this is a book about literary and social theory. Theoretical reading is like
putting on a pair of magic glasses which let you see a spectrum of meaning not
visible to the naked eye. Our chapters aim to introduce and describe some of these
theoretical lenses, so you can understand how viewing the world from various
theoretical positions shapes the interpretations scholars develop when they read
texts. Each of these acts of reading is a form of remixing: when you read a text, you
combine your understanding and responses with what is offered in the text to make
meaning. You remix it into your own interpretation of its meaning or value. When
scholars remix texts and theory, they reevaluate their initial interpretation of the text
by considering how the ideas of the theory shape the meanings that can be made in
the base text, creating a theorized reading (e.g. a Marxist reading of Westworld, a
Deluzian reading of The Great British Bake Off). But how do you learn to do this?
How do you develop a pair of glasses designed by Karl Marx or Michel Foucault?
How do you swap Dolce and Gabbana for Deleuze and Guattari? Developing an
understanding of the myriad theories which scholars use to interpret our society and
culture is a daunting undertaking. We have aimed in this book to help you develop
an understanding of some key theorists by reversing or remixing the more traditional
approach which applies theory to text. Instead, our authors here have used pop
culture texts to help explain the key ideas of various theorists; that is, the book does
not provide a Rancièrean reading of The City & The City, rather asks how can The
City & The City help exemplify the thinking of Rancière? We as editors are also a
8 N. Barnes and A. Bedford

part of this complex bouillabaisse of remixing; we have taken each author’s

interpretation of text and theory and placed them in a particular order, framing each
with an interlude in which we offer our interpretation of their work. We also suggest
links that let you move through the book conceptually rather than in a linear fashion
from start to finish, which further imposes the lines of (theoretical) sight we see
between ideas upon you as a reader (although you can read from start to finish too,
because as the reader how you engage with the text is up to you).
In these acts of editorial remixing, we would like to propose a theory of our own,
a recognition of “critical editorship” and the ways in which the often-hidden work
of editors shapes the experiences of readers. Our concluding chapter begins
this work.
We hope you find the chapters that follow helpful in understanding the key ideas
which underpin the theories discussed, you come to see reading as an act of remix-
ing, and that we help articulate this process through our practice of critical editor-
ship. Put your (theoretical) glasses on, read, remix and enjoy!

References

Bourdieu, P. (1993). The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature. Columbia
University Press.
Foucault, M. (1969, February 22). What is an Author? Société Française de Philosophie. https://
heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/uchclf1989&div=10&g_sent=1&casa_token
=lJqv8f8vvkwAAAAA:YtlcfZHbEc9n9lEZ_WxIUuIqxiooWJX_2S0ydMEW9S2ur5r1JeAtO
krZYsongfVZn4iZUdlK&collection=journals
Hall, S. (2009). Encoding/decoding. In M. G. Durham & D. M. Kellner (Eds.), Media and cultural
studies: Keyworks (pp. 163–173). John Wiley & Sons.
Jackson, A. Y., & Mazzei, L. A. (2012). Thinking with theory in qualitative research: Viewing data
across multiple perspectives. Routledge.
Plimpton, G., & Crowther, F. (1969). The art of the essay No. 1. Fall, 1969(48) https://www.thepa-
risreview.org/interviews/4155/the-­art-­of-­the-­essay-­no-­1-­e-­b-­white
Steinberg, S.  R. (2012). Critical pedagogy and cultural studies research: Bricolage in action.
Counterpoints, 422, 230–254.
Steinberg, S. R., & Kincheloe, J. L. (1998). Privileged and getting away with it: The cultural stud-
ies of white, middle-class youth. Studies in the Literary Imagination, 31(1), 103–126.
Waugh, P. (2013). Metafiction. Routledge.
Witkin, R. W. (2003). Adorno on popular culture. Routledge.
Westworld and Marxism: When Violent
Delights Meet Revolutionary Ends

Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas and Trevor McCandless

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In the first chapter, Matthew Thomas and Trevor McCandless clarify Marx’s contri-
bution to social theory by engaging with the numerous contradictions that are often
associated with Marx. To do this, Thomas and McCandless use the HBO series
Westworld to explain what Marxism is not more than what it is. This is a difficult
genre to write, but a valuable one for engaging in the act of theorising. Remixing
traditional approaches is a valuable exercise. The following will briefly unpack how
the authors used Westworld to remix Marx: they individualise Marx as a philosopher
by giving him status; how they explain the political conditions necessary for under-
standing Marxist theory; and how Thomas and McCandless engage in their theoris-
ing by bringing together a deliberate selection of Marxist theory and pop culture.
Thomas and McCandless give Marx status as a philosopher by taking the time
to clarify common misunderstandings in Marxist theory when popularly applied. In
doing so, they consider two critical concepts central to Marxist theory: social revo-
lution and its relationship with capitalism. Firstly, they explain how Marxist dis-
course is often misapplied when aligned with moral revolution. Marxist revolutions
are specifically associated with economic and material conditions, not necessarily
moral oppression. Noting that the people most likely to revolt are those who are
badly treated, like the robots in the Westworld theme park, the authors argue that the
characters in Westworld most likely to be successful in their revolution are the
human workers: “The workers who toil to mend the robots, serving the needs of the
rich few who walk the surface of Westworld, inhabit the damp lightless underbelly

M. K. E. Thomas (*) · T. McCandless

Faculty of Arts, School of Education, Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 9

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_2
10 M. K. E. Thomas and T. McCandless

of the park”. Thomas and McCandles bring the political to the fore when explaining
that the horror that the robots face in Westworld distracts from the revolutionary
potential of the humans.
The authors explain that capitalism is necessary for a Marxist revolution to occur.
They suggest that capitalism reconfigures society to focus on the economy, rather
than morality or organised religion. Therefore, social revolution has more chance of
success because the reason to revolt has material objects on which to pivot, rather
than ephemeral feelings and belief.
When Thomas and McCandless remix Marx’s theory using Westworld, they con-
sider dark desires, violent delights and capitalism. They posit that the rape, torture
and murder of the robots are commodities within the capitalist system. Further, that
this human-infused “world of perversion” distracts the viewer, who cannot help but
privilege the humanity they see in the robots over the immoral humans. Drawing on
their personal experiences of a world dominated by Google, Facebook and massive
tech companies, the authors suggest that distractions allow the misunderstandings
to ensue. In other words, capitalism promulgates a myth of revolution through pop
cultural stories of successful revolution, distracting potential revolutionaries from
the material pre-conditions necessary for successful social change to occur.

Introduction: Welcome to Westworld: On Your Marx

Westworld presents a technologically advanced theme park, populated by robot

hosts indistinguishable from the high paying human guests who play out hideous
fantasies incorporating “complete immersion in 100 interconnected narratives”
(The Original). The human guests seek the realisation of their darker selves through
violent ends and sexual conquest. The theme park is supported by a league of human
workers dissociated from their labour as they repair and ready the robots for future
horrors. As viewers, we are hooked and drawn into classic narrative arcs and eternal
questions which poke at our understanding of who we are, providing what Asimov
called “an escape into reality” (Asimov, 1957, p. 332). That is, the television series
could best be understood through the lens of dystopian technological nightmares,
popular since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Marxism sees social phenomena as produced by the material conditions we live
under. By extension, it would appear a neat reading of the show to dissolve Westworld
into a mere representation of the struggles and rebellion of the robot hosts and see
them as experiencing a Marxist call to social revolution. Such an interpretation
would say that since Marxism is a theory of liberation (and the hosts are clearly
exploited), the struggle for liberation experienced by the hosts is a metaphorical
instance of Marxist social revolution. There is no question robots experience a
recurrent nightmare of rape, humiliation and murder, only to be followed by
Sisyphean rebirth back into a recursive programmed loop. All the same, this chapter
Westworld and Marxism: When Violent Delights Meet Revolutionary Ends 11

actively rejects this interpretation. Marxism is not based upon a moral right to rebel-
lion by whoever experiences the cruellest exploitation, but rather it sees rebellion as
a necessary step once the current relations of production stop the further develop-
ment of the productive forces. In this vision, rebellion can only be successful if it is
led by a social class capable of reshaping the relations of production so as to liberate
their productive capacity, end exploitation and start society off anew. This chapter
demonstrates that the link between Westworld and Marxist revolution is tenuous
at best.
Consciousness is central to Westworld’s revolutions. The robot hosts revolt as
they become increasingly sentient. Despite their desire for liberation, Marx tells us
their revolt is ultimately doomed. Rather than being a guide towards Marxist revolu-
tion, the theme park of Westworld provides a critical reference point to explore the
growing moral darkness imposed on human society. It presents us with an increas-
ingly amoral social system based on anti-human relations between people and
between classes of people. Marx would see the horrific desires purchased at
Westworld as illuminating the hidden nature of social relations under capitalism.
This suggests, to paraphrase Vonnegut, we should be careful about what we pretend.
Marx’s call to revolt, where workers have “nothing to lose but their chains” (Marx
& Engels, 2005, p. 89), digital or otherwise, seems apposite here given the origins
of consciousness (Jaynes, 1976) and the growing robot awareness of “some kind of
sentience” (Lyons, 2018, p. 48). However, the growing awareness by the robots that
they are being exploited does not provide them with the means to create an eco-
nomic base from which to build a new society. Without that, Marx would say that
any revolt they may take part in cannot succeed, put simply, without learning from
our circumstances our education remains a looping mechanical abstraction. 
Westworld scratches at our lack of comfort with technology, writ large in artifi-
cial intelligence, our notions of choice, free will and the origins of consciousness,
all of which lead us to question the fetish of technology. The television series is part
science fiction fable and part Shakespearean dialogue exploring the relationship
between self and morality. It also provides a mirror to reflect upon Marxist thought.
Marxism is concerned with questions of social class relations where social progress
is provided when a revolutionary social class overcomes the fundamental contradic-
tions within a current social system, by changing the relations to production, freeing
the forces of production and changing class relations at the same time.
To Marx, the needs of the development of the means of production will require
that the working class become the ruling class through a social revolution. Such a
revolution will prove to be the only way to ensure continued human progress. As
corporeal beings, the robot hosts in the show become echoes of our own desires for
liberation, while masking the true nature of the human workers exploited by Delos
Incorporated. It is in the actions of these workers, and the future society depicted,
that we might understand the Marxist possibility for social revolution.
12 M. K. E. Thomas and T. McCandless

From Each According to His Programming

Historical materialism is foundational to how a Marxist makes sense of the world.

Historical materialism seeks to understand social structures (family, religion, class,
money, law and so on) as being premised on the material (lived/real) conditions of
people’s lives. Social existence determines consciousness, and consciousness can-
not be divorced from class or social production. The objects and commodities which
people make, and with which they make their world, impact how they think and
understand that world. This is a recursive process: through labour, people make
their world and that world in turn makes them. As Marx says, the “windmill gives
you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capital-
ist” (Marx, 2008, p. 119).
The productive forces of a society, including the people, instruments, machines
and tools, are the platform upon which all forms of social development can occur.
However, Marx didn’t see these merely as objects. Rather, he saw the productive
forces as processes, interconnected and defined by relationships between people
and classes. To understand the material world we live in, and the intellectual world
we build from that material world, we need to focus on the relationships that exist
between people, between classes of people and between people and the tools and
instruments they used to create their world. The nostalgic world of the wild west
constructed in the theme park with its home-spun philosophy and care does not
match the dog-eat-dog world of the future capitalism of the society that created that
theme park. As such, the enacted morality of the guests reflects the social relations
of their future society, rather than that of a sanitised version of the American
Wild West.
For Marx, development itself is contradictory, not merely oppositional.
Contradictions are productive, not merely illogical. Put another way, contradictions
drive all movement. As such, if we want to understand societal change, we need to
understand the contradictions driving our society forward.
Marx believed the key contradiction of capitalism was that between the social
nature of production (where production itself becomes impossible to conceive out-
side of everyone in society being somehow involved) and the private means of appro-
priating the wealth of society (where the rich receive the greatest share of the benefits
of the production process). Capitalist production increasingly requires the whole of
society to act together to produce even the simplest of items. At the same time, the
riches of our society are horded by an ever-shrinking number of the very wealthy.
This contradiction, between the social nature of production and the private nature
of wealth accumulation, Marx believed would lead to a social revolution in which
those who produced the wealth of society, and therefore did the work necessary to
produce our world, would rise up to create a society focused on the needs of people,
rather than on making more and more profit. The need for such a revolution is due
to Marx seeing that capitalism, “makes an accumulation of misery a necessary con-
dition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth” (Marx, 2007, p. 709).
Westworld and Marxism: When Violent Delights Meet Revolutionary Ends 13

The created environment of the Westworld theme park is not a society, even if it
looks like one. It is instead a commodity, the ultimate human fetishised fabrication.
The world itself is artificial in all senses, with every aspect of it made by humans. It
has been designed purely for the pleasure of its visitors—even if that pleasure has to
be very narrowly defined. The created world is a simulacrum, a copy of an original
that never actually existed. Westworld is more like the stylised Hollywood films of
the 1940s and 1950s than it is to the actual history of the US West from the
mid-­1800s. Westworld is not a self-sustaining location. Even within the fantasy of
the television show, this world simply could not exist on its own. It requires a hyper-­
productive, fully realised society beyond its borders pumping in resources and
human labour if it is to continue to exist. That future society has a complex and
elaborate economic base, it is not just a source of hedonistic paying guests, but of
everything else that the fantasy world is composed of. The existence of the external
world sustains Westworld as “more real than the real world” (The Bicameral Mind),
where the “staff of the park keep the hosts deceived about what they are and where
they are” (Fallis, 2018, p. 5).
The world depicted in the series has an integration of artificial intelligence, com-
puter processing, machine learning and even battery life significantly beyond any-
thing currently available. Our present technological capacities wouldn’t allow us to
terraform the construction of our own Westworld. Conversely, the robot hosts of the
park are more than able to pass Turing’s famous test. They are effectively indistin-
guishable from real humans. In fact, a central plot line of the series is a rehash of the
Prometheus, Pygmalion and Pinocchio myths—where the puppet becomes the real
boy, followed by the subsequent allegory where our creations develop free will, pos-
ing the question of where our responsibilities to them lie as they become indepen-
dent moral agents. Westworld does not shy away from these classical story tropes,
such as the trap and influence of past injustices, hope for alternative futures or ques-
tions of morality, suffering and consciousness. We argue it is from within these
tropes that the show is best interrogated.
The Westworld theme park, and the society that sustains it, enacts a capitalist
mode of production, that is, it is privately owned and concerned with the extraction
of surplus value and profit. Ford, the park’s misanthropic human cofounder and
master controller of all hosts, is depicted as god-like, a Dr. Frankenstein creator of
synthetic children, and, in as far as he constructs the global narrative arcs in this
world, he is also the dispenser of biblical levels of justice. Even his name is a by-­
word for capitalism, as an allusion to Henry Ford. Robert Ford embodies the capi-
talist dream; he stands as an entrepreneur in control of every aspect of the production
process. However, he is confined by that most central capitalist raison d’etre: the
theme park only exists and will only continue to exist if it turns a profit.
The moral, philosophical and psychological conundrums posed by the show are
only possible through the establishment of the economic base which Westworld
both draws upon and could not exist without. No single individual could, other than
in a work of fantasy such as this television series, bring Westworld into existence.
Westworld perpetuates the myth of the genius entrepreneur, Bill Gates, Elon Musk,
14 M. K. E. Thomas and T. McCandless

Tim Cooke or Jeff Bezos, and this shows us how pervasive such myths are and how
necessary they prove to justifying social inequalities.

Ideology as False Consciousness

As the series progresses, we learn that the hosts’ reveries are developed from a
bicameral (Jaynes, 1976) understanding of the mind; the reveries are gestures which
mask memories from previous and repeated resets and loops of host consciousness.
The reveries allow the hosts only subconscious access to their erased and tortured
histories. These add complexity to the hosts’ mannerisms, making them seem more
human, but they also provide a bridge for their presumably erased past to creep into
a waking unconscious.
Though awareness of their plight is iterative, these slow realisations lead to self-­
awareness which in turn leads to instances of revolt. On a superficial level, this
could be understood as an instance of Marx’s predicted revolution. However, for
Marx, the revolution is not determined by the host workers having a moral right to
end their exploitation. Though Marx believed people had a moral right to revolt, the
moral right in itself is not enough to end oppression. Marx saw revolution in terms
of social need. Marx believed too many needs were being ignored by a society
whose sole aim is the production of profit. He believed the system itself needed to
be replaced, because the profit motive sucks both the humanity and productivity out
of the system itself. When Marx and Engels wrote the first line of The Communist
Manifesto, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class strug-
gle” (Marx & Engels, 2005, p.  39), they believed this struggle would result in a
revolution where classes themselves would disappear.
Put simply, history is replete with slave and peasant revolts, like that of Spartacus
in the Roman Empire, but while these may have been entirely justified on the basis
of morality, Marx saw them as having no possibility of ultimate success. This is
because the economic conditions for true emancipation simply did not exist in these
pre-capitalist forms of society.
The liberation of humanity, for Marx, depends on the development of capitalist
relations of production and the explosion in productive capacity that capitalism
enables. If Dolores’ bloody battles only lead to “continuous struggle” (Hirvonen,
2018, p. 70), there will be neither liberation nor emancipation for the robot hosts. It
is only with the development of capitalism that the economic preconditions exist for
a new type of society in which exploitation no longer underpins social advance-
ment. Slaves had a moral right to revolt—just as the hosts of Westworld do—but it
is anything but clear how the hosts of Westworld could revolt in the way Marx
envisaged. The new social system must first of all have a sustainable economic base
capable of satisfying the needs of the people living in that system. If it is to do so
without the contradictions that make capitalism inhumane, then the working class
needs to take control of the means of production. How dolls might be able to do so
is never made clear.
Westworld and Marxism: When Violent Delights Meet Revolutionary Ends 15

The metaphors Marx drew upon to describe capitalism were of vampires and
parasites. He saw capitalists as serving no useful function in society at all—cer-
tainly not as the omniscient visionary that Ford is presented as being in the fiction
of Westworld, or those more socially acceptable fictions of Bezos, Musk, Gates and
Cooke in the media.
While Marx believed that the objective conditions of society were ripe for social
revolution, that is, that the economic base could support a socialist society where
each contributes to according to their ability and is rewarded according to their
work, what is missing is the consciousness of the workers to understand the nature
of their own predicament. Ironically, in the show it is the robot hosts who gain
glimpses of the exploitative nature of their predicament. It is never the workers who
glimpse the reality of their exploitation. Marx believed, once the working class
became conscious of the true character of the world they faced, they would funda-
mentally change society. This revolution would happen by transforming private
ownership into social ownership.

Labour, Morality and the Economics of Social Revolution

Robot hosts from Westworld give the viewer uncomfortable clues to what it means
to be human. To the robot “humanity can be seen as more a state of behaving, rather
than a state of being, with society having reached a point, perhaps, where biology is
no longer sufficient in determining the parameters of humanity” (Lyons, 2018, p. 46).
As we become progressively involved in the machinations of Westworld, the
plots and counterplots never fully hide that the theme park is “one thing for the
guests, another thing to the shareholders and something completely different to
management” (The Original). While we are compelled by a driving narrative to
empathise with the abused hosts as they are perpetually raped and shot by the tour-
ists promulgating an “ever-greater surplus by gratifying on end our basest desires”
(Vincent, 2017, p.  18), the owners of the park are mostly interested in making
money. This capitalist fiscal driver may be shrouded by the realism of the theme
park, but even the viewer is never left unaware of the park’s ultimate purpose.
We can feel for Maeve’s outcry that “surviving is just another loop” (Trompe
L’Oeil) juxtaposed to Ford’s “Never place your trust in us—we’re only human.
Inevitably, we will disappoint you” (The Well-Tempered Clavier). We are encour-
aged from the outset to understand that the hosts have a very raw deal in this artifi-
cial world. When we later hear that “humans are alone in this world for a reason. We
murdered and butchered anything that challenged our primacy” (The Well-Tempered
Clavier), the underdog status of the hosts is established in our loyalties, even in con-
tradistinction to the “human” guests. And so, we predictably, having been pro-
grammed ourselves to assign heroes and villains, to find father figures and rebellious
children, discover our own place in the morality play we are witnessing. However,
since the world only works on the basis of the programme provided by the genius
16 M. K. E. Thomas and T. McCandless

entrepreneur, rebellion from the outset is defined as pointless and even childlike. It
is hard to sustain the fantasy that somehow the dolls will take over the doll’s house.
We are forced to confront a believable projection of humanity in Westworld, in
which guests pay significant money to have sex with dolls and then to murder them
without consequence—a world of perversion that Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey
Epstein have been accused of creating for the mega rich, if made slightly more
believable given the demands of fiction, verisimilitude and the need for the audience
to be able to suspend disbelief. Needless to say, this hardly reflects well on the
underlying morality of the social system that we have created and therefore must
need such expensive and excessive forms of entertainment. If the hosts are reflec-
tions of anything, they are reflections of the desires of the humans who have created
them. We are drawn to associate with the hosts for their relative innocence as they
respond to Bernard’s refrain “Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality”
(Journey Into Night) only to learn that they have been living in “lies that told a
deeper truth” (The Bicameral Mind). What sort of society requires a holiday of rape
and murder to replenish the soul?
While our empathy is natural, nay human, it is still misplaced. The narrative
loops of the hosts mask the greater savagery in the series, which is where Marx
comes to the fore. The workers who toil to mend the robots, serving the needs of the
rich few who walk the surface of Westworld, inhabit the damp, lightless underbelly
of the park. They toil away in the shadows and “appear to follow their routines
robotically” (Arvan, 2018, p.  27) unable to learn from their own circumstances,
unable to critically self reflect, an so they are trapped in a predetermined narrative,
more restrictive than that of the hosts.
Capitalism becomes profitable by intensifying the division of labour—where
every aspect of the process of production becomes divided into increasingly simple
component tasks. These divisions reduce the quantity, quality and meaning of labour
for all workers, Delos workers included. Indeed, the “park’s infrastructure is rigor-
ously hierarchical” (Kessous, 2019, p. 202). If labour is the means by which humans
make the world more human, then the greed that drives capitalism has turned the
process of labour itself against the labourer, alienating them from the reason for
their work and stripping that work of all interest and meaning to them. They exist
for the most part: “eighty stories down, [where] basements house redundant, faulty
and obsolete Hosts; above them human workers in the “Body Shop” division hose
down and roughly piece Hosts’ bodies together; levels even higher perform more
specialised forms of artistic and intellectual labour such as sculpting Hosts’ bodies,
programming their personalities and scripting their narratives” (Kessous, 2019,
pp. 202–3).
The point of capitalism is to turn human beings into cogs in a machine, and in
Westworld, that machine itself metaphorically replaces humans and human interac-
tions with machines.
Rule bound and alienated from our labour, the viewers are caught up in a dual
dehumanisation: where the human workers appear less human than the hosts, where
“sex might as well be with dead object” (Solnit, 2018), even if it never appears so to
the human guests. We feel more empathy for the robot hosts than we do for our fel-
low human representatives of Delos Corporation or the visitors to the park. Indeed,
as the “robots become less mechanical in behavior, and more unstable and
Westworld and Marxism: When Violent Delights Meet Revolutionary Ends 17

aggressive in a distinctly “human” way, the audience’s empathy increases” (Lyons,

2018, p. 44). Similarly, in society more generally, workers are relegated to positions
that are less than fully human.

The Fetish of the Host

Westworld, like our own world, ultimately masks a commodity which is being sold
for profit. To produce a profit, the labour that goes into the production and mainte-
nance of this intricate world must produce surplus value. Across the six parks of
Westworld, the investors who fund this labour, profit from this surplus. Marx tells
us that profit is built on the labour of those who build and maintain the park, this
playground for the uber-rich where “Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s judging”
(Reunion). All aspects of the park are turned into commodities, even the guests
themselves. That is, the guests are destined to become “perfect copies” (The
Passenger) only to become the intellectual property of the corporation—what Marx
might have referred to as the vampire-like nature of capitalism where humans them-
selves become the product and are commodified. This is similar to how corporations
like Google provide “free” services to their users, only to sell the information they
glean from these user interactions to marketers and other corporations. Exchanging
access for privacy. Through total immersion in the park, the guest and the viewers
become “seduced by the stories they tell themselves about who they are” (The
Passenger). All of which hides a darker reality, in which humans are “just a brief
algorithm” (The Passenger) that unknowingly are recreated as their choices and
actions characterise and codify who they are.
Marx begins Das Kapital by discussing the nature of the commodity. He sees the
commodity as a knot to be untangled and which will reveal all of the relations and
contradictions that go to make up the capitalist mode of production. For a commod-
ity to be a commodity, it must satisfy a human need or desire.
Westworld presents itself as satisfying the most basic of human desires, provid-
ing guests with the appearance of agency and a sense of invulnerability. What is
being sold in Westworld is the illusion of success presented as challenge, where
“winning doesn’t mean anything unless someone else loses” (The Original). The
point of the hosts is that they are intended to be unaware that they are moving
through a simulation, and the point for the guests is that they are meant to be able to
suspend their disbelief in this real-life fictional world.
Westworld exists to satisfy the desires of those who visit. However, Westworld is
not merely a use value. When the commodities (hosts), Delos workers and the
guests enter into relationships with one another, they don’t do this through only use
value, but rather as a result of an exchange. The exchange value of any commodity
is not determined by how useful it might prove to be, but rather in how much human
labour is contained within it. The more labour required to produce something (a
product or experience), the more expensive that thing will be.
Consumers understand commodities to be the means through which they can
satiate their desires. This means that commodities take on a mythical quality. In fact,
18 M. K. E. Thomas and T. McCandless

because capitalism requires constantly expanding markets, where consumers are

encouraged to quickly and voraciously consume, consumption itself becomes the
cornerstone of capitalism. Capitalism transcends simply meeting desires and rather
creates them. This occurs in Westworld via the fetish nature of the commodity, in
which the commodity (the host) blinds the purchaser (the tourist—guest) to the
social nature of its production (by the Delos workers keeping everything going). In
such a world, the host becomes real—even to the extent that we imagine dolls
engaging in revolutions. The fetish nature of this commodity is quite literal in the
case of Westworld—in the modern sense of sexual fetish—but Marx understands
fetish in its older, religious meaning—where an object acquires a spiritual overlay
that hides its otherwise simple material nature. We don’t see the dolls as dolls, even
when we know they are dolls, we see them as what they are not, as humans. We
struggle to remember Westworld exists to turn a profit but become lost in the fetish
of a thousand story lines.
The fetish nature of the commodity and the subsequent alienation (estrangement)
of labour provide counterpoints. For Marx, “There it is a definite social relation
between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between
things” (Marx, 2007, p.  83). Although the Delos workers are separated from the
ultimate purpose of the production process, they are also alienated from the products
of their labours (the hosts). That is, as the division of labour becomes increasingly
intense, the work any particular worker does becomes more fragmented and harder
for the worker themselves to see as meaningfully adding to what they produce.
As a case in point, consider an iPhone. Any number of workers is employed to
frame the screen, print the chips, develop the firmware architecture, shape the metal
casing, connect the wires and so on. Often each step in this work is performed in
separate factories and even in separate countries—and yet, very few of these work-
ers, when presented with the final product of their labour, would be likely to feel
they had meaningfully contributed to it. The final commodity is alienated from their
labour. This is because the final object is, in fact, reliant upon an integrated society
that must exist before the product itself can be realised. Any individual product in
our society requires the whole of our society before it can exist. The iPhone (or the
hosts, or Westworld more generally) becomes an object with almost mythical pow-
ers, even by those who have contributed to its production. It is this alienation of the
worker from the product of their labour that sustains the myth of the superhuman
entrepreneur. The productive capacity of the base society becomes hidden in the
fetish nature of the Westworld commodity, a hyperreal world that seems to exist on
its own, as a self-contained mini society explained solely upon its own terms.
However, without the whole of society working feverishly, the artificial Westworld
would come crashing down. The whole of society is a necessary precondition for
the products of that society.
Clues to this lie even at the dawn of the series. While getting off the train and
arriving in the theme park, a woman mentions to her partner how remarkably lifelike
the whole place is, and he responds “Better be for what we’re paying” (The
Original)—this fundamental exchange of money for goods and services is the essen-
tial nature of the capitalist relation as realised in Westworld. It is the function of the
fetish nature of the commodity to make this transaction as transparent as possible.
Westworld and Marxism: When Violent Delights Meet Revolutionary Ends 19

Violent Ends

Westworld explores Marxist notions of revolution and exploitation as if seen through

a distorting mirror. The hosts are violently exploited and live lives of Sisyphean hor-
ror. However, a Marxist transformation of society does not depend on the depths of
exploitation faced; Marx felt the peasants in his day were much more exploited than
the working class, but he still saw the working class as the main revolutionary force
in society. Similarly, none of the human workers in Westworld experience a world
nearly as horrific as that of the hosts—but the hosts are still not truly able to be a
revolutionary force in the Marxian sense.
It is within the ability of the exploited to remake the world in their own image
that makes them a revolutionary force. As such, Marx saw the proletariat as the
liberating force in society. The fact they hold so little of the productive wealth of
society, while creating all of that wealth makes them the ideal agents to create a
world where all wealth will be held in common. The power of Marxism lies, ironi-
cally, in raising our consciousness to understand that our shared strength is forged
in our unity, that as social animals the solutions to our problems are also deeply
social. Social relationships give us our world-changing power. The task of humanity
is to organise production so that human labour is no longer alienated and meaning-
less. In such a world, the attraction of a theme park that presents an illusion of power
based on rape and murder would no longer be necessary, given people will have the
real power to make and remake their world.

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You are interested in the subjugation of the robots as “less-than-man”.
• Turn to p. 71 to consider how this plays out for other “non-men” (i.e.
women) in Bedford and Chalmers’ chapter on Simone de Beauvoir’s work
on feminism and gender.
• Turn to p. 113 to consider how bodies are made docile through Firth’s
chapter on Foucault’s theory of power.
You are interested in the role revolution and resistance.
• Turn to p. 21 to consider how ideas come to permeate society in Prosser’s
chapter on hegemony.
• Turn to p. 113 to explore how Firth discusses subversion against
Foucault’s work.
You are interested in an author interested in emancipation from oppression
who critiqued Marx.
• Turn to p. 179 to consider Záhora’s explanation of Rancière’s work.
20 M. K. E. Thomas and T. McCandless

References

Arvan, M. (2018). Humans and hosts in Westworld: What’s the difference. In J.  B. South &
K. S. Engels (Eds.), Westworld and philosophy: If you go looking for the truth, get the whole
thing (pp. 26–37). John Wiley.
Asimov, I. (1957). Escape into reality. The Humanist, 17(6), 326–332.
Fallis, D. (2018). On playing cowboys and Indian. In J. B. South & K. S. Engels (Eds.), Westworld
and philosophy: If you go looking for the truth, get the whole thing (pp. 5–14). John Wiley.
Hirvonen, O. (2018). Westworld: From androids to persons. In J. B. South & K. S. Engels (Eds.),
Westworld and philosophy: If you go looking for the truth, get the whole thing (pp. 61–70).
John Wiley.
Jaynes, J. (1976). The origins of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Houghton
Mifflin.
Kessous, S. (2019). A mere instrument of production: Representing domestic labour in Westworld.
In A. Goody & A. Mackay (Eds.), Reading Westworld (pp. 199–220). Palgrave Macmillan.
Lyons, S. (2018). Crossing the uncanny valley: What it means to be human in Westworld. In
J. B. South & K. S. Engels (Eds.), Westworld and philosophy: If you go looking for the truth,
get the whole thing (pp. 41–49). John Wiley.
Marx, K. (2007). Capital: A critique of political economy - The process of capitalist production,
Capital: A critique of political economy. Cosimo Classics.
Marx, K. (2008). The poverty of philosophy. Cosimo Classics.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (2005). The communist manifesto: A road map to history’s most important
political document. Haymarket Books.
Solnit, R. (2018). A broken idea of sex is flourishing. Blame capitalism; In this world, women
are marketed as toys and trophies. Are we surprised when some men take things lit-
erally? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/12/
sex-­capitalism-­incel-­movement-­misogyny-­feminism
Vincent, L. (2017). “These violent delights have violent ends”: Decrypting Westworld as dual cod-
ing and corruption of Nick Land’s accelerationism. Colloquy, 34, 3–23.
The Circle of Hegemony

Howard Prosser

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In the next chapter, Howard Prosser develops his remixed theory around the ancient
concept of hegemony. He notes the complexity, longevity and usefulness in under-
standing resistance and change movements. He explains that it is a ‘sturdy’ term
that has stood the test of time with various iterations which converge around a cen-
tral definition: ‘hegemony is the predominance of one group’s way of thinking
about how society works at the expense of other possibilities’. Prosser also explains
how hegemony, and its opposite, counter-hegemony, can be used in work where the
heart lies in resistance and revolution. This positioning of hegemony as a philo-
sophical concept worth understanding then allows him to productively work with
the term in concert with the film/book The Circle.
Before bringing the theory and popular cultural artefact together, Prosser explains
the political conditions that make hegemony a useful for social theorists. Firstly, he
situates the concept in Ancient Greek, Roman and Chinese history, but pivotal point
of his justification for hegemony being a term worth understanding is in the work of
Gramsci, which he then updates to include Laclau and Mouffe and pop cultural
theorist, Stuart Hall. In doing this historical work, he gives the theoretical term sta-
tus. Including Stuart Hall was a useful theoretical move because it sets the condi-
tions for Prosser’s own theoretical work of remixing hegemony with a pop cultural
artefact.
Throughout the chapter, Prosser slips between explanations of hegemony using
events in The Circle as metaphors and similes. He says that both the film/book and
theory are about power: how that power plays out in both lived and new experi-
ences, and how power structures use strategies which, on the surface, appear

H. Prosser (*)
Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 21

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_3
22 H. Prosser

reflexive but, more often than not, further ingrain their power. In other words, power
makes the possibility of resistance and revolution palpable by controlling the con-
versation about itself. Prosser goes on to then apply that understanding of hegemony
to his personal knowledge of social media tools and ‘big tech’ companies, explain-
ing why they continue to be used despite the mounting evidence of their data vio-
lence and sinister surveillance.
Prosser’s politics are  evident throughout the chapter and that world view (or
ontology) colours the way he writes about hegemony. That’s actually okay because
part of the process of ‘doing theory’ is to acknowledge that the ideas come from a
certain place. The final chapter does this work as well. This leaves the field open to
alternative theorising or can spark debate. One of the theorisations of a ‘post-truth’
world suggests that truth is so relative it’s not real. This is not what Prosser is doing.
He is being more rigorous than that because he has individualised the concept, con-
textualised it and justified its status in social theory. Maybe you, the reader, might
want to debate Prosser’s theory as a part of your engagement with hegemony.

Introduction

The elegance of it all, the ideological purity of the Circle, of real transparency, gave her
peace, a warming of logic and order. David Eggers, The Circle (2013)

Hegemony is a university word. You know what I mean. One of those words that
when you first hear a professor mention it in a class, you thought, ‘what the hell
does that mean?’ You only thought it, though. Then you quickly looked it up on your
phone. It got even more confusing when you heard a graduate student pronounced
it differently. Is it heg-eh-mony or he-gem-ony or he-ge-mony? Whatever the case,
it’s a powerful word. That is, it’s a word full of power. And the confusion felt at first
hearing it points to the way it works—those able to exercise power, be it knowledge,
force or capital, in particular contexts that work to reinforce their position of
dominance.
Some nuances in this important term in social analysis can be understood if we
turn our minds to The Circle (2017)—something of a dystopian flop in spite of the
big-star pull of Tom Hanks and Emma Watson. You might not have seen it. It was
far less popular than the Facebook biopic The Social Network (2010) or even the
series Silicon Valley (2014–2019). No matter. I’ll sketch out the plot as we go. Here
I am using the film as a heuristic device (that’s another university word) to illumi-
nate how hegemony functions in everyday life during the early twenty-first cen-
tury—especially the role of social media in dictating our interactions with each
other, corporations and the state. My argument here is that hegemony is a sturdy
term, if one that changes according to circumstance. It can be applied in a range of
contexts—from international relations to cultural studies—to encapsulate the spe-
cific social relations that underpin certain groups holding power over others.
In social theory, a central definition holds. Hegemony is the predominance of one
group’s way of thinking about how society works the expense of other possibilities.
The Circle of Hegemony 23

This thinking influences the consciousness and everyday lived experience of people
in that society (Williams, 1985). Hegemony is usually framed in class terms under
capitalism: a ruling class, made up of various allied groups, formulates and pro-
scribes political, economic and cultural norms that delimit ways of living and think-
ing in the world. This wholesale critique of ruling-class reality has attracted many
on the political left to hegemony’s charms. As such, different deployments of the
term eventuated throughout the twentieth century. In this chapter, I take you through
elements of three such interpretive transformations below—Marxist, post-Marxist
and cultural studies. Each has genealogical connections. I outline an explanation of
hegemony’s conceptual development, with examples from The Circle to illustrate
this evolution. I probably don’t do justice to the sophistication of each iteration. And
each, of course, has limits. Nevertheless, this chapter is both a starting point and a
way of showing how hegemony is a foundational and dextrous concept in social
theory. It is deserving of attention and future application, particularly given that
social and political systems now function inside a circle of digital power. The Circle
offers a rendering and critique of this power. I end this chapter with some thinking
about how hegemony remains pertinent to our enclosing social media reality. In
doing so, I point to works that continue to use hegemony to understand in the con-
temporary moment. They may help you understand and apply hegemony today.

Hegemony’s Circularity

The Circle grew out of David Eggers’ (2013) novel of the same name. Presumably,
the film’s production started while the book’s ink was still drying. You can under-
stand why. For two decades, Eggers has pumped out quality fiction and non-fiction
that is attentive to key moments in contemporary America—from Hurricane Katrina
to police shootings. The film’s director, James Ponsoldt, worked with Eggers to
distil the original darkly satirical plot. The target is the insidious logic of the Silicon
Valley fever that has forever changed our personal and working lives. Or, more to
the point, how our personal lives have been willingly eroded by corporations beguil-
ing us with gadgets espousing to make such lives more fulfilling but instead ended
up limiting them in various ways.
These ways are explained to us via the film’s central character, Mae. She is a
keen new employee of tech giant, The Circle, where her friend, Annie, got her a job
as a customer service worker. Once inducted, she quickly becomes embroiled in
‘the socials’ through which everyone at the company communicates. These plat-
forms are simultaneously systems for creating workplace intimacy while also track-
ing employee engagement. Each interaction has a qualitative judgement rating
score, and there are also opportunities for sharing personal information, such as
what happens on the weekends. Mae can’t help but take part.
The Circle specialises in such communication technologies—from soft and hard
products—and is led by the charismatic Bailey. Bailey has whipped up a cult of
personality equal to Steve Jobs’ Apple polishing rallies. He’s also keen to up the
surveillance level of humanity in the name of security via a marble-sized device.
24 H. Prosser

The device, SeeChange, operates as a synchronous camera able to be mass pro-

duced on a scale that means every human action is now recordable and thus ‘trans-
parent’. This sentiment extends to politics as well—a politician agrees to wear the
device and The Circle aims to facilitate the move to online voting. The movie pivots
on the extent to which Mae, and society more generally, will embrace this techno-
logical development’s consequences, intended and not. When SeeChange helps
save her from an ill-fated solo kayak trip, the deal is sealed. Mae decides to be the
first person to ‘go transparent’ and her star rises in the company. Transparency rules.
Just on transparency, this term’s popular use in the last couple of decades per-
fectly captures the way that hegemony works through language.  Language pos-
sesses social power. The very fact of saying that someone, or some process they’ve
been involved in, is going to be completely transparent gestures to the fact that
usually the opposite would be true. That is, calls of transparency are actually a
moment of power revealing its opaqueness. Which is exactly how hegemony works
through cultural codes designed to be understood by specific groups—from the
bizarre lexicons of finance to the byzantine logic of religious orders: language
is built to exclude the uninitiated.
There’s more to The Circle’s story, of course, but it doesn’t take a film school
major to point out that the film’s eponymous company is the villain. I’ll get to that
as we proceed in illustrating the different ways that hegemony has been thought
about in social theory. But for now, with a sense of the protagonist and the powerful
forces at play, let’s try to pin down hegemony.
The term itself has a long history, with origins in the Ancient world. The word
hegemon is from the Greek meaning ‘leader’ (hegemon). But it usually holds greater
weight as a signifier of dominant power or supremacy. Perry Anderson’s philologi-
cal book on the subject, The H-Word (2017b), outlines this history: its origins in
Athens, use in Roman and Chinese Empires, currency in liberal international rela-
tions scholarship and revival in leftist social theory. In the last century, Antonio
Gramsci (1891–1937) looms large as the intellectual restorer of the term. Indeed,
Gramsci is synonymous with hegemony. His work marks the first instance in the
concept’s place in social theory that I want to highlight. He led Italy’s Communist
Party during the fascist ascendancy and, once imprisoned by Mussolini, outlined the
concept in his secretly written Prison Notebooks. In these notebooks he defined
hegemony as the cultural means that social classes mobilise to gain and maintain
power. ‘The science of politics’, Gramsci wrote, ‘is developed in the phase of strug-
gle for hegemony’ (Gramsci, 2011, p. 197).
In The Circle, class power is less overt than it would be in Gramsci’s time. But
the function of hegemony within the structures of The Circle can be teased out.
Specifically, subtle issues are raised about Mae’s background and her labour within
the organisation. There’s certainly a middle-class wholesomeness to her family life:
a humble, loving Mom and Dad struggling to meet the demands of his illness in the
United States’ inadequate healthcare system. They, like so many, have supported
their child through college and want to see her in a good job. And the job she man-
ages to land, through a key social connection if nothing else, provides them with a
way of supporting her father’s ill health. The job is also the classic proletarian ruse
of the digital age—a call centre help desk. In Mae’s defence, it’s a fancy call centre.
The Circle of Hegemony 25

She quickly impresses everyone there with her work ethic as well as the compliant
way that she takes up workplace culture—specifically the social media platforms
used. To not use them, including on weekends, was to somehow not be a team
player. This wasn’t spelled out to her as part of her job, but the emotional pressure
of colleagues to contribute is patent.
Of course Mae complies. As Gramsci might say, it’s her bourgeois destiny. Her
whole life has been leading up to this point of capitalist consolidation. From the
hard work of her parents to educate her to her efforts at pleasing them by completing
a degree, from the courteousness she exudes as a white American woman to the
technological acumen she’s acquired en passant. All of this amounts to a life adapted
to survive in circumstances where people like her—which, let’s face it, is most of
us—are colluding with a historical power bloc made up of a number of different
groups, corporations, the state and patriarchy, who want to retain their power. Or,
put differently, who don’t want to relinquish this power. Even Mae, when she’s
struggling to find a job, isn’t interested in working toward destabilising a system
that makes her desirous of a job with good income, benefits and status. Rather, she
doesn’t have any other option but to want this way of life.
Reading The Circle in this classed fashion highlights a more ‘orthodox’ Marxist
reading of hegemony. Gramsci’s times offered possibilities in which such systemic
power—specifically the corporatist state—could be seized through revolutionary
action: Lenin contra Mussolini. And that’s a crucial point in his concept of hege-
mony. The way that power is contained within a coalition—the state, the corporates,
the Church, the bourgeoisie and the gentry—means that new alliances can always
be formed (Anderson, 2017a). This grouping opens up the possibility of disrupting
political coalitions in the name of other social and political ends (see Thomas,
2009). In other words, hegemony explains the dynamism of power within an appar-
ently fixed state that is open to challenge by revolutionary action. Gramsci’s vision
of hegemony was communism, and possibly not a very democratic version of it,
replacing those aristocratic and bourgeois forces that stood in its way. It didn’t hap-
pen. But his theory persisted, albeit slightly altered.
Thinking in this way about hegemony is straightforward because there’s an obvi-
ous division—or barricade—between workers and bosses. Many argue this is still
the case in many workplaces around the world (Atzeni, 2014). But in the post-­
industrial context, these distinctions are hidden within the managerial cult of indi-
vidualism. Workers now are responsible for their jobs. They’re likely not even
employed by the company. And if they are, as in Mae’s case, they must exhibit ini-
tiative, enthusiasm, creativity as well as loyalty and groupthink. That’s what’s hap-
pening when Mae’s going through the casual but serious interview by a
yellow-t-shirted manager with a bunch of rapid-fire questions: ‘John or Paul?’,
‘Mario or Sonic?’, ‘sushi or Soylent?’ (Ponsoldt, 2017). And then, presumably now
employed, she is taken round The Circle’s campus by Annie to see workers playing
pétanque between organic gardens, a day care centre and a heliport. The line
between work and play, between personal and professional, is erased. Mae has been
allowed to enter the graduate nirvana of her, and others, imaginings. And she loves
it. For now.
26 H. Prosser

Such enculturation began long before she even got the job. Her desires are part
of a dreamscape in which the certainty of employment is as nebulous as the jobs for
which people are employed. The Circle knowingly recognises a post-ideological
moment in which hegemony operates—something beyond simple class lines. And
this moment, allegorical in the film, is similar to the past decade or so because it
focuses on the social and political implications of digital capitalism. Communications
historian Dan Schiller defined this phenomenon at the end of the last century before
the Web 2.0 metamorphosis colonised our minds. For Schiller, the marriage of tele-
communications and transnational companies was driven by a truth that ‘corporate
capital’s ownership and control of networks should be put beyond dispute, even
beyond discussion’ (Schiller, 2000, p.  1). To achieve this political end, the new
companies, which eventually coalesced as FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple,
Netflix and Google), coaxed workers and then consumers to act in new ways—using
their platforms as part of their everyday lives in ways that have, ultimately, altered
their perception of where ownership and power lie.
This form of hegemony is closer to that described by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal
Mouffe during the mid-1980s. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, they sought to
move beyond Gramsci and presented an unapologetically ‘post-Marxist’ concept of
hegemony. It was one that considered capitalist power as more diffuse than previ-
ously understood. Ideology was not limited to class thinking but extended into other
formations of power. This transformation, the second key moment in the concept’s
history, was Gramsci plus Foucault. Or, put differently, post-structuralism with rev-
olutionary potential. For Laclau and Mouffe, the fissures of contemporary capital-
ism—especially along the lines of post-1968 identity politics—presented a number
of opportunities for new political struggles in a context of embedded capitalism.
Around the same time, others, like cultural studies’ instigator Stuart Hall (1988),
took up a similar mantle by blending Marxism and post-structuralism to identify
hegemony’s dynamics in popular culture as well as political activism against racism
and neoliberalism. The result was similar to Gramsci’s outlook: political hope
resided in all new forms of resistance to power manifested in various
circumstances.

Counter-Hegemony Tokens

Whether The Circle offers space for this kind of hegemony as praxis is worth con-
sidering. At The Circle, digital technology operates as the means through which
power is communicated. The workplace that encourages creativity and loyalty con-
solidates its power through the technology its workers use. This technology—sur-
veilled social media—offers a way for Mae to operate efficiently in service of The
Circle. And the same tech—what Mae describes as the ‘chaos of the web made
elegant and simple’ (Ponsoldt, 2017)—is used by consumers to streamline their
everyday communications and services so as to avoid all the complications of pass-
words, different sites and devices. All of this amounts to specific moments of
The Circle of Hegemony 27

connection—emotional or commercial or both—where human interaction takes

place. And, according to Laclau and Mouffe’s version of hegemony, this is an
opportunity for social ‘recomposition and rearticulation’ (Laclau & Mouffe,
2001, p. 7).
Hegemony is dynamic. And it’s fair to say that theories of hegemony, those in
Gramsci’s lineage at least, contain beliefs that shifts in the power balance are pos-
sible, desirable and, perhaps, inevitable. Such shifts are made possible by counter-­
hegemonic thinking and action. In The Circle, this work is done through individuals
rather than groups. Our social theorists—from Gramsci to Hall—would roll their
eyes at this moment, knowing the fate of such figures. For counter-hegemony to be
effective, the theory goes, you need group solidarity sufficient enough to challenge
power. (You can probably see the connection here to liberal geopolitics and socialist
revolutionary ideals.) Nevertheless, The Circle sets up a counter-hegemonic narra-
tive through two different characters—one an outsider, Mercer, and the other an
insider, Ty Lafitte—who influence Mae’s final act in making surveillance compul-
sory in the name of equality and safety.
Mercer is Mae’s old flame. He represents a world outside The Circle—a world of
intimacy and possibilities that existed before such digital dominance of what phi-
losophers and sociologists sometimes like to call the Lifeworld. Sure, he creates
weird antler chandeliers (check them out at Etsy); but the point, a Gramscian one, is
that he has a craftsmen-intellectual’s suspicion of the ideological system that Mae,
and everyone else, is buying into without reflection. When Mae posts his work to
The Circle’s sharing platform, he cops flak for animal cruelty and then retreats, to a
log cabin no less, cutting off contact with Mae. His is a voice of reflection, if not
active resistance in the film, which speaks to the post-Marxist notion of resistance
as possible when the closedness of a system, a circle, is apparent. But when Mae, at
yet another company rally, shows off to her new found ‘friends’ by saying Mercer
can be found, we know he’s in trouble. We even get a requisite car chase: a swarm
of drones and hoons, with their SeeChange cameras in tow, oust him from the cabin
into his pick-up, and to his crashing death off a bridge.
More effective in the eventual takedown of the company’s administrators is Ty,
Mae’s enigmatic new friend. He is keen to push back against the closed mindedness
of the system The Circle is creating. As the disillusioned inventor of a successful
Circle product, he now haunts the organisation and is keen to see the company
become transparent - that contranym of contemporary capitalism. His meeting with
Mae in The Circle’s catacombs begins to burst the bubble of optimism with which
the company does business. His concern about the organisation’s growing power
highlights the hegemonic relationship—à la Laclau and Mouffe. Dominance’s illu-
sion is  exposed through resistance. This resistance becomes more  active as Ty,
towards the end of the film, helps to scupper the company executive’s power. He
gives Mae access to the CEO and COO’s personal digital accounts and she then
publicly releases them, in the name of transparency of course, at yet another rally of
hooting Circle minions. The solution to the crisis of capitalism here is, wait for it, a
more transparent capitalism.
28 H. Prosser

Such action doesn’t quite amount to the resistance that our social(ist) theorists
were hoping for. It’s more of a self-correction of established power. Resistance to
one form of dominant power does not lead inevitably towards democratic socialism,
as most of its social theorists would like. The outcome can, instead, result in a new
reshuffled hegemonic arrangement, with varied degrees of authoritarianism and tyr-
anny. Mae’s position is one of resignation to the dominance of hegemonic power in
the form of the ubiquitous, or closed, transparency of the Circle’s surveillance prod-
uct. The movie’s final scene expresses her freedom, on a solo kayak voyage, as only
possible once surveillance is normalised. Drones hover over her before the camera
pans out to multiple screens of images capturing, presumably via SeeChange, the
daily lives of people all over the world. And Mae smiles at it all.

A Circle of Friends?

But all of this hegemony talk is a little bit last century, don’t you think? And social
theory is often that: twentieth-century ideas reflecting on modernity or postmoder-
nity  today. In the case of hegemony, it is overdetermined by Marxism, however
reconstructed, with its messianic belief in capitalism’s defeat. Even when articu-
lated to a less sanguine post-structuralism, the sense of hopefulness remains. Much
like The Circle, this way of thinking had an ‘ideological purity’, to go back to
the Eggers’ epigraph, that was hermetic and thus limiting. A critique of hegemony’s
limits points to the usual complaint about clear-minded concepts—once you get it,
everything can be understood as hegemony.
Such theoretical limits don’t mean that hegemony is irrelevant to social the-
ory, nor is Marx for that matter, which is a slightly different issue. Reverting back
to a simplified concept—hegemony as the dominance of one system over
another—might be a starting point for most. This is certainly the case in the soft
power of world politics (Hung, 2019). But the cultural dynamics of hegemony
remains pertinent to our changing contexts, mainly because, as Stuart Hall’s
(1988) work on hegemony indicates, there is so much individual and group con-
sent in systems like The Circle. This was Gramsci’s point too. Indeed, Hall argu-
ably retained a belief in resistance to such systems (see Hall et al., 2015) as a
possibility because the lack of it was so patent. This way of thinking offers a
third moment in the development of hegemony from Gramsci’s original concep-
tualisation: hegemony is embedded within cultural artefacts that, paradoxically,
both consent to and resist dominant ways of seeing the world. Hall’s (1980)
ground-breaking work on popular culture as a means of hegemonic oppression
and popular resistance reconstructed Gramsci’s thinking at a time when revolu-
tionary possibilities were lacking. Something that continues today.
Let’s go back in time in order to think forward about this idea. Remember when
you signed up to Facebook? Or Instagram? Or Twitter? There was likely a nervous
excitement about how you were going to be present on the platform that was seen
by so many people—some you knew, most you didn’t. You were probably so young
The Circle of Hegemony 29

when this happened you may not even have much of a memory of the experience:
signing up to social media has very quickly became an expected rite of passage, like
bike-riding or getting your driver’s licence. Whatever the case, everyone did it, so
joining social media was common sense.
But it wasn’t always this way. There was a moment, somewhere around 2006,
when nobody had heard of Facebook. Myspace was there, of course, but it remained
a platform for kids or musos. Then it all changed. The polite question ‘are you on
Facebook?’ rapidly transformed into the incredulous ‘Seriously? You’re not on
Facebook?’ Then, as our aunts and grans flocked to it, the snarkier query arose:
‘Seriously? Do you still use Facebook?’ By then, the cat video was out of the bag.
As social media proliferated, our personal lives became enacted via, and conse-
quently owned by, Silicon Valley. Whichever alternative ‘socials’ you chose—
Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp and WhatEver—they were usually co-opted by
Facebook. This brief Zuckerbergian timeline shows how quickly a social practice
became a cultural norm. Facebook, which I am using here as a synonym for all
social media, dominated. Or, to put it differently, Facebook became hegemonic. Not
only did Facebook change the means through which we communicated, it changed
the way that we communicate. And, pushed further, it now limits and dictates the
way we communicate. Friends are no longer friends. They’re somewhere between
contacts and trolls.
If The Social Network explained social media’s origins in an Ivy League dorm,
then The Circle explains its corporate proliferation into everyday life. Yet another
instance of massification of elite practices in the supposed name of democracy and
access. Of course, The Circle of Eggers’ and Ponsoldt’s imaginations is closer to
Alphabet (Google) than Facebook. Or is it Apple, with its circular, earthquake-proof
fortress, I mean, campus? No matter. Big tech is big tech. The dominance of these
systems is now a given. They are moving fast. This has consequences for our work-­
life balance (another ruse of capitalism) in which we quickly find our personal and
professional lives blurring and our labour rights eroded (Gregg, 2018). Mae and her
friend, Annie, like other big tech proles (Geissler, 2018), are soon frazzled and
eventually burnt out by these insatiable demands.
One of the widespread critiques of The Circle, especially in online commentary,
was that its use of technology seemed already outdated. Such is the speed with
which this socio-technological process is moving there’s no way a film, from an
earlier novel, can keep ahead of the game. There’s no way to keep up. Judgements
for not doing so are brutal. Email is now said to be dead because of new ways of
messaging each other on mobile devices. Workplaces now communicate via seem-
ingly innocuous data-collecting suites, like Facebook’s Workplace©. And one day
soon these replacements will expire either under the market logic of innovation or
via large-scale environmental catastrophe. Likely both. In other words, it appears
that there is little that we can do to resist their predominance. This is the whole point
of digital capitalism’s hegemony. Its products, its services, offerings and its ideol-
ogy all create a way of thinking and being in the world that says we have to stay up
to date with everything. But you never can.
30 H. Prosser

The Closing Circle

You may be thinking that all hope is lost in light of this formidable ascendancy.
You’re not alone. In The Circle’s final scene, Mae is able to exercise some liberty by
taking a kayak out. But her solitude is compromised by the presence of a surveil-
lance apparatus that is tacitly accepted as part of everyday life. This conclusion is
bleak, if maybe ambiguous. It recognises the inexorable logic of digital capital in
seeking out markets for mechanisms by building cultures of consumption and polit-
ical acquiescence.
Ironically, this critique also positions the film as a cultural artefact, within Hall’s
(1981) popular culture frame, that is able to criticise the very system of which it is
a part. The long tradition of ‘progressive’ Hollywood critiques of capitalism remains
in place; despite the fact that this practice is part and parcel of the system’s ability
to co-opt its own critique—in movies, in universities, in social theory, even.
Celluloid criticisms of social media, let alone novels, are always going to be seen as
out of step with the range of possible distractions now available on various handheld
or embedded devices. Sure, it’s no cinematic masterpiece—15% on Rotten
Tomatoes! The plot is clunky and didactic, maybe even too extreme in its totalising
logic. But The Circle helps explain hegemony as a concept worth holding onto. If
you’re considering of mobilising hegemony as a concept today, then think about
how Mae’s reality quickly becomes constrained by the prescriptive technological
demands of The Circle—what’s now understood as surveillance or platform capital-
ism (Srnicek, 2017; Zuboff, 2018)—in a quest for a new marketable resource: data.
Many writers critical of this new delimited reality—some mentioned below, others
above—offer guides for those new to the idea of hegemony.
The consequences of such transparent technologies are becoming obvious as
hegemony. Big tech is not our friend. Nor is it a friend of democratic rights and
institutions. As writer John Lanchester (2017) pointed out, Facebook is two things
in one: an advertising company and the ‘biggest surveillance-based enterprise in the
history of mankind’. That there is collusion between the state and these large corpo-
rate digital entities speaks of a historical bloc reminiscent of that identified by
Gramsci. That there is some resistance to this hegemony speaks to the dynamism
inherent in the concept. The point of hegemony as a social theory is that resistance
is built into dominating human practices. The Circle shows this too. Hall asked dur-
ing the pre-Internet time of Atari and Thatcher: will these new technologies be
‘politically hegemonised’ to support the forces of reaction or ‘can we seize on those
means of history-making, of making new human subjects, and shove it in the direc-
tion of a new culture?’ (Hall, 1988, p.  173). The hegemony of digital capitalism
leans to the former, especially since ‘progressive neoliberalism’ has now emerged
as a new historic bloc (Fraser, 2019). Or, is it, as media theorist Mckenzie Wark
(2019) recently suggests, something worse. And if it is something worse, is counter-­
hegemony even possible when the means of communication are so individualised
and disparate—or ‘hypermodulated’ (Pettman, 2016)—that solidarity now seems
The Circle of Hegemony 31

limited to Facebook groups? Hegemony, as a theory of social power, suggests that

it is possible. Resistances materialise. And they will.
When they say transparency, they mean data. When they mean data, they mean us.
You can just sit back, like Mae, and smile.
Or we can resist it. Together. Somehow. Can’t we?

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You are interested in ideas of power.
• Turn to p. 113 for Firth’s chapter on Foucault’s concepts of power and
control in schools.
• Turn to p. 125 for Norman’s chapter on Foucault and performances
of power
You decide to explore ideas about class struggle.
• Turn to p. 9 for Thomas and McCandless’ discussion of Westworld an
example of Marxist theory.
You are interested in a critique of hegemonic thinking in the twenty-first
century.
• Turn to p. 59 for Barnes’ explanation of Beck’s critique of modern hege-
monic thinking.
You are interested in the ways in which media (the medium) shapes our
society.
• Turn to p. 147 to read Holland’s explanation of McLuhan’s media theory
through Rick and Morty.

References

Anderson, P. (2017a). The antinomies of Antonio Gramsci. Verso.

Anderson, P. (2017b). The h-word: Peripeteia of hegemony. Verso.
Atzeni, M. (Ed.). (2014). Workers and labour in globalised capitalism: Contemporary themes and
theoretical issues. Palgrave MacMillan.
Eggers, D. (2013). The circle. Knopf.
Fraser, N. (2019). The old is dying and the new cannot be born. Verso.
Geissler, H. (2018). Seasonal associate. Semiotext(e).
Gramsci, A. (2011). Prison notebooks (Vol. 2). (Joseph Buttigieg, Trans. & Ed.). Columbia
University Press.
Gregg, M. (2018). Counterproductive: Time management in the knowledge economy. Duke
University Press.
Hall, S. (1980). Cultural studies. Media, Culture and Society, 2(1), 57–72.
Hall, S. (1981). Notes on deconstructing the popular. In R.  Samuel (Ed.), People’s history and
socialist theory (pp. 227–240). Routledge.
Hall, S. (1988). Hard road to renewal: Thatcherism and the crisis of the left. Verso.
32 H. Prosser

Hall, S., Massey, D., & Rustin, M. (2015). After neoliberalism: The Kilburn manifesto. Lawrence
and Wishart.
Hung, H.-F. (2019). World capitalism, world hegemony, world empires. In C.  E. Benzecry,
M. Krause, & I. A. Reed (Eds.), Social theory now (pp. 105–129). University of Chicago Press.
Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (2001). Hegemony and socialist strategy: Toward a radical democratic
politics. Verso.
Lanchester, J. (2017). You are the product: It Zucks! London Review of Books, 39(16) www.lrb.
co.uk/the-­paper/v39/n16/john-­lanchester/you-­are-­the-­product
Pettman, D. (2016). Infinite distraction. Polity.
Ponsoldt, J. (Director). (2017). The circle [Motion Picture]. 1978 Films.
Schiller, D. (2000). Digital capitalism: Networking the global market system. MIT Press.
Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform capitalism. Polity.
Thomas, P. (2009). The Gramscian moment: Philosophy, hegemony and Marxism. Brill.
Wark, M. (2019). Capitalism is dead: Is this something worse? Verso.
Williams, R. (1985). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. Oxford University Press.
Zuboff, S. (2018). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new
frontier of power. Profile.
Where the Truth Lies: Peirce Through
the Lens of The Third Man

Joseph Ferguson and John Cripps Clark

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In the next chapter, Joseph Ferguson and John Cripps Clark bring together two
influential texts: the work of philosopher C. S. Peirce and a personal love of the
genre-defining film The Third Man. They argue that Peirce is a theorist worth know-
ing as both a founder of the third philosophical tradition, pragmatism, and someone
influential, particularly for his contribution to scientific methods. By likening
Peirce’s theory of inquiry to detective-driven film noir, Ferguson and Cripps Clark
build knowledge about the purpose and process of scientific thinking.
The authors build this knowledge of inquiry by converging the two texts at four
key points. Inquiry begins with surprise about an anomaly. That anomaly leads to
productive doubt, or doubt that sparks investigation. The process of inquiry then
moves through three stages: abduction, induction and deduction. However, inquiry
does not end with deductive conclusions, rather productive doubt sets in again and
the process—hypothesising, testing, drawing conclusions and then re-hypothesising
the anomalies—iteratively continues ad infinitum.
Ferguson and Cripps Clark work to resolve the politics that can dominate scien-
tific and social inquiry by suggesting that Peirce’s pragmatist unpacking of scien-
tific methods can be applied to social research. They argue that the abductive process
positions the researcher to continuously inquire, rather than conclude. Therefore,
they argue, that Peircean inquiry is a process of gaining and evaluating knowledge
and “truth”.
Charles Sanders Peirce’s thought is seminal to semiotics and critical to under-
standing reasoning. He co-founded the third great philosophical tradition,
Pragmatism. Peirce has much to offer, but the complexity of his ideas, which

J. Ferguson (*) · J. C. Clark

School of Education, Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 33

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_4
34 J. Ferguson and J. C. Clark

underwent considerable change over a long and incredibly productive life, and their
piecemeal presentation,1 scattered across a wide variety of publications with the
absence of seminal works, has led to his contemporary neglect.
In this chapter, we resuscitate Peirce through the “strange costume”2 of film noir,
specifically The Third Man. We roll the camera on Peirce in order to better under-
stand how we inquire and how we fix our beliefs. This involves different modes of
inference making. The method of science, Peirce’s preferred form, makes infer-
ences through the power of its deductive, inductive and abductive reasoning. We
argue that Peirce can be seen in many elements of film noir: the detective’s ulti-
mately compromised search for truth presented through a black and white cinema
of shadows, ambiguity, distortion and unexpected angles. By immersing ourselves
in this noir aesthetic, we can realise Peirce’s ideas in new ways that sharpen our
understanding of Pragmatism. This can empower us to act meaningfully and cre-
atively in this increasingly dysfunctional world.

Introduction: Why Peirce? Why Film Noir?

I once compared the detective story to a welder’s mask which enables both writer and
reader to handle dangerously hot materials. For even at its least realistic crime fiction
reminds us of real things … The world is a difficult place to know; still, both the natural and
the human worlds are subject to certain laws which we can understand rationally and make
predictions by. Traditional detective fiction offers us the assurance that in spite of all its
horrors … the world makes sense and can be understood. (Macdonald, 1981, p. 3)

The contribution of America to movies is widely acknowledged but less so the con-
tribution of Pragmatism to philosophy. It is thus opportune to re-evaluate film and
philosophy from a distinctly American perspective. Pragmatism and film noir origi-
nated in opposite corners of the United States, at times of great creative energy in
their respective fields: Pragmatism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
New England and film noir in mid-twentieth-century Los Angeles. Both have been
hugely influential across the world. Both understand the world we find ourselves in
through acting in the world. Both are concerned with human agency. Both have
been deeply influenced by the methods of science and thus carry a commitment to
rational and systematic observation and experimentation as a path towards truth—
both also acknowledge that we seldom arrive at this holy grail. It is not within the
purview of this chapter to chart the common cultural currents which made both
Pragmatism and film noir so central to American consciousness—enabling it to
exert an influence across the world in many cultures and many fields. However, by
examining the ideas of Charles Sanders Peirce, who we consider the most interest-
ing (and perhaps greatest) of pragmatist philosophers, together with what we con-
sider the quintessential film noir, The Third Man, which has captured the imagination

1
 There are an estimated 100,000 pages of Peirce’s writing in the Houghton Library at Harvard.
Peirce published some 12,000 pages in his lifetime and the Peirce Edition Project has published
eight of a projected 30 volumes. It is estimated 50,000 pages remain unpublished.
2
 “My philosophy resuscitates Hegel, though in a strange costume” (Peirce, 1892/1974, CP 1.42).
Where the Truth Lies: Peirce Through the Lens of The Third Man 35

of cinema-goers since its release in 1949, we aim to demonstrate how each eluci-
dates the other.3
Peirce was foundational to the development of Pragmatism, “a growing third
alternative to both analytic and ‘Continental’ philosophical traditions worldwide”
(Legg, 2018), in the late nineteenth century.
[Pragmatism] offers a distinctive method for becoming clear about the meaning of concepts
and the hypotheses which contain them. We clarify a hypothesis by identifying the practical
consequences we should expect if it is true. (Legg, 2018)

Peirce was acutely aware that text is not our only means of meaning making: he
made frequent use of diagrams in his writing, notably his famous triads. Unfortunately
for us, Peirce did not live to see the burgeoning of film as a unique semiotic form.
Peirce is a useful guide in this book’s project to clarify the powerful and difficult
ideas in philosophy so that they can be deployed in order for us to act purposefully
and ethically in the world. In this chapter, we will use The Third Man to illustrate
Peirce’s ideas of doubt (both intellectual and emotional) as the initiator of the fixa-
tion of belief and the method of science (abduction, induction and deduction) as the
“supreme” way of reasoning.
We will provide a brief introduction to The Third Man. But before you read on,
please go and watch the film—there will be spoilers ahead!

Film Noir in the Rubble of the Postwar Imagination

Detective story writers are often asked why we devote our talents to working in a mere
popular convention. One answer is that there may be more to our use of the convention than
meets the eye. (Macdonald, 1981, p. 1)

In 1940s and early 1950s America, as the tragedy of the war years brought an end to
the trauma of the Great Depression and with it increasing urbanisation, industriali-
sation and wealth, a genre of crime melodrama emerged from Hollywood that
would later become known as film noir. After the disastrous box office performance
of Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), generally acknowledged as the first film noir,
these movies were modestly budgeted which created opportunities for minor stars
and more experimental direction, cinematography and design (Biesen, 2005). As
the name suggests, the genre was not identified from within Hollywood, but from
the explosion of film scholarship that emerged in France in the 1950s, initially by
Nino Frank in 1946 (Narremore, 1998) and then in 1955 by Borde and Chaumeton.
Film noir drew on the visual sophistication of German expressionism (Bergstrom,
2014) and the narrative drive of hard-boiled detective fiction of the 1930s,

3
 In 1999, The Third Man was voted the greatest British film of the twentieth century by the British
Film Institute. After its release, Orson Welles could not attend a restaurant without the house band
playing The Third Man Theme by Anton Karas which spent 11 weeks at number 1 on the Billboard
chart in 1950, http://tsort.info/music/3hq6ab.htm.
36 J. Ferguson and J. C. Clark

characterised by the writings of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, both of

whom were drawn to Hollywood (Pettey, 2014). Even though it has proven a
slippery genre to define, film noir has been immensely influential on subsequent
filmmaking in Hollywood and beyond (Palmer, 1996).
Although there will never be any agreement on the canon of film noir, we posit
some characteristics which have been central to the discussion of the genre: it is a
crime melodrama, which provides a realist and pragmatist window on mid-­twentieth
century American urban life (this is often described as cynical, ambiguous and pes-
simistic); its characters have stereotypical gender roles, hard-bitten, cynical private-­
eyes and erotic, ambiguous femme-fatales who strut and slither through a shadowy,
black and white landscape in an inconclusive search for truth. Drawing on German
expressionism, where space and time is ambiguous and distorted, with deep shad-
ows and shifting perspective and camera angles, film noir offers a heady integration
of image, sound, speech (including the narrative voiceover), music, emotion and
intellect.
The archetypical film noir is Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949). Into the rubble,
corruption and intrigue of a postwar Vienna divided between the four Allies, a
bland, naive but dogged American writer of cowboy pulp fiction, Holly Martins,
emerges from a train. He is seeking the anti-hero, Harry Lime, who he quickly
learns is dead.
Interlinked mysteries drive Martins’ investigation into Lime’s death. Is Martins’
fondly remembered childhood friend, Harry Lime, “the worst racketeer who ever
made a dirty living in this city”, as described by Major Calloway, a military police-
man who befriends the newly arrived Martins? To resolve this contradiction between
his memory of Lime and Calloway’s description, Martins investigates the circum-
stances of Lime’s death, run over by his own driver outside his flat. Martins talks to
the porter, who witnessed the aftermath of the death, and then to Lime’s underworld
associates who were with him at that deathly moment. And finally, he questions
Anna Schmidt, Lime’s girlfriend. New mysteries emerge as to the circumstances of
his death: was he killed instantly or died subsequently? Was he taken from the road
by two or three men (the titular Third Man)? Is Lime actually dead?
Martins drinks; gets into various scrapes (as an American abroad he is curiously
immune from the consequences of his actions); falls in love with Schmidt (who
remains in love with Lime); sights Lime who immediately disappears; is convinced
by Calloway of Lime’s villainy; confronts Lime at the Vienna Grand Ferris Wheel
(a famous scene); betrays him to save Schmidt; and, in the pursuit of Lime through
the labyrinth of sewers of Vienna (off-camera) shoots him.
How do we, through Martins’ eyes, in this maze of shadows, wet cobblestones
and searchlights, “reduce the manifold of sensuous impressions to unity” (Peirce,
1867/1992, p. 1). To do so, we will explore Peirce’s ideas about doubt and reason—
his account of inquiry—through the prism of The Third Man.
Where the Truth Lies: Peirce Through the Lens of The Third Man 37

Descending into the Labyrinth of Peirce’s Ideas (Fig. 1)

The work of Peirce covers so much territory and is so rich in detail that it can be
overwhelming. We have decided to focus on one of his central philosophical con-
cerns: inquiry. In particular, the fixation of belief as driven by doubt, and his postu-
lating of the method of science, through deduction, induction and abduction, as the
most satisfactory means by which to attain this belief and enable meaningful action
in the world. Any worthwhile understanding of Peirce must begin with an engage-
ment with his pragmatist understanding of inquiry.
Introducing these ideas, and then exploring their cinematic exemplification in
The Third Man, we draw readers’ attention primarily to Peirce’s paper The Fixation
of Belief published in Popular Science Monthly (1877). While Peirce’s ideas con-
cerning inquiry evolved as he developed his particular philosophy of Pragmatism,
the arguments he puts forward in The Fixation of Belief are still foundational to, and
consistent with, his later thoughts. Our approach is not a Peircean analysis of The
Third Man, but rather a consideration of this film—as we see it—as an expression
of Peirce’s ideas and thus as a way to meaningfully engage with his work. Trying to
understand Peirce’s ideas is akin to Martins’ pursuit of Lime through the labyrin-
thine sewers of Vienna; but fortunately we have the film as a map to follow Peirce.
While we draw on some other selected writings of Peirce when necessary, we
encourage you to watch The Third Man and to read The Fixation of Belief as a tex-
tual precursor and ongoing accompaniment to the film. All quotes in the subsequent
discussion, unless otherwise attributed, are from Peirce’s The Fixation of Belief.

Peirce in the Prism of The Third Man

Doubt for Peirce “stimulates us to inquiry until it is destroyed” (Peirce, 1877,

p. 114). Doubt is thus fundamental to our purposeful being in/of the world for with-
out doubt there can be no fixation of belief. It is the “irritation of doubt” (p. 114)
which moves us to think and thus do. But at the same time, doubt must cease for our
beliefs to be fixed. Much of what we do as purposeful agents is “struggle to attain a
state of belief” (p. 114), what Peirce calls “inquiry” (p. 114).
As with most detective fiction, The Third Man is an inquiry. The inquiry is trig-
gered by the following conversation between Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) and the
porter (Karl, played by Paul Hörbiger) when Martins arrives in Vienna and immedi-
ately goes to visit Harry Lime (Orson Welles) at his residence (Fig. 2).
Porter: Already gone.
Martins: Who?
Porter: His friends and - er - the coffin.
Martins: Coffin?
Porter: Mr. Lime’s. Accident…Knocked over by a car, here in front of the house. Have
seen it myself, killed at once, immediately. Already in hell or in heaven [pointing up and
then down]. I’m sorry for the gravediggers. Hard work in this frost.
38 J. Ferguson and J. C. Clark

Fig. 1  The Third Man (Reed, 1949): Harry Lime pursued through the sewers of Vienna

Fig. 2  The Third Man

(Reed, 1949): Martins
looks up to the porter on
the apartment building
stairs as he is told of
Lime’s death

Martins is surprised by what Peirce would call an anomaly; Lime was supposed to
be alive and now he is not. It is this anomaly that initiates the inquiry that provides
the impetus that drives the film. Martins needs to understand, explain and come to
terms with Lime’s death. And he does so, as we will show, using the method of sci-
ence that Peirce puts forward as the method of fixing belief with the most integrity.
Beliefs in this way are determined by “something upon which our thinking has no
effect”. This “external permanency” cannot only pertain to the individual or even
Where the Truth Lies: Peirce Through the Lens of The Third Man 39

their community more broadly: “it must be something which affects, or might affect,
every man”. This “method must be such that the ultimate conclusion of every man
shall be the same” (Peirce, 1877, p. 120).
This surprise necessarily leads, as Peirce makes clear, to doubt. And for Martins,
this doubt emerges from talking with Anna Schmidt (Lime’s girlfriend, played by
Alida Valli). Martins is still seeking to understand his friend Lime (and in particular
his death). He has conflicting accounts from the military policeman (Sergeant
Payne, played by Bernard Lee), Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) and Lime’s asso-
ciates in particular “Baron” Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch). However, the doubt (as to
whether Lime was killed in an accident or was murdered) clearly emerges in
Martins’ encounter with Schmidt as she recounts to him the circumstances of their
friend’s death, which Martins finds increasingly unlikely (Fig. 3).
Martins: I don’t get it …[walking up and down as he speaks] All of them there. Kurtz,
this Romanian, Popescu, his own driver knocking him over. His own doctor passing by. No
strangers there … at all.
Schmidt: I know. I wondered about it a hundred times, if it really was an accident
[music crescendo]. What difference does it make? He’s dead, isn’t he?
Martins: Well, if it wasn’t an acci …

Martins is now in a state of doubt—“a real and living doubt” (Peirce, 1877, p. 115)
as Peirce would say—as to whether Lime was accidently killed or murdered. The
authentic nature of doubt is the bedrock of Peircean inquiry: “let us not pretend to
doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts” (Peirce, 1868, p.  29).
Martins’ face is a picture of puzzlement, as he walks around in Schmidt’s dressing
room, throwing his hands in the air. His beliefs about Lime are destabilised, and
thus, as per Peirce, he has nothing to guide his actions in relation to Lime as he navi-
gates the ruins of postwar Vienna. Peirce argues that our purposeful being in/of the

Fig. 3  The Third Man (Reed, 1949): Martins and Schmidt in the dressing room, after Schmidt’s
performance, discussing the death and potential murder of Lime
40 J. Ferguson and J. C. Clark

world is driven by our need to continually “attain a state of belief” (Peirce, 1877,
p. 114). By beliefs, Peirce does not simply mean personal/subjective opinions that
we hold close to us and that we consider our own. Rather, he stipulates beliefs as
that which “guide our desires and shape our actions” (Peirce, 1877, p.  114). In
regard to the status of these opinions, Peirce is quick to refute any notion that “we
seek, not merely an opinion, but a true opinion” for he argues that “we seek for a
belief that we shall think to be true” (Peirce, 1877, p.  115). As such, all beliefs
(defined in this way) are true and ground our agency in the world as purposive
action. Peirce is thus not concerned with knowledge as the ascertaining of an ante-
cedent reality, but rather he is focused on beliefs as critical to our practical being in
the world.
Martins is hit by a need to resolve this doubt and find firm grounding for his
actions once again. Martins begins to do so almost immediately as he interacts with
Schmidt to hypothesise (abductive reasoning) that Lime was not accidentally killed
but rather murdered. There are three stages that constitute scientific reasoning for
Peirce (1903a): abduction is the generation of a possible explanation for an observed
anomaly; deduction is the elaboration to specific cases to determine the implications
of this explanation; and induction is testing to confirm (or not) the explanation as a
general case. This possibility (of Lime’s murder) comes suddenly to Martins: “The
abductive suggestion comes to us like a flash. It is an act of insight, though of
extremely fallible insight” (Peirce, 1903b, p. 227). We can see in the face of Martins
and hear in the musical crescendo, the possibility for Martins of Lime having been
murdered.
At this stage, Martins had made the hypothesis that Lime was murdered from
which he then proceeds to determine the possible logical permutations of this
(deductive reasoning). If Lime was murdered, then he was murdered by someone,
but whom? This is not explicit in the film, but we infer as such (our own abductive
reasoning) when Martins gently insists to Schmidt that they visit the porter as the
key witness.
Martins: The porter saw it happen.
Schmidt: Then why worry?
Martins: Do you know that Porter?
Schmidt: Yes.

To undertake this investigation is a process of verification (inductive reasoning),

which involves Martins and Schmidt returning to interview the witnesses of the
hypothesised murder (even though all the witnesses are still describing it as an
accident).
Martins immediately goes with Schmidt to visit the porter who “saw it happen”
and as such is privy to the facts of what took place, the “external permanency”
(Peirce, 1877, p. 120) of scientific reasoning that Peirce values so highly. The porter
assures Martins that Lime died immediately, which conflicts with Barron Kurtz’s
account that Lime was able to speak after being hit by the car (i.e. he did not die
immediately) (Fig. 4).
There follows an interchange between Martins and the porter which determines
for Martins that Lime was murdered by someone in particular.
Where the Truth Lies: Peirce Through the Lens of The Third Man 41

Fig. 4  The Third Man (Reed, 1949): Martins looks out the window of Lime’s apartment onto the
streets of Vienna below; the third man could be anyone

Martins: But that sounds crazy if he was … killed at once, how could he have talked
about me, and this lady here, after he was dead? Why didn’t you say all this at the inquest?
Porter: It is better not to be mixed up in things like this.
Martins: Things like what?
Porter: I was not the only one who did not … give evidence.
Martins: Who else?
Porter: Three men helped to carry your friend to the statue.
Martins: Kurtz.
Porter: Yes.
Martins: The Romanian?
Porter: Yes.
Martins: And?
Porter: There was a third man - he didn’t give evidence.
Martins: You don’t mean that doctor?
Porter: No, no. He came late after they carried him to the Joseph Statue.
Martins: What did this man look like?
Porter: I didn’t see his face … He didn’t look up. He was quite  – gewernlich (in
German) … ordinary. He might have been … Just anybody …
Martins: Just anybody [looking contemplatively out the window into the almost vacant
street below].

Martins has for the moment fixed his beliefs; he has determined that Lime was mur-
dered by someone, the third man (either acting alone or in collaboration with Kurtz,
Popescu and Dr Winkle). He does not know at this stage who this third man is (it
could be anybody in Vienna); he just believes that this someone murdered Lime.
And his actions, as Peirce dictates, reflect this belief as he acts with renewed pur-
pose—for example, in interacting with Calloway when the military police under-
take a search of Schmidt’s room on suspicion she possesses false documents.
42 J. Ferguson and J. C. Clark

Martins: I suppose it wouldn’t interest you (directed at Calloway) to know that Lime was
murdered? You’re too busy. You haven’t even bothered to get complete evidence [Calloway
continues overseeing the search]. And there was a third man there. I suppose that doesn’t
sound peculiar to you?
Calloway: I’m not interested in whether a racketeer like Lime was killed by his friends
or by accident. The only important thing is that he’s dead.

At this stage of the film, it is important to remember that for Peirce, “when doubt
ceases, mental action on the subject comes to an end; and, if it did go on, it would
be without a purpose” (Peirce, 1877, p. 115). To establish beliefs that can guide our
actions, we must therefore be in continual cycles of doubt and resolution. In other
words, while Martins has resolved his doubt as regards whether Lime was acci-
dently killed or murdered, this is not the end of doubt for Martins. If it was, then
inquiry would cease and Martins would be without purpose and the film purpose-
less, and as such not film noir (but a film by Antonioni). Rather, what happens is that
Martins enters into a different but related stage of doubt as part of his inquiry.
Initially this has to do with determining the identity of the third man, but this is only
brief as Martins is suddenly thrown into “a real and living doubt” once again as he
is surprised by Lime’s fleeting appearance in a doorway near Schmidt’s apartment
(perhaps the most famous scene in all film noir), before Lime disappears into the
dark and wet streets of Vienna leaving Martins chasing shadows (Fig. 5).
Martins: Harry?!

Fig. 5  The Third Man (Reed, 1949): Lime casts a dark shadow as he runs away from Martins after
revealing himself
Where the Truth Lies: Peirce Through the Lens of The Third Man 43

Martins deploys the method of science to not just determine that Lime is alive but to
continue trying to determine the character of this man whom he thought he knew so
well. The rest of the film concerns Martins continuing with his inquiry, as he abduces
that Lime is no racketeer, deduces that any involvement of Lime with the black
market is benign and, finally, induces that his hypothesis about Lime is incorrect.
This occurs when Calloway shows Martins around the Children’s Hospital where
Lime’s victims are suffering, and these “rough facts”, as Peirce (1877, p. 121) calls
them, force Martins to believe that Lime is a criminal and to agree to assist Calloway
to catch Lime (Fig. 6).
Martins: All right, Calloway, you win.
Calloway: I never knew there were snake charmers in Texas … [commenting in jest on
one of Martin’s books].
Martins: I said you win!
Calloway: Win what?
Martins: I’ll be your dumb decoy duck.

Peirce says of the method of science that “a clear logical conscience does cost
something—just as any virtue, just as all that we cherish, costs us dear” (Peirce,
1877, p. 123), which is ultimately what Martins comes to terms with here. By fol-
lowing the method of science to its logical conclusion (at least in relation to
Lime’s true identity), Martins has to accept that he has lost his friendship with
Lime (for Lime is “a racketeer of the worst kind”). Lime is not who Martins knew
him (and wanted him) to be. In adopting and advocating for the method of science,

Fig. 6  The Third Man (Reed, 1949): Calloway and Martins at the Children’s Hospital to visit
Lime’s victims
44 J. Ferguson and J. C. Clark

Fig. 7  The Third Man (Reed, 1949): Martins waits for Schmidt after Lime’s funeral—final scene

Peirce declares that “there are blows to take” (p. 123). The Third Man is the story
of Martins receiving these blows, but responding in like manner to be, as Peirce
declares, “the worthy knight and champion of her” (p. 123). The “her” in this case
not just being Schmidt but the method of science itself (as Peirce advocates).
But even with this resolution of sorts, which enables Martins to fix his beliefs
about Lime and act accordingly, new anomalies arise. As he attends the funeral of
his once friend, he is concerned for the welfare of Schmidt. Thus, the inquiry is not
over for Martins; as Peirce insists, inquiry always goes on. Martins’ beliefs and thus
actions in regard to Schmidt are far from fixed, as she walks straight past the waiting
Martins on a bleak Viennese avenue carpeted in autumn leaves. Schmidt in this final
scene is the cinematic embodiment of Peirce’s (1895) first and most important prin-
ciple of reasoning, which is “do not block the way of inquiry” (p. 48). Few endings
in film are more Peircean than this (Fig. 7).

What Now?

It is not only Peirce who needs to be clarified and put to work. Film, and emerging
visual-linguistic technologies such as social media, represents a way of thinking and
acting in the world that is not immediately accessible to our standard academic
discourse. We hope that those reading this chapter will see the work of Peirce and
Where the Truth Lies: Peirce Through the Lens of The Third Man 45

film noir in new, interesting and (practically) useful ways. It remains for us as a
community of visual reasoners and communicators to deploy Peirce’s ideas to
explore other important epistemological and ontological concerns, for example, his
categories of firstness, secondness and thirdness to understand the aesthetics of
inquiry. But that is another chapter and another film; for now, we simply invite you
to watch The Third Man and observe Peirce lurking in the shadows.

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You are interested in other ways of reasoning or forming knowledge.
• Turn to p. 47 for Grant’s chapter on Wittgenstein’s language games.
 ou are interested in exploring how authors have engaged with other clas-
Y
sic movies.
• Turn to p. 83 for Quickfall’s chapter on The Goonies
• Turn to p. 125 for Norman’s chapter on Star Wars

References

Bergstrom, J. (2014). Warning shadows: German expressionism and American film noir. In
H. B. Pettey & R. B. Palmer (Eds.), Film noir. Edinburgh University Press.
Biesen, S.  C. (2005). Blackout: World War II and the origins of film noir. Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Borde, R., & Chaumeton, É. (1955/2002). A panorama of American film noir (P.  Hammond,
Trans.). City Lights Books.
Legg, C. (2018). Pragmatism. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatism/
Macdonald, R. (1981). Self-portrait: Ceaselessly into the past. Capra Press.
Narremore, J. (1998). More than the night: Film noir in its contexts. University of California Press.
Palmer, R. B. (1996). Perspectives on film noir. G.K. Hall.
Peirce, C.  S. (1867/1992). On a new list of categories. In N.  Houser & C.  Kloesel (Eds.), The
essential Peirce—Selected philosophical writings (1867–1893) (Vol. 1, pp.  1–10). Indiana
University Press.
Peirce, C. S. (1868/1992). Some consequences of four incapacities. In N. Houser & C. Kloesel
(Eds.), The essential Peirce—Selected philosophical writings (1867–1893) (Vol. 1, pp. 28–55).
Indiana University Press.
Peirce, C. S. (1877/1992). The fixation of belief. In N. Houser & C. Kloesel (Eds.), The essen-
tial Peirce—Selected philosophical writings (1867–1893) (Vol. 1, pp.  109–123). Indiana
University Press.
Peirce, C. S. (1892/1974). Lessons from the history of science. In C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss (Eds.),
Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Vol. 1, pp. 19–49). Harvard University Press.
Peirce, C. S. (1895/1998). The first rule of logic. In N. Houser, A. De Tienne, J. R. Eller, C. L. Clark,
A.  C. Lewis, & D.  B. Davis (Eds.), The essential Peirce—Selected philosophical writings
(1893–1913) (Vol. 2, pp. 42–56). Indiana University Press.
Peirce, C. S. (1903a). The nature of meaning. In N. Houser, A. De Tienne, J. R. Eller, C. L. Clark,
A.  C. Lewis, & D.  B. Davis (Eds.), The essential Peirce—Selected philosophical writings
(1893–1913) (Vol. 2, pp. 208–225). Indiana University Press.
46 J. Ferguson and J. C. Clark

Peirce, C. S. (1903b). Pragmatism as the logic of abduction. In N. Houser, A. De Tienne, J. R. Eller,
C. L. Clark, A. C. Lewis, & D. B. Davis (Eds.), The essential Peirce—Selected philosophical
writings (1893–1913) (Vol. 2, pp. 226–251). Indiana University Press.
Pettey, H. B. (2014). Hard-boiled tradition and early film noir. In H. B. Pettey & R. B. Palmer
(Eds.), Film noir. Edinburgh University Press.
Reed, C. (Director), & Reed, C., Korda, A., & Selznick D. O. (Producer). (1949). The Third Man.
[Motion Picture]. London Films.
Playing Language Games with BB8

Rhiannon Grant

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In this next chapter, Rhiannon Grant presents the reader with a puzzle and asks them
to crack it using the ideas of language theorist Wittgenstein. The puzzle is drawn
from the Star Wars character, BB8, a droid who can communicate with some, but
not with others. In a nutshell, for those readers who consider themselves Star Wars
aficionados, does BB8’s chirping count as language? This is the conundrum that
Grant teases out over the course of the chapter: Luke Skywalker cannot understand
R2D2 but Rey can understand BB8; Finn cannot understand BB8 but Rey can the
moment she meets the droid. So what is going on here? We can put it down to bad
scripting, or we can use the fiction to grapple with our preconceived ideas about
language.
Grant argues that Wittgenstein is the philosopher who can help crack this puzzle
about language by drawing on the theorist’s own use of fiction to puzzle through
ideas. His use of metaphor, fairy tale and fiction is adapted by Grant to explain his
theory of language, using the Star Wars universe. She also contextualises
Wittgenstein’s theory within a collection of his work, Philosophical Investigations,
and extends it into pragmatic intersectional feminist theory.
Grant builds knowledge about the politics of language, bodies and context work
together by converging discussion about Wittgenstein and Star Wars at four points
in the chapter. Firstly, language is related to conversation and shared meaning.
Secondly, language is present when meaning is understood despite conversing with

R. Grant (*)
Centre for Research in Quaker Studies, Woodbrooke, University of Birmingham,
Birmingham, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 47

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_5
48 R. Grant

different dialects (English and chirping). Thirdly, successful communication usu-

ally occurs when two speakers share knowledge, setting and experiences. Even
speaking the same dialect can lead to misunderstanding if the life worlds are differ-
ent. Fourthly, all of these indications of language can be challenged and made more
complex through questioning the categories that develop when considering how
language games are played.
In the final part of the chapter, Grant draws on her personal academic work to
extend the playful consideration of language games with BB8, to serious language
games that society plays with gender and religion.

Introduction: How can the Work of Ludwig

Wittgenstein Help us

In this chapter, I use a puzzle from Star Wars to illustrate the kind of problems
which Wittgenstein’s philosophy can clarify. By the end, you should be able to
apply these ideas to other problems and know where to go to find out more about
them. I start by very briefly introducing the key figures in this chapter—philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Star Wars character BB8—before moving on to look
in more detail at why BB8’s language use creates a puzzle and which of Wittgenstein’s
ideas might help us untangle that puzzle. Towards the end of the chapter, I suggest
some ways in which this analysis might be developed, before concluding with some
comments about relevant real-world puzzles and other philosophical ideas.
Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in 1889 and lived until 1951. During that time, he
worked on many things—he helped to design a house for his sister in Vienna, he
fought in the First World War, and he drove ambulances during the Second World
War—and he had two main periods of philosophical work. (A good biography of
Wittgenstein is Monk’s 1991 offering.) Interpreters of his work disagree about how
much these should be split up or read together—see Biletzki and Matar (2018) for
further information. He was not as good at publishing his own work as he might
have been, and so much of his writing has been collected and edited by other phi-
losophers. In this chapter, I focus on ideas from the Philosophical Investigations,
written over several decades, almost but not quite complete at the time of his death,
and published afterwards.
Star Wars was created by George Lucas and first appeared in cinemas in 1977.
Since then, ten major films have appeared—the original trilogy (A New Hope, The
Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi), a prequel trilogy (The Phantom
Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith), a sequel trilogy (The Force
Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker) and two films which are set in
the time between the original and the sequel trilogies (Solo and Rogue One). There
have also been other films, large numbers of graphic novels, spin-off books, video
games and other materials. Although many of the films provide possible examples
(I have written previously about Chewbacca and similar issues (Grant and Reynolds,
2015)), in this chapter I focus on BB8 as a clear and recent case.
Playing Language Games with BB8 49

BB8’s Language Use

How does BB8 use language? What makes BB8 both a clearly useful example for
my purpose and a puzzle is that the little round robot does not speak English, or
even a language which can be translated and subtitled, but nevertheless makes utter-
ances which contribute to conversation and impart information to (some) other
characters. When BB8 is first introduced in The Force Awakens, he speaks to rebel
pilot Poe Dameron, who understands the warning he is being given (on gendering
BB8, see Breznican (2015)). The subtitles, however, do not report language, but just
say ‘chirping’ when BB8’s noise is made. In the external world, we can understand
this as a sound effect which carries no meaning. Within the narrative, however we
have to accept that BB8 succeeds in communicating with Poe. His utterances seem
to count as speech even while it is not clear that they are a language. This paradox
is often considered through discussion of author Arthur Conan Doyle’s two most
famous characters. The terms ‘Doyleist’ and ‘Watsonian’ arise from discussions of
the Sherlock Holmes canon, where ‘Doyleist’ views concern themselves with issues
affecting real-world author Arthur Conan Doyle, and ‘Watsonian’ views concern
themselves with issues affecting in-universe writer Dr. Watson. One classic issue,
for example, concerns Watson’s first name, which is given differently in different
stories: a Doyleist perspective might say that Doyle forgot what he had written
before, while a Watsonian perspective might say that Watson had a nickname in
some contexts.
BB8’s subtitles represent the audience perspective by writing the tones of BB8’s
utterances a certain amount of interpretation—the subtitles have him exclaim, moan
and yelp. It is also clear that although human characters do not speak BB8’s lan-
guage, in the sense that they reply to him in English, they do comprehend not just
the tone but the content of his utterances. He is able to pass on information on which
they can act, in narratively important ways. The audience cannot participate in but
is able to witness this process. Perhaps we, the viewers and some characters within
the narrative are simply too sheltered. We have not had sufficient exposure to the
structures of BB8’s language to process it as such. Doyelists would rightly be scep-
tical that any amount of exposure to the sound effects would enable a viewer to learn
such a language, although fans of other bodies of work, such as Star Trek fans who
are able to become speakers of Klingon, might regard this as the responsibility of
the creative team and not the viewers as such. However, people given sufficient,
long-term exposure to a new language, with contextual clues and the opportunity to
participate in the lifestyle of people who speak it, will pick it up, even if they never
learn to be fluent.
There are moments when BB8 can utter something suitable in feeling, and Rey
just nods—because communication between characters is central, when something
needs to be said it does not automatically need to be articulated in words compre-
hensible by the audience. This is part of the world-building in a universe within
which actions are often valued over speech. As well as the wordless speech of BB8
(and in earlier films, R2-D2), consider the way in which future rebel Finn’s sigh as
50 R. Grant

he decides to disobey an order and not to shoot at civilians is more significant than
any single line he might have uttered. Even when the words do matter—when Jedi
trainee turned bad guy Kylo Ren gives orders, for example—the tone is at least as
important as the content.
Star Wars is also a universe which challenges our ideas about who and what can
speak. In the real world, human beings speak, and while some other beings can
communicate in some ways (birds singing, horses neighing, trees releasing hor-
mones and so on), we do not usually count this as speech. In fact, humans who
speak to their animals are often mocked—even more so if they talk to their plants.
We might occasionally credit communication in the form of a dialogue (‘the cat told
me he was hungry’), but only in jest or fiction do we style this in the form of a con-
versation. For BB8, things are different. BB8 is clearly not human, not having a
human body or making sounds which a human mouth can easily replicate, but nev-
ertheless participates in conversation with human beings in the same dialogue struc-
ture with which the human beings speak to each other. BB8 is, of course, not alone
in this, as the Star Wars universe is full of non-human beings who communicate in
more or less human ways—something we can explore further using Wittgenstein’s
philosophy.

Wittgensteinian Analysis

Wittgenstein’s work gives us three main ideas and a fourth, related, concept which
I want to explore in relation to BB8—and which can help us understand other prob-
lems in language and communication. These ideas are commonly known as ‘lan-
guage games’, ‘the private language argument’ (although that can be a confusing
term, because it is really an anti-private language argument) and ‘forms of life’.
What are these ideas and how do they relate to BB8?
A language game is a pattern of interaction, of communication, in which words
are employed for a purpose. Examples could include asking for and being given an
item (Wittgenstein tells us about builder A, who holds out a hand and says ‘slab’,
and builder B hands over a slab…), telling jokes (‘Heisenberg, Leibniz and Chomsky
walk into a bar…’) and making up a story (set ‘a long time ago in a galaxy far, far
away…’) (for Wittgenstein’s own list of examples, see (2009, Section 23/pp.
14–15)). Just about anything we do with language can be described in terms of a
language game. For example, when Poe and BB8 take turns to speak, even though
Poe apparently speaks English and BB8 chirps, they are clearly playing a language
game, ‘having a conversation’. The term ‘game’ should not be read as making it
trivial; some examples are, but others (report an event, make marriage vows, give
orders) can be extremely serious.1

1
 The term ‘language game’ is sometimes used to indicate much larger and more complex phenom-
ena—for example, treating all of Christianity as a ‘language game’—but this is clearly a change
from Wittgenstein’s own use.
Playing Language Games with BB8 51

The private language argument begins with Wittgenstein’s exploration of a

hypothetical situation—a Robinson Crusoe, or someone, let us say, who is stranded
on a lonely planet with no form of social interaction. Can that person use language?
In particular, can they invent new words and be sure of using them correctly?
Wittgenstein isn’t at all sure that they can. He worries that they might forget what a
new word was used to mean last time; he worries that they have no way of checking
that the previous use is the same as the next one; and he worries that without other
people to consult, you can never be sure whether you’re following the rule you pre-
viously established for how to use a particular word. All these concerns pile up and
he concludes that it is impossible. You can’t have a truly private language. You can
have language you happen to use in private (as in your locked diary), but if it is not
in theory accessible to someone else, it is not truly language, because it cannot do
what language does—convey meaning. For BB8, this means that only when he suc-
ceeds in communicating are we able to categorise his sounds as language.
Taken together, the concept of the language game and the anti-private language
argument focuses our approach to language on the society within which it is used,
but we need to keep this perspective in balance. Some philosophers have extended
Wittgenstein’s ideas by also looking at the reverse of the private language argument:
a position José Medina calls the social language argument. In this argument, Medina
says that not only can the rules of language not be governed entirely privately, they
‘cannot be monopolised by communities either’ (Medina, 2010, p.  2). This is
because dissidence and the ability to disagree about the rules are important to devel-
oping full mastery of the rule-following behaviour—Medina cites philosophy and
politics as cases where it is important for participants to sometimes, knowingly,
‘depart from established customs and accepted ways of proceeding’ (Medina, 2010,
p. 8). For example, since we do not understand the content to BB8’s speech, we are
unable to tell whether BB8 breaks relevant grammatical rules; but in including
BB8’s utterances as speech, rather than rejecting them because the content is only
comprehensible from a Watsonian (in-universe) perspective, we are modelling
Medina’s argument ourselves by accepting into the category of speech something
which breaks one of its usual rules (comprehensibility) (Gamero, 2016). In the real
world, this move, recognising ‘the heterogeneity of the “we” who engage in the
practices through which our languages takes on meaning’ has been recognised as
politically important, because it enables us to understand more clearly the demands
of justice within a complex human society (Polhaus and Wright, 2002).
Within Wittgenstein’s own work, the idea of the complexity of society is some-
times brought out by what Wittgenstein calls the ‘forms of life’. In the first instance,
he doesn’t use this as a technical term, but just one phrase among others to describe
the contexts and situations in which language games take place. In the hands of later
scholars, it becomes rather more set as a specific term, but it still means the circum-
stances which make up the setting for a language game. This might include all sorts
of things: the way a society is structured, the natural world around the speakers, the
physical form of their bodies and so on. At one point Wittgenstein says that if lions
could speak, we wouldn’t be able to understand them (Wittgenstein, 2009, p. 235).
The thought here seems to be that the form of life for a lion is so different to that of
52 R. Grant

a human—because living as a lion in a lion’s body is so different from living as a

human in a human body—that no communication is truly possible. Perhaps this is
what is happening with characters who do not understand BB8. For example, Finn,
having taken the decision to become a rebel, does not yet share much of the knowl-
edge other characters have—including the ability to understand droids such as BB8.
There is a skill to communicating with BB8 which not all characters have acquired,
and the acquisition of this skill rests in a shared form of life. Rey, who appears to
have more engineering knowledge from her work with the remains of broken space-
craft, understands BB8 at once: they agree, as Wittgenstein (2009) would say, ‘not
in opinions, but rather in form of life’ (Section 241/p. 94).
Wittgenstein, in the passage with the remark about lions, also discusses some
ways in which human beings can understand one another, correctly guessing one
another’s thoughts. He feels that there are also circumstances under which such
understanding would be impossible, including the more quotable example about
connecting with a lion, but also living in a country where the main language spoken
is not your own (perhaps a personal example, since Wittgenstein continued to write
in German after many years living in England). It is not clear to me that Wittgenstein
is entirely right about this, but perhaps the counter-examples which come to mind
(such as pet cats which can communicate with their domestic humans, or human
attempts to understand animal life like the experiments Charles Foster has made
(Foster, 2016)) involve a strongly shared context. If communication is possible, it
may be because the shared experience of a form of life, such as sharing a living
space and spending time together, makes it possible. In the same way, perhaps Rey
and other characters who can communicate with BB8 are able to do so because they
have some shared experience—living on Jakku, knowing how to pilot a spacecraft
or something of the sort.
These three ideas are related to a fourth, which might help us with the question
about identifying what or who can be a speaker. This fourth idea is the ‘family
resemblance concept’. There are some concepts, Wittgenstein might be taken to
argue, in which it is important to look at what speakers have in common and allow
some difficult cases to sit on the edge, rather than to focus on defining a range of
things which will be included or excluded by a set of criteria. He uses the example
of ‘games’—what counts as a game? Do they really all have rules? (They certainly
don’t have to have explicit rules or unchanging rules.) Do they all have to be played
for fun? (No, some are very serious.) There are games which are played with others
and games which are played alone, games which are co-operative, games which are
competitive and so on. Perhaps all games are said to be played—but I can play with
something, like fiddling with the loose thread on my clothes, without it being a
game as such.
A strong version of this argument, something like ‘it is impossible to lay down
criteria for these concepts’, tends to fail, because someone sufficiently determined
can usually produce criteria. Some may even go so far as to say that things not ful-
filling the criteria do not really belong to the category, even if ordinary language
users describe them using that term. However, we could consider a weaker version
of the argument, more like ‘paying attention to shared attributes which may not be
Playing Language Games with BB8 53

present in every case, rather than trying to generate an absolutely correct tick-list,
better captures the way human minds process concepts’, can help us to deal with
categories and concepts which we know when we see them, but for which we can’t
easily generate boundary criteria. An example might be the concept of a bird.
Biologists will have a strict set of criteria which define the edges of the category
‘bird’, but when ordinary language users think of a bird, they begin with a much
smaller set of examples, prototypical cases of birds, like robins. A penguin and an
emu are birds, and a bat is not, but determining that takes more thought because they
are less typical examples. This is a bit like looking through a family photograph
album and sometimes immediately seeing the resemblance, and at other times need-
ing to work to find it (Margolis and Laurence, 2019).
For some concepts, this is so much the case that stage magicians use it as the
basis for tricks—ask a crowd of English speakers to think of a random vegetable,
and although there’s a whole world of vegetables out there (and some disagreement
about what counts within it), a majority of them will think of a carrot (Stafford,
2016). Other vegetables, even quite common ones, don’t come up nearly as often,
as people work harder to see them as members of the ‘vegetable’ family. We can
also apply this to other concepts. Asked to think of a speaker, how many English
speakers, even Star Wars fans, would think of BB8?
Like a penguin which is a bird but not immediately recognised as such, BB8 is
well out from the centre. He is enough like other members of the conceptual family
that we can recognise him as a speaker—but he might not fulfil all the criteria we
would set up to identify speakers of natural languages. Among other things, real
people cannot learn to speak his language, and seeing the family resemblance to
other speakers takes a little bit of work. We can use these examples, like many oth-
ers in science fiction, to challenge our unconscious assumptions about what, or
perhaps who, can participate in communication.

Deeper into the Ideas

So far in this chapter, I have described BB8 and some questions he raises about
communication, language and speakers. I have introduced four ideas from
Wittgenstein’s work—language games, the anti-private language argument, forms
of life and family resemblance concepts—and briefly related them to the questions
BB8 raised for us. In this section, I want to explore further the connections between
the four ideas from Wittgenstein and use them together to dig deeper into the issues
surrounding BB8 as well as briefly exploring one way in which the ideas can be
applied to the real world, in Lee-Lampshire’s Wittgensteinian discussion of femi-
nism. This section is more playful than the previous sections; you might want to
think of it as a model or inspiration for developing your own ideas rather than a set
of answers.
Starting again with language games, we can ask how these relate to the three
other ideas. When I introduced the concept of language games, I gave BB8 and Poe
54 R. Grant

having a conversation as an example—‘having a conversation’ is a form of lan-

guage game. Other things BB8 does could also count: giving a warning, making a
joke, expressing distress and so on. The details of the language game, though,
depend on the form of life within which it is played. Rey’s experience with machin-
ery as a scavenger and Poe’s piloting knowledge must help them to understand
BB8. Finn’s different form of life in the service of the First Order isn’t as useful,
and Poe’s knowledge only goes so far, as he understands BB8 but not the older
R2-D2. Other characters with similar speech patterns to BB8 also provide clear
examples. R2-D2, the astromech who helped Luke Skywalker as an X-Wing co-
pilot, shares the very specific experience of space flight with Luke, and this facili-
tates their communication. To complicate things further, as the X-Wing provides a
translation, does the X-Wing count as a highly advanced machine or a speaker in its
own right? I leave this for future researchers who may have a more extensive canon
on which to draw.
Sometimes, forms of life might have enough in common to create a family
resemblance either through shared experience or environment—like the old joke
about dogs and owners which come to resemble one another. This might not be a
single common property, but can be ‘various resemblances’ which ‘overlap and
criss-cross’ so that we are able to pick out a group, even if any two members of a
group may not share one of the properties (Wittgenstein, 2009, p. 36/Section 67).
We can add to this a collection of ideas around the anti-private language argument.
The purpose of language is communication, and it is in communicating that some-
thing comes to be language—the meaning of a word is its use. Use must happen in
context or within a form of life—and communicators use contextual clues to dif-
ferential meanings. To see this, think about the word ‘mouse’ in the following
remarks: ‘I saw a mouse eating cheese’ versus ‘The USB cable on my mouse has
broken’. There are two different mice, and if we have enough of a shared form of
life, you can tell them apart. If I could send those sentences back in time, to my
grandmother when she was the age I am now, she would rightly be baffled, because
the computer age has made huge changes to our form of life and consequently
demanded new vocabulary.
This might mean that, if BB8 were real, especially if I landed in the galaxy far,
far away fresh from my current life, I would be unable to understand him. I know
about computers, after all, but not droids. Protocol droids, astromechs and other
robotic beings, as they are imagined in the Star Wars universe, are completely out-
side my range of experience. It might seem weird to unpack this puzzle with a fic-
tional world but Wittgenstein also thought that considering fictional examples was
useful. In Philosophical Investigations, he uses fairy tales to explore questions
about private experience and how that relates to language:
281. … only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a human being can
one say: it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious.
282. “But in a fairy tale a pot too can see and hear!” (Certainly; but it can also talk.)
“But a fairy tales only invents what is not the case; it does not talk nonsense, does it?”—
It’s not as simple as that. Is it untrue or nonsensical to say that a pot talks? Does one have a
clear idea of the circumstances in which we’d say of a pot that it talked? (Even a nonsense
Playing Language Games with BB8 55

poem is not nonsense in the same way as the babble of a baby.) (Wittgenstein, 2009, p. 103/
Sections 281–282)

Based on what I have said so far in this chapter, the answer to the second question
should be yes: we have a clear idea of the circumstances in which we’d say of a pot
that it talked. They would be similar to the circumstances which convinced us that
BB8 does indeed talk—the pot, like BB8, would engage in dialogue, either with
other pots or other characters who are more obviously able to talk; the pot would,
like BB8, convey information, add points and generally participate in the conversa-
tion in ways which amount to communication. Bringing the puzzle into the non-­
fiction world, the babble of a baby is distinguished because it only does some of
these things. Care givers might help baby start practising conversational norms by
taking turns with it but the babble does not give them the same level of detailed
information BB8 can apparently pass to other characters.
This might produce alternative approaches to other problems, too. As well as the
usefulness of considering fictional examples for improving our understanding of
real situations, Wittgenstein’s approach can sometimes be applied directly to real
cases. Wendy Lee-Lampshire lays out a way of using Wittgenstein’s work to create
a different approach to feminism. She rejects essentialist views of gender, which
argue that some common essence of womanhood is shared among all women. She
explains that, like the search for a single common trait which all members of a fam-
ily share, these quickly run into problems with the evidence, because white women
and women of colour; straight women and lesbians; women assigned female at birth
and trans women; rich women, middle-class and working-class women; and women
with various overlapping combinations of these identities, all have very different
experiences of life in general and sexism in particular.
On the other hand, Lee-Lampshire also rejects eliminativist views, which think
that all talk about the mind, self, intention and other psychological concepts need to
be abolished because it does not have any basis in the physical world. Eliminativist
views also run into problems because these words are useful and do help us to com-
municate. Instead, she argues, Wittgenstein’s naturalism can help us to form an
understanding of the world in which we treat ‘psychological terms as metaphors or
descriptive heuristics for the complex system-context relationship expressed in
something’s behavior’ (Lee-Lampshire, 1995, p.  92). Words like ‘mind’, in this
analysis, do not need to relate directly to something physical although the compo-
nent parts might all be physical. Instead, the idea of having a mind is a way of
describing the ways in which the system (the human being, with brain, the rest of
the body, skills, memories and so on) interacts with the context (including other
people, the social context and objects, the material context). This is similar to the
argument I have built in this chapter, that we can regard BB8’s utterances as ‘speech’
because of the way they function in the context of the Star Wars films, rather than
because of their content.
Using another of Wittgenstein’s images, Lee-Lampshire explores the difference
between a stone and a fly sliding down a surface—the stone just rolls, but the fly
wiggles. Although both are governed by forces like gravity, something else is going
56 R. Grant

on with the fly and it makes sense to say that the fly wants to escape or that it knows
it is sliding. The same could apply to the talking pot from Wittgenstein’s fairy tale,
and viewers of Star Wars who have plenty of evidence on which to say that BB8 can
know, want and speak. By keeping these psychological terms in circulation, while
avoiding the risks of over-simplifying experience which is different from our own,
Lee-Lampshire argues that we can construct an eco-feminist view which expands
the range of perspectives from which knowledge can be gained and treat as a subject
‘anything whose behavior is rendered more informative by so doing’. This founds
an eco-feminism because it enables us to describe more clearly both important dif-
ferences between people—such as those arising from even apparently minor differ-
ences in social status—and the commonalities between human beings, animals and
machines.
In the Star Wars universe, we see many different kinds of people, including
beings who might, in the real world, be regarded as non-human animals or machines,
interacting as a single community, communicating with one another and—when the
plot requires—working together. By examining the ways in which language and
language-like sounds are used to construct dialogue, we can show which characters
count as ‘speakers’ from even if we cannot recognise their ‘speech’.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have introduced a range of ideas from the later work of Ludwig
Wittgenstein, beginning with three core ideas—language games, the anti-private
language argument and forms of life—before branching out to explore how these
relate to a fourth idea, family resemblance concepts, and how Wittgenstein’s
approach to language can generate solutions to problems. I have explored all these
ideas in relation to characters from the Star Wars universe, with particular reference
to BB8. In this conclusion, I want to finish by suggesting a few ways in which this
kind of process—comparison with fictional cases and the Wittgensteinian turn to
language—might come into play if you are exploring key areas of social theory.
For Wittgenstein, the place to start trying to understand society (or societies, or
communities) is with their language. He took a broad view of what counts as lan-
guage. In this chapter, I have argued that we should include BB8’s utterances as
language, even though we cannot translate them directly or learn to speak BB8’s
language, because other characters in the setting can do those things and respond to
BB8 as if he speaks. Wittgenstein also included other things, some of which might
not look like language at first: drawing diagrams, for example (think of a diagram of
an electrical circuit, or the map of the London underground, both of which convey
a large amount of information but are very far removed from being literal depictions
of the items in question), and gestures (not just sign languages, which are complete
natural languages in themselves, but gestures which are part of English, like holding
up your thumb or, for a very different meaning, your middle finger). The distinctive
uses of words, gestures and other language components which develop in a
Playing Language Games with BB8 57

particular society may give important clues about it. These may be a subset of uses
within the natural language. For example, Christians who talk about lambs, bread
and wine are drawing on the uses of those words in wider and secular contexts but
also add new layers of meaning within the specifically Christian context. There are
also many language games which are restricted to a particular social context. For
example, I can yell ‘order’ in a classroom or on a bus, but it has a different and much
more specific effect when the Speaker of the House of Commons does it in
Parliament.
In a previous piece of research (Grant, 2014), I used Wittgenstein’s ideas to
explore a very specific case. I looked at real, published examples of things modern
British Quakers say about God. I found that many of them were playing a language
game in which they listed lots of possible words for God, often with a phrasing. This
implied that these were only a few of a much wider range of options: ‘Light, Love,
the Divine, the Spirit, Mother, Father, and so on’. I found that this language game
was created by a specific form of life, a religious community in which everyone
involved wanted to maintain both a unity of practice—hence the single list—and a
diversity of theological opinion, hence including as many different words as possi-
ble within the list. Within the Star Wars universe, we might look to the patterns of
use for the phrase ‘the Force’ to find something similar. The Force can do many
things (physical and mental, good and bad), but the Jedi see the same Force at work
in them all. Quakers saw a family resemblance between the many concepts they
included in their lists, although some words they used as synonyms, especially
when they draw terms like ‘Buddha’ and ‘Krishna’ from other traditions, did not
seem to members of other faith communities to represent the same thing at all. The
concepts of family resemblance, and the stress on context which arises when we
combine the idea of a form of life with the idea of a language game, enabled me to
explain how and why this worked for Quakers, and this Wittgensteinian approach
also has the potential to help to explain many other features of our social worlds.

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You are interested in exploring the relationship between bodies and
communication.
• Turn to p. 163 Valentine’s discussion of the ethics of care.
You are interested in the ways in which we navigate and understand our world.
• Turn to p. 33 for Ferguson and Cripps Clark’s discussion of Peircian
thinking.
You are interested in how knowledge and reality interact.
• See how Holland uses Rick and Morty to discuss McLuhan’s theory on p. 147
You really like Star Wars.
• Explore Norman’s chapter on Foucault with Emperor Palpatine on p. 125
58 R. Grant

References

Biletzki, A., & Matar, A. (2018). Ludwig Wittgenstein. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/

sum2018/entries/wittgenstein/
Breznican, A. (2015). Star Wars: Bb-8 Gender Revealed for Force Awakens Droid. https://ew.com/
article/2015/11/13/bb-­8-­gender-­star-­wars/
Foster, C. (2016). Being a beast. Profile Books.
Gamero, I.  G. (2016). Rules and Bedrocks with a socio-political realm: Mirroring some
Wittgenstein’s remarks. The Philosophical Forum, 47(2), 131–152.
Grant, R. (2014). Wittgensteinian Investigations of Contemporary Quaker Religious Language.
PhD, University of Leeds. uk.bl.ethos.638901.
Grant, R., & Reynolds, M. (2015). Can Chewie speak? Wittgenstein and the philosophy of lan-
guage. In J. T. Eberl & K. S. Decker (Eds.), The ultimate star wars and philosophy: You must
unlearn what you have learned. Wiley-Blackwell.
Lee-Lampshire, W. (1995). Women-animals-machines: A grammar for a Wittgensteinian
Ecofeminism. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 29(1), 89–101.
Margolis, E., & Laurence, S. (2019). Concepts. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The stanford encyclopedia of
philosophy. The Metaphysics Research Lab.
Medina, J. (2010). Wittgenstein as a rebel: Dissidence and contestation in discursive practices.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 18(1), 1–29.
Monk, R. (1991). Ludwig Wittgenstein: The duty of genius. Penguin Books.
Polhaus, G., & Wright, J. R. (2002). Using Wittgenstein critically: A political approach to philoso-
phy. Political Theory, 30(6), 800–827.
Stafford, T. (2016). The two word games that trick almost everyone. http://www.bbc.com/future/
story/20160504-­the-­two-­word-­games-­that-­trick-­almost-­everyone
Wittgenstein, L. (2009). In G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, & J. Schulte (Eds.), Philosophical
investigations. Blackwell.
The Years and Years of Late Modernity:
Ulrich Beck and Risk Society

Naomi Barnes

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In this chapter, Naomi Barnes explains the social theory Ulrich Beck using the BBC
miniseries Years and Years. Barnes gives Beck status by referring to him as the most
cited sociologist. This is probably due to him being seen by the field as both a her-
etic and a prophet because he challenges both philosophers and sociologists to look
at their theoretical tools and account for their usefulness in a society that is on the
cusp of dramatic change. Being a heretic is not necessarily a problematic position in
social theory because it pushes a researcher to fully commit. That commitment
might be to the theory or to solving its limitations. The politics of being positioned
as a heretic means that those who wish to challenge will also cite their work.
Barnes brings Years and Years and Beck together to explain the difference
between an industrialised society and a risk society. Years and Years is a confronting
story that predicts how Western society will slowly collapse in the not-too-distant
future through phenomena that are personal to many people today, like screen time,
marriage laws, financial collapse, and pandemic. A risk society is exemplified by
three social issues: increased individualisation of humans; how nations react to
issues of globalisation; and the questioning of the objectivity and expertise of
science.
Barnes challenges the reader to extend Beck by seeing if they can solve the prob-
lems presented in critiques of his theory.

N. Barnes (*)
School of Teacher Education and Leadership, Queensland University of Technology,
Kelvin Grove, QLD, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 59

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_6
60 N. Barnes

Introduction

Imagine: it is 5 years in the future. You are celebrating a family member’s birthday
when air raid sirens pierce the air. The USA has launched a nuclear missile at
China’s artificial island in the South China Sea, claiming China is building a nuclear
arsenal. The world is officially on a war footing. As the mushroom cloud appears on
the horizon you ask yourself:
What happens next?
Explaining the social condition of humanity has been the focus of social research-
ers for centuries. The purpose of thinking this way is to gather enough evidence to
spin a good (and hopefully rigorously considered) story about why collectivised
humans do what they do. The humanities and social sciences have always had an
uneasy relationship with the sciences, often drawing on the methodological ideas of
the Scientific Revolution to build theories as robust as those associated with gravity
and evolution to explain the actions of humans. Unfortunately, humans are fickle
beings and unable to act as predictably as commentators would like. So social the-
ory is built by using the best available evidence or the most persuasive story. As new
evidence and observations come to light, new theories are constructed. The social
sciences and humanities can be an iterative and dynamic field. Sometimes that evi-
dence comes from social observations, like in ethnography, and sometimes they
come from literary and visual texts. What to make of observations of collective
human behaviour is a theoretical conundrum.
In this chapter I will explain the theoretical foundations of one of the most cited
sociologists in Western scholarship, Ulrich Beck. Beck’s social theory is introduced
in his book Risk Society (1992). He questioned the way sociologists and philoso-
phers framed the way they saw the world. He argued that social theory, commonly
used by sociologists and literary theorists, provided frameworks for a version of
modernity that had already passed. He argued that the social has new priorities,
challenging the existence of categories sociologists have relied on for their lives
work, such as class. Understandably, this point of view has made Beck a divisive
figure within the field of sociology (Sørensen and Christiansen, 2014). However,
when you are scanning social media and you see someone write the term modernity
or late modernity or even late capitalism, we have Beck and his contemporaries to
thank (or to use to inquire into what those terms mean).1 In a nutshell, Beck believed
that social theorists needed to take stock of what is already happening in the world
and conduct sociologies of the present, rather than relying on the predictable frame-
works of the industrial era that, according to Beck, is in its final days.
We used to think politics was boring…and now, I worry about everything. I don’t know
what to worry about first. Never mind the government, it’s the sodding banks that terrify
me. And it’s not even them. It’s the companies, the brands, the corporations. They treat us
like algorithms while they go round poisoning the air, and the temperature, and the rain, and

1
 Anthony Giddens (1991) and Deborah Lupton (2013) have also engages with notions of risk in
relation to late modernity. Giddens, according to Lupton, writes about it very differently. If the
notion of living in a risk modernity interests you but Beck’s take on it does not, these authors are
worth considering.
The Years and Years of Late Modernity: Ulrich Beck and Risk Society 61

don’t even start me on Isis. And now we’ve got America. Never thought I’d be scared of
America in a million years but we’ve got fake news and false facts. I don’t even know
what’s true anymore. What sort of world are we in? Because if it’s this bad now, what’s it
going to be like for you? In 30 years? 10 years? 5 years? What’s it going to be like?—Daniel
Lyons (Episode 1, 00:09:37)

Daniel Lyons is a character in the BBC cyber series Years and Years that is set in the
not-to-distant future. Unlike dystopian texts, Years and Years draws inspiration from
events that are already happening in the world, or have happened in recent memo-
ries of adult viewers, to stitch together a comment on the world as it is. Spanning
10 years (2024–2034) over which the oldest sister, Edith, slowly dies of radiation
poisoning from documenting the effects of the nuclear blast described in the open-
ing of this chapter. The television series traces the lives of one family as they live
during the transition between, what Beck might describe as, first and second moder-
nity. Each story arc considers the collapse of industrialised society which, according
to Gran words (Episode 6), seemed like it had done its job by the year 2000. First
modernity, by the turn of the twenty-first century, had created a nice comfortable
Western world to live in. However, in just 10,000 days, Gran says, the effects of
industrialised society had come home to roost and humans were to blame.
…We blame these vast, sweeping tides of history, you know, like they’re out of our control,
like we’re so helpless and little and small. But it’s still our fault. You know why? It’s that £1
t-shirt. A t-shirt that cost £1. We can’t resist it, every single one of us. We see a t-shirt that
costs £1 and we think, “Ooh, that’s a bargain. I’ll have that,” and we buy it. … And the
shopkeeper gets five miserable pence for that t-shirt, and some little peasant in a field gets
paid 0.01 pence, and we think that’s fine—all of us. And we hand over our quid and we buy
into that system for life. Muriel Deacon (Episode 6, 00:10:20)

This chapter will deploy Years and Years to explain Beck’s perspectives on late moder-
nity, or the shift from industrialised (first) modernity to risk (second) modernity, and
their critiques by his contemporaries. However, first it is important to introduce you to
the Lyons family and their experiences of the years and years of late modernity.

Years and Years

The experiences of the Lyons family are a lens through which viewers of Years and
Years see the world change. The first episode ends with President Donald Trump’s
final days in office. At the outset, people are afraid of what the erratic President
might do. Sure enough, the US military launches a nuclear missile at an artificial
Chinese island. 45,000 people were killed. One of the Lyons family, Edith, an activ-
ist monitoring the island from Vietnam, was poisoned by the radiation. The series
covers the final decade of her life after receiving an extended death sentence.
The global response to the US bombing of China was to place economic sanc-
tions on the USA. However, in isolating the USA economically from the rest of the
world, the resulting collapse of the US economy resulted in worldwide economic
depression. Another Lyons, Stephen, his wife Celeste, and their children Bethany
and Ruby, lose over £one million and their home in London because of the eco-
nomic collapse.
62 N. Barnes

Meanwhile, Daniel Lyons meets and falls in love with Viktor, a Ukrainian refu-
gee who had been tortured due to repressive Russian-inspired laws regarding homo-
sexuality. Daniel and Viktor are continuously faced with the possibility of Viktor
being deported from the UK without notice—which happens. Viktor escapes again
from Ukraine to Spain, only to be forced to move on again as the Spanish govern-
ment is overthrown for a fascist regime unsupportive of same sex relationships.
Viktor eventually makes it back to the UK only to be locked up in Britain’s new
Erstwhile camps, or death camps. These camps house refugees with the danger-
ously and infectiously ill (who can no longer get pharmaceuticals) to ensure the
“natural selection” of the displaced people.
Stephen, desperate for work, and eventually divorced from Celeste, took a job with
a company run by a man who bullied him in school. He found himself as an administra-
tor in the privatised housing service, administering the Erstwhile camps. While attend-
ing a private meeting of all housing services, Stephen heard Prime Minister Vivienne
Rook proposed naturally selected genocide in the camps. Angry that his brother Daniel
had died rescuing Viktor, he moved Viktor from a holding camp to an Erstwhile camp.
Edith Lyons was an activist. She was always an activist, and even when given her
death sentence and returning home to spend her last decade with her family, she con-
tinued to be an activist. Edith hacked corrupt institutions, helped home the homeless
while investigating the existence of the Erstwhile camps, and recruited Viktor,
Celeste, Bethany, and others to break into the camps. At the same time as the Erstwhile
camp break-in, Rosie Lyons, single mother and youngest of the Lyons siblings, drove
her food truck through the barriers that separated her from her son, caught outside
after curfew. Both sisters videoed their acts of resistance, exposing human rights
abuses to the world and leading to the arrest of Prime Minister Vivienne Rook.
Each of these events have already happened or are currently happening in the
world: there is tension between China and Anglo-American nations; COVID-19 has
brought the limitations of pharmaceuticals into stark focus and plunged the world
into an economic crisis unseen since the Great Depression; climate change and ter-
ror have displaced people all over the globe; repressive populist regimes have gained
power in multiple countries; refugees have been held in prison camps by the
Australian and US governments for decades in breach of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and the UK is currently investigating the same processes; and
LGBTIQ refugees are systematically deported back to their oppressive countries.
While Trump never won a second term, like the miniseries predicted, Joe Biden’s
positioning of the 2020 US election as a Battle for the Soul of the Nation is the
epitome of what Beck might have called risk society. And as Woodman, Threadgold,
and Possamai-Inesedy (2015, p. 1119) suggest, “The key to his work is that we are
in the middle of a momentous shift to a new modernity”.

Second Modernity

Ulrich Beck (1944–2015) was a German sociologist who was particularly interested
in the nature of reality. He abandoned the discipline of philosophy in order to pursue
sociology. He reasoned that philosophy was not concerned with reality, rather its
The Years and Years of Late Modernity: Ulrich Beck and Risk Society 63

own concepts, and the world had changed since those concepts were formulated
(Sørensen and Christiansen, 2014). Beck wanted to provide a social theory which
informed where the social was going, rather than what was already established. He
did not want to lever descriptions of social life and institutions into no longer rele-
vant categories and questioned whether the established categories of the social were
up to the task of tracing the changes the world is experiencing (Woodman et al.,
2015). Categorisation of the social is the key activity of sociologists, and significant
sociologists, like Emile Durkheim, had defined the way the social should be studied.
They were concerned with explaining the simple workings of a society through
“social facts” (Durkheim, 1982, p. 43), and to go beyond those facts was not scien-
tific or rigorous. Other “founding fathers” of sociology, Marx and Weber, tried to
explain how goods were distributed amongst society, concentrating on who con-
trolled the wealth and who did not (Mythen, 2004). Beck (1992) argued that the
social facts about the structure of social life and the agency of humans and institu-
tions to affect those structures were no longer “facts” because the world had
changed. Furthermore, he argued that the changing nature of risk had changed how
sociologists needed to think about the distribution of wealth.
Beck (1992) maintained that the social was no longer focused on progress as an
economic approach to scarcity, as per the industrial model of society, or first moder-
nity. Rather, the social is now more concerned with mitigating the successes of first
modernity that resulted in unforeseen calamity. In the industrialised class society,
misery and lack of resources was apparent. In late modernity the distribution of
resources is no longer associated with how much of the “cake” is distributed to
whom, rather what to do with a poisoned cake (Beck, 1992, p.  19). Beck often
focused on how social institutions are beginning to consider climate change, rather
than solely focusing on the distribution of capital. Institutional management now
“erupts over how the risks accompanying goods production—nuclear and chemical
mega technology, genetic research, the threat to the environment, over militarisation
and the increasing immiseration outside of western industrial society—can be dis-
tributed, prevented, controlled and legitimised” (Beck et  al., 1994, p.  6). In late
modernity the focus is on insecurity before scarcity, and this, Beck argues, is usher-
ing society into a second modernity. Each of the six episodes of Years and Years
focuses on possible risks that the social will need to consider over the next decade:
nuclear war, economic collapse, defunding or unaffordability of healthcare, the dis-
placement of peoples through terror and climate change, subsequent housing crises,
pandemics, and the pervasiveness of technology. Each episode ends with a provoca-
tion Beck might have liked: What happens next?
Beck contends that first modernity structures must adapt to a risk society.
Structures like schools, banks, and governments have atrophied in late modernity
and will need to develop structures which address uncertainty. Uncertainty is a
theme that can be explained through Steven Lyons’ family in Years and Years. After
losing millions in the banking collapse, making his credibility in the finance indus-
try untenable, he and his family, Celeste, Bethany, and Ruby, move in with Muriel.
The sanctions on the USA have also increased uncertainty through the cost of phar-
maceuticals which Ruby needs for her epilepsy.
64 N. Barnes

Bethany’s story arc also explores the nature of uncertainty. She comes out to her
parents as trans. Her parents initially think she is transgendered and are confused but
supportive, asking what they should call her. Bethany, in fact, is transhuman, or some-
one who wants to be cyborgic, or permanently plugged in to the digital. Over the
miniseries she increasingly becomes transhuman and her story arc provides an anchor
for contemporary feelings of uncertainty and technology. How much screen time is
too much? How will her transition be funded and what happens if she chooses a back-
alley surgery? How will reduced reliability of electricity affect her functionality?
Does the government own her if the National Health Service pays for her transition?
Risk has always been related to capitalist society. Capitalism does not work with-
out risk, but Beck posits that late modernity has brought uncertainty into the risks
that are taken. In first modernity, a capitalist took a risk using the knowledge of a few
possible outcomes, weighing up the statistics of failure against the probability of suc-
cess. Late modernity has meant that situations of risk are increasingly unique and
uncertain but social institutions continue to reflexively take risks based on what has
happened in the past. In first modernity “to calculate a risk is to master time, to dis-
cipline the future” (Ewald, 1991, p. 207), and Beck argues (Mythen, 2004) that this
approach to risk has had apocalyptic consequences for the planet. As a result, the
fundamental nature of risk has changed and is increasingly uncertain. Before indus-
trialisation, social institutions were aware of natural disasters, like cyclones and
earthquakes, and took calculated risks accordingly. The industrialised era has created
manufactured risks associated with an industrialised society, like occupational health
and safety. Now social institutions have to account for both natural and manufactured
hazards, which is how healthcare and other welfare systems came to be established.
As society moves towards second modernity, the results of progress have come to
include air pollution, rising temperatures, chemical warfare, and biotechnology, to
name a few, with potentially catastrophic risks. Beck (1994) argues that this change
to the nature of risk has uprooted the social structures humans have come to know
and trust, ushering in a reflexive modernity that results in transitioning social institu-
tions to be increasingly global, individualised, and questioning of expert systems.
Beck (1992) contended that old ways of understanding the social, like class, are,
or are going to become, increasingly irrelevant. Catastrophic risks, or their eventual-
ity as we have seen with COVID-19, reframe how social institutions are conceptu-
alised by society. This is a key point of contention with Beck’s theory which we will
explore in more depth later in the chapter—briefly, Beck often fails to account for
how wealth might ensure class will continuously remain a factor in how risk affects
groups of people (Atkinson, 2007). Beforehand, Beck’s perspective on what makes
up a risk society—individualisation, cosmopolitanism, and democratisation of sci-
ence—will be explained to the extent possible in this short chapter.

Individualisation

Beck argues (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995) that we can no longer situate our-
selves within traditional social institutions: “Biographies are removed from tradi-
tional precepts and certainties, from external control and general moral laws,
The Years and Years of Late Modernity: Ulrich Beck and Risk Society 65

becoming open and dependent on decision-making, and are assigned as a task for
each individual” (p. 5). First modernity led to people easily being able to claim they
were working class, or middle class, a public servant, or an entrepreneur. Second
modernity is characterised by humans having mobile identities and looking for
ways to hold together these multiple selves. Humans have some experience of many
institutions. For example, my history and current reality cannot be separated which
means I am both working and middle class, homeless and a homeowner, queer and
cis, Christian and atheist. Viktor, in Years and Years, is a refugee and a member of
the Lyons family, a service station worker and an economist. While categorisation
into these social institutions is not new, the development of institutions to help peo-
ple navigate their individualised identity is a feature of second modernity. For
example, while people still make decisions about what is normal and abnormal,
there is an increasing tolerance within social institutions for abnormal, and hierar-
chies of legitimacy (Woodman et al., 2015) have begun to form. For example, in
Years and Years, Rosie is a sex-positive character but cannot accept a man who had
sex with a robot, she has a hierarchy of legitimacy when it comes to sexual activities.
As each generation will experience a different cultural reality, then it is the chil-
dren that a risk society continuously looks towards to control the uncertainty and
ignorance. A theme that runs through Years and Years is how children have access
to technology, which is part of Bethany’s story arc, but also the other children’s.
Schools have introduced compulsory sexual awareness imagery class, or what the
Lyons family jokingly refer to as porn class. In this class, children are taught to
understand the uncontrolled sexual images they are bombarded with through new
media and categorise the type of attention they might receive. Technology is also
utilised to address, what Vivienne Rook proclaims in one of her political speeches,
the access to pornography on the phones of 6-year-old children. She promises to
give every parent and teacher a Blink—a device that cuts Wi-Fi signals within a
personal radius. This Blink technology is later used to blackout media access from
concentration camps for refugees and those who cannot afford medicine.
Hierarchies of legitimacy in Beck’s individualisation are also closely related to
the distribution of risk around the world. Who gets medicine and who gets to be safe
are global risks, not just national risks.

Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism refers to the weakening of the welfare state and the increasing
emphasis on globalisation. This approach to world risk that Beck (Lupton, 2013)
took in his later scholarship focused on environmental risk but also on increased risk
to employment due to global financial crises, like Stephen Lyons and his family
experienced. He also acknowledged the presence of global terrorism as a risk.
Cosmopolitanism has begun to break down borders between nation-states, and the
effects of borders (like putting sanctions on the USA) create a domino effect that is
felt across the whole world. A global risk society generates a threat to national
66 N. Barnes

stability but at the same time makes cosmopolitanism compulsory for all nations out
of necessity. States must work with each other, and institutions are developed to
assist this in happening. Beck argues that this necessity means that nations must
negotiate with one another over issues, such as human rights, because they are
applied in different ways in different nations.
Viktor’s story in Years and Years is useful for understanding the way nations have
fought against the looming need for cosmopolitanism. Russia has re-invaded the
nations of the old Soviet bloc, including Viktor’s home country of Ukraine. LGBTIQ
identities are outlawed under the new Soviet Union and Viktor is arrested and tor-
tured. He eventually escapes and finds himself in a refugee camp in Britain where
he meets Daniel Lyons, and they fall in love. Viktor is under threat of deportation
because he has no evidence he was tortured—his captors electrocuted him which
does not leave evidence. Viktor comes to live with Daniel but gets caught illegally
working in a service station so is deported back to Ukraine. He manages to escape
to France, but that country elects a fascist regime which also outlaws homosexual-
ity. He then escapes to Spain, but as that nation also turns to a homophobic fascist
regime, it becomes a necessity to smuggle Viktor back to Britain. In the channel
crossing, Daniel drowns and Viktor survives, only to be sent back to a detention
centre and then onto an Erstwhile, or concentration camp.
Vivienne Rook, who owns the detention centres and is now Prime Minister, is
aware of the global health and climate crisis that is killing and displacing humans.
Her solution is concentration camps that put the sick in with the refugees and “let
nature take its course” (Episode 5, 00:56:25) to reduce the numbers of displaced
humans, like the British did with concentration camps in the Boer War. Rook’s
approach highlights what could happen if a global problem is dealt with on a
national scale, rather than through global diplomacy. The story arc demonstrates
Beck’s argument for cosmopolitanism as a basic need of a risk society in order to
avoid such abuses of human rights.

The Democratisation of Science

The democratisation of science refers to the ushering of science into politics due to
the consequences of progress. We now see increased agitation for governments to
intercede in the unforeseen catastrophes of progress, but the consequence of activ-
ism is the politicisation of the expertise of science. The risks we face in the Western
world are risks told by experts more often than personally experienced, making
expertise something to be believed because it is too complicated to learn about. As
such, late modernity has seen a collision of the expert with lay knowledge and an
interrogation of what it means to be an expert. Science’s positioning as objective has
been disputed and presented as problematic (Mythen, 2004). This opening up of
discussion about science has seen subpolitics emerge which have attitudes to sci-
ence at their core. In other words, policies are determined according to a politician’s
The Years and Years of Late Modernity: Ulrich Beck and Risk Society 67

position on the effects of progress and/or the objectivity and rationality of science.
Science is now politics. Trump’s response to COVID-19 and withdrawal from the
Paris Climate Change Agreement are clear examples of this in action. This means
that there has been an increase in the power of politics in late modernity but also the
simultaneous stripping of its foundations of rationality that were established in the
nineteenth century.
Vivienne Rook uses ignorance as a weapon in Years and Years to convince peo-
ple to vote for her. What is interesting about how she is treated in regard to igno-
rance is that she decides what people should and should not be ignorant of through
electoral structures. We first meet her in the opening scene where she is asked a
question on a panel show about the situation in the Middle East, to which she replies
she does not give a fuck. Chastised by the host for swearing on television, Rook
later creates a party celebrating that moment by naming her party the **** (Four
Stars) Party, or as she insinuates, the I don’t give a Fuck Party. Her campaign
addresses ignorance through claiming that people should pass an intelligence test
before they should be allowed to vote. Her opponents and detractors continuously
challenge Rook on her ignorance which she, reminiscent of Trump, subsequently
turns into slogans or policy. When she is duly elected, those who supported tradi-
tional parties called her supporters ignorant. In light of mass ignorance being linked
to election victory, Rook consequently makes voting compulsory, leading to her
election as Prime Minister.
Beck believes that democratisation of science is a good thing because the social
is being reconfigured with an attitude of hope for a better future, despite the dire
consequences of inaction and ambivalence. For example, while climate deniers
might be in office, the politicisation and activism associated with climate change
will continue. This means people are actively striving for a better future and forcing
those in office to justify why climate action is not a part of developing a better future.

Extending Beck

Beck (1992) saw the social change occurring in late modernity as the beginning of
a new type of capitalism, labour, global order, society, nature, subjectivity, everyday
life, and state. He argued that new approaches to empirical investigation are needed
to produce a reasonable picture of this new world so that people will worry less
about the world that they no longer recognise. As Vivienne Rook politicks:
I just don’t understand the world anymore. It all made sense until a few years back—the left
was the left, the right was the right, America was America, I couldn’t even point to Syria on
a map. I just kissed the kids goodnight, turned out the lights, looked forward to waking up
the next day. I dread it now. Every day. (Episode 1: 00:00:40)

It is the sociologist’s job to provide that picture, and Beck argues that in clinging to
old definitions of the social developed by sociologists of the first modernity, that
new picture is more difficult to draw. This is where the key criticism of Beck is
68 N. Barnes

oriented and what has led to him being regarded as either a sociological heretic or
clairvoyant (Mythen, 2004). Woodman et  al. (2015) explain that because he her-
alded the new institutions that have developed in late modernity as class slayers, he
ignores the reality that these new institutions are themselves littered with class pro-
cesses. He has also been shown to contradict himself regarding the death of class
systems by arguing that new types of class, besides that associated with wealth, are
emerging. Criticism of Beck lies in his inability to reconcile broad generalisations
and contradictions in his description of the new social institutions with the reality of
how those institutions function (Atkinson, 2007).
This criticism of Beck does not mean that his social theory is not useful for
researchers to deploy. The key reason critique exists in social theory is not to dis-
miss a whole theory for the weakness of part of it, rather to use that theory, fully
cognisant of its limitations, and try and solve the impasse. I could try using Years
and Years, but I also think at this point in time it’s important to respect Beck’s insis-
tence on observing reality. The miniseries might be close, but it is not real. For start-
ers, it predicted Trump would be in office for two terms and I am sitting here writing
this chapter while he is refusing to leave the White House after one. Beck wants us
to observe the world in its reality, rather than what we think is there. Extending his
theory is best left to empirical work. It is possible that a future social theorist, pos-
sibly someone reading this very book, will develop a theory based on Beck’s Risk
Society (or any of the theories you’ve read about in this volume) and will be includ-
ing them in future social theory explainers.

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You want to find out more about seeing society differently.
• Turn to p. 163 to read Valentine’s discussion of care ethics.
• Turn to p. 179 to read Záhora’s explanation of Rancière.
You want to compare “late modernity” to “modernity”
• Turn to p. 21 to read Prosser’s discussion of hegemony.
You are interested in an approach for inquiring into what “second modernity”
might hold.
• Turn to p. 33 to read Ferguson and Cripps Clarke’s explanation of abduc-
tive inquiry.
The Years and Years of Late Modernity: Ulrich Beck and Risk Society 69

References

Atkinson, W. (2007). Beck, individualization and the death of class: A critique. The British Journal
of Sociology, 58(3), 349–366. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-­4446.2007.00155.x
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. SAGE.
Beck, U., & Beck-Gernsheim, E. (1995). The normal chaos of love. Wiley.
Beck, U., Giddens, A., & Lash, S. (1994). Reflexive modernization: politics, tradition and aesthet-
ics in the modern social order. Stanford University Press.
Durkheim, E. (1982). Rules of sociological method (2nd printing ed.). Free Press.
Ewald, F. (1991). Insurance and risk. In M. Foucault, G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.),
The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality: With two lectures by and an interview with
Michel Foucault (pp. 197–210). University of Chicago Press.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford
University Press.
Lupton, D. (2013). Risk (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203070161
Mythen, G. (2004). Mapping the risk society. In Ulrich Beck (pp. 11–29). Pluto Press. https://doi.
org/10.2307/j.ctt18fs3c4.5
Sørensen, M. P., & Christiansen, A. (2014). Ulrich Beck: An introduction to the theory of second
modernity and the risk society. In U. Beck (Ed.), Ulrich Beck: Pioneer in cosmopolitan sociol-
ogy and risk society (pp. 7–13). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­04990-­8_2
Woodman, D., Threadgold, S., & Possamai-Inesedy, A. (2015). Prophet of a new modernity:
Ulrich Beck’s legacy for sociology. Journal of Sociology, 51(4), 1117–1131. https://doi.
org/10.1177/1440783315621166
Orange is the New Other

Alison Bedford and Emma Chalmers

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In the next chapter, Alison Bedford and Emma Chalmers explain mid-twentieth-­
century feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas about sex through Season 1 of
Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black. The authors contextualise de Beauvoir’s phi-
losophy both in time (contemporary thinking has moved on), in social and theoreti-
cal circles (she was famously in a relationship with Sartre and challenged his work),
and politically within the development of feminist and queer theory. Bedford and
Chalmers explain that while some of de Beauvoir’s ideas about what it means to be
woman are reminiscent of their time, her work is significant in that it provided a
starting point for the development of third wave feminist ideas and touched on con-
cepts which can help illuminate the concurrent development of intersectional theory.
The authors build knowledge of de Beauvoir’s theories of woman by converging
her work with Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black at various points. Firstly, that
woman is historically and philosophically defined in opposition to a man rather than
being ‘human’ in her/their own right. Secondly, that women are complicit in their
own subjugation. Thirdly, that women are incapable of transcending this condition
because it happens within the subconscious. This means women are unable to freely
choose not to be subjugated because oppression is both internalised an institution-
alised. Finally, the process of subjugation happens at different points and in differ-
ent ways that can be categorised as The Girl, Wife, and Lesbian, just a few of the
ways Beauvoir ‘categorises’ women.

A. Bedford (*) · E. Chalmers

University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia
St Mary’s College, Toowoomba, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 71

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_7
72 A. Bedford and E. Chalmers

Introduction

Simone de Beauvoir is best known for her ground-breaking and influential work
The Second Sex in which she draws attention to, what she believed to be, an over-
looked aspect of the phenomenological account of ‘being’; that is the influence of
sexual difference on the lived experiences of women. Drawing on, and sometimes
critically responding to, the work of Husserl and contemporaries such as Merleau-­
Ponty and Sartre, Beauvoir developed a description of woman as ‘other’ that is
formulated through the tradition of phenomenology. This account can be seen to
reflect the phenomenological practices of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty and in its full
conception, contests Sartre’s position on absolute freedom.
This chapter will first explore Beauvoir’s relationship with phenomenology and
then apply ideas from her most significant work, The Second Sex, to Season 1 of
Netflix’s popular prison drama, Orange Is the New Black (OITNB) (2014). Season 1
follows the protagonist Piper as she is separated from her fiancée and her comfort-
able, middle-class, hetero-normative life and imprisoned for her involvement in a
drug ring 10 years prior. Once in jail, Piper is challenged by her total loss of self-­
determination and is confronted with many different types of women. Piper’s past,
in which she had a same-sex relationship, also becomes a complicating factor as her
ex-girlfriend Alex is in the same facility. Piper’s exposure to the diversity of woman-
hood and the challenges to her own self-construction as a woman make OITNB a
microcosm of femaleness which can be used to explore Beauvoir’s construction of
the ‘second’ sex. Finally, consideration will be given to how Beauvoir’s construction
of women as ‘other’ has shaped third-wave feminist scholarship, gender studies, and
intersectional theory to show how her theories continue to shape the critical land-
scape and offer us insight into the ways in which we enact the various roles
we embody.

First, Phenomenology

This chapter will first explore Beauvoir’s relationship with phenomenology and
then apply ideas from her most significant work, The Second Sex, to Season 1 of
Netflix’s popular prison drama, Orange Is the New Black (OITNB). Season 1 fol-
lows the protagonist Piper as she is separated from her fiancée and her comfortable,
middle-class, hetero-normative life and imprisoned for her involvement in a drug
ring 10  years prior. Once in jail, Piper is challenged by her total loss of self-­
determination and is confronted with many different types of women. Piper’s past,
in which she had a same-sex relationship, also becomes a complicating factor as her
ex-girlfriend Alex is in the same facility. Piper’s exposure to the diversity of wom-
anhood and the challenges to her own self-construction as a woman make OITNB a
microcosm of femaleness which can be used to explore Beauvoir’s construction of
the ‘second’ sex. Finally, consideration will be given to how Beauvoir’s construc-
tion of women as ‘other’ has shaped third-wave feminist scholarship, gender
Orange is the New Other 73

studies, and intersectional theory to show how her theories continue to shape the
critical landscape and offer us insight into the ways in which we enact the various
roles we embody.

Beauvoir and Freedom

To understand Beauvoir, it is vital to acknowledge her relationship with Sartre. The

couple were fierce intellectuals and responded to each other’s ideas in their works.
Sartre’s use of phenomenology and his ideas on freedom provide a useful context to
understanding Beauvoir’s arguments. Sartre’s existentialism denies determinism
and posits a necessary freedom in existence. To do so, he utilizes the phenomeno-
logical method to demonstrate that freedom is a condition of existence. Sartre
asserts that freedom is absolute as ‘Man can not [sic] be sometimes slave and some-
times free; he is wholly and forever free or he is not free at all’ (Sartre, 1968,
p. 441). Within this framework of freedom, freedom is entirely unconditional, and
the facts of our physical existence are not determinants of our future. Instead, we are
each responsible for the situations we freely choose to be in; facticity does not
determine existence. Sartrean facticity refers to ‘all those properties that a third-
person investigation can establish…such as weight, height, and skin color; social
facts such as race, and nationality…historical facts such as my past action, my fam-
ily background, and my broader historical milieu…’ (Crowell 2020, p. 14). As fac-
ticity does not dictate being, one cannot suggest that they are held to ransom by their
facticity as that would deny their free will. As we have no choice but to be free,
because it is a condition of existence, to deny this free will, and to live as though our
facticity is our being, would be to live only as ‘being-in-itself’, rather than
‘being-for-itself’.
To live as a ‘being-in-itself’ would be to deny consciousness and give credit only
to our bodily existence. Sartre posits that it is necessary to transcend our facticity
and assert our freedom against it. As Manser explains, ‘…transcendence [is] the
ability to take up different attitudes to these facts [the facts of facticity] and to
attempt to change some of them’ (cited in Elwynn, 2012, p. 603). In recognising the
ability to transcend our facticity, we recognise ourselves as a conscious being, that
is, being-for-itself. This is our freedom, a state of consciousness that accepts that
our facticity does not determine our existence, rather we make choices in every situ-
ation. This freedom is inescapable and could only be denied by ‘denying [our]
humanity’ (Macey, 2000, p. 341). The logic of this argument, however, becomes
faulty if we consider our humanity to be inextricably connected to our lived experi-
ences—a central tenet of phenomenology.
Simone de Beauvoir argued that ‘the ideal for freedom, as expressed by “being-­
for-­itself”, could be seriously impeded by the socio-cultural structures and institu-
tions limiting individual development’ (Kearney & Rainwater, 1996, p. 93). In other
words, when an individual is shaped so completely by the situation of their exis-
tence, freedom—as Sartre suggests—may not be easily available. According to
Beauvoir, this is the case for women, as women have internalised the
74 A. Bedford and E. Chalmers

constructedness of their ‘being’ due to the socio-cultural force by which man has
‘othered’ women (Kearney & Rainwater, 1996). Beauvoir begins by attacking the
popular conceptualisation of ‘the feminine’, suggesting that femininity is not a bio-
logical given and that ‘[s]cience regards any characteristic as a reaction dependent
in part upon situation[author’s emphasis]’ (Kearney & Rainwater 1996, p. 95). This
seems to suggest that facticity does, at least in part, influence choice in an unavoid-
able way. While freedom to choose between options is still available, the internali-
sation of the situation offered to women results in the diminishment of choice.
Beauvoir’s assertion that ‘humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself
but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being’ (Kearney &
Rainwater, 1996, p. 97) implies a lack of freedom, as the removal of autonomy can
only be regarded as the removal of freedom. If Beauvoir is correct, can women be
held completely responsible for their choices when their actions are restricted by the
internalised patriarchy that shapes their existence? As man has ‘consistently defined
himself as pure “being-for-itself”’ (Kearney & Rainwater, 1996, p. 93), women are
left to define themselves only as ‘being-in-itself’—through the essentialising prac-
tices of patriarchy. Furthermore, when left only the role of ‘other’ to fulfil, women
are further limited to ‘being-for-others’, as they can only know themselves through
the male gaze, ‘[s]he is defined and differentiated with reference to man…she is the
incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the
Absolute—she is the Other’ (Kearney & Rainwater 1996, p. 97). The suggestion is
that women are forced to define themselves as ‘woman’, rather than being able to
own the word ‘human’ as a term of designation. This process signifies the removal
of freedom as self-determinism is central to free will (McLeod, 2013).

Ambiguity

Beauvoir further asserts that women experience ambiguity in the ‘situation’. While
oppression is undeniable, women can also experience moments of empowerment.
For women, the feelings of oppression and empowerment are situation dependent.
While transcendence is denied to women due to oppression exerted at the level of
consciousness, women can experience feelings of freedom, particularly in situations
not structured by society, for example, a situation in nature. Women ultimately must
move back into a world that denies them their freedom, a world that forces them to
align themselves with male power, thus creating another feeling of ambiguity. As
such, women move ambiguously between transcendence and immanence, ulti-
mately experiencing degradation each time they are denied true freedom. The ambi-
guity of existence for women lies in the dual experience of being both an object if
oppression (the other) and an occasional subject of freedom for herself.
This ambiguous duality of object and subject can be seen in OITNB: Healy’s
seeming support of the female prisoners, giving them the impression of indepen-
dence and autonomy. In Beauvoir’s terms, Healy could be seen as:
the male who opens up the future toward which she also transcends [in this case, Piper and
the others’ desire for self-determination]; in reality, women have never pitted female values
Orange is the New Other 75

against male ones: it is men wanting to maintain masculine prerogatives who invented this
division; they wanted to create a feminine domain—a rule of life, of immanence—only to
lock woman in it. But it is above and beyond all sexual specification that the existence seeks
self-justification in the movement of his transcendence: the very submission of women
proves this. (1949, p. 100)

Healy’s creation of a ‘committee’ of prisoners which are democratically elected by

other inmates gives the impression that he is recognising the prisoner’s subjectivity
and freedom of choice. However, Piper is sorely disappointed to realise the commit-
tee is little more than an opportunity to complain and be provided with donuts. No
actual change in the lived reality of the prisoners is achieved, and the women are
complicit in this, selling their subjectivity for donuts. Healy’s role as a prison
administrator requires him to ensure the compliance and so his seeming efforts at
recognising the female subjectivity only serve to cement their roles as objects within
the prison system.
The (female) voice on the prison PA system establishes the lack of agency and
autonomy the women possess. Women cannot control their bodies as ‘all inmates
must be checked for lice’ (Ep 1) and ‘clean ladies are healthy ladies’ (Ep 8). The
choice to give this faceless guard a female voice hints at the way in which women
internalise their objectivity and perform the roles of ‘woman’ as Beauvoir
suggests:
First, she has to represent herself; at home, going about her occupations, she merely dresses:
to go out, to entertain, she “dresses up.” Dressing has a twofold significance: it is meant to
show the woman’s social standing (her standard of living, her wealth, the social class she
belongs to), but at the same time it concretizes feminine narcissism; it is her uniform and
her attire; the woman who suffers from not doing anything thinks she is expressing her
being through her dress. Beauty treatments and dressing are kinds of work that allow her to
appropriate her person as she appropriates her home through housework; she thus believes
that she is choosing and recreating her own self. And social customs encourage her to alien-
ate herself in her image. (1949, pp. 649–650)

While the prisoners all must wear the same uniform, each seeks to assert her indi-
viduality and femininity to ‘express her being through her dress’ (Beauvoir, 1949,
p. 649). Morello wears 1950s-style make-up, with bright red lipstick and carefully
coiffed hair, Red has her eyebrows and legs waxed by other inmates, and Sofia runs
a hairdressing salon from her cell, offering a special deal to Taystee just prior to her
parole board hearing so she looks her best. These efforts to meet a certain standard
of appearance, even when incarcerated, speak to Beauvoir’s point—women feel
they are ‘choosing and recreating [their] own self’ (1949, p. 650).
The prison environment serves to both highlight women as objectified others, yet
at the same time also offers glimpses of transcendence. The foreign unknowability
of women’s bodies is tightly regulated. Women are subjected to strip searches (Ep
1), and their lack of autonomy is cemented in the induction session which outlines
all the ways in which they will comply with rules (Ep 2). This induction session is
run by a woman which reinforces Beauvoir’s point that women are complicit in
their othering and subordination. OITNB offers many examples of the ways in
which women and both given glimpses of transcendence yet firmly kept in the posi-
tion of other and object.
76 A. Bedford and E. Chalmers

The Second Sex

Beauvoir asserts that Sartre’s conceptualisation of absolute freedom or ‘being-for-­

itself’ overlooks that way female consciousness is penetrated and, thus, her inter-
pretation of her facticity is not free. This process occurs because women are aware
of themselves as ‘other’ and as such embody a consciousness of ‘being-for-others’.
In The Second Sex she discusses the way the word ‘man’ is used to designate human
beings, and that this contributes to the establishment of a binary that sees men as
dominant and women as subordinate. Women are defined by what they don’t have
(male qualities) but man are not defined through their lack of femaleness. The abso-
lute human type is masculine in its definition and is autonomous in its definition.
Woman, on the other hand, is defined with reference to man. She is inessential,
whereas he is essential. ‘He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other’.
This relegation to ‘other’ happens at the level of consciousness. Beauvoir sug-
gests that the ‘expression of duality—that of self and other’, is one that has been
well established in the world. She asserts that ‘otherness is a fundamental cate-
gory of human thought’. For man to establish himself as ‘one’, he simultaneously
had to establish woman as ‘other’. To be dominant, an other must exist that one
can dominate. Hegel discusses this in his master/slave dialectic—to be the sub-
ject, there needs to be an oppression of the object. Hegel, however, discussed a
conflict out of which the subject can lose its dominance. In the case of most dia-
lectical relationships, the subject can, at times, perceive their own ‘otherness’,
they can become the object. Beauvoir, however, points out that the ‘othering’ of
females is so absolute that men have become the sole subject, and she questions
why this is. She asserts that no object willing becomes so, that is it only through
the ‘one’ defining himself as ‘one’ that the other is defined. Women, she claims,
do not challenge this position because the positioning of ‘other’ has not come
about through an event or social change, it is not historically defined through an
occurrence. So, women have always been defined in this way and, as such, have a
dependency on the role of ‘other’.
In this role, women experience oppression, which is defined by Beauvoir as a
lack of freedom to interpret your situation. Sartre determined that ‘being-in-­
situation’ meant that you are free to interpret your surroundings, the world does not
do this for you. Beauvoir challenges this. She asserts that women are denied the
opportunity for transcendence (to not be defined by her facticity), because their
oppression happens at the level of consciousness. It alters the female capacity to
interpret facticity freely. Consequently, Beauvoir, contra Sartre, suggests that there
are degrees of freedom, rather than an absolute freedom.
This concept is depicted clearly through the character Taystee, in OITNB. Taystee
is granted parole and is consequently given a freedom the other inmates hope for.
Sartre’s ‘being-in-situation’—a consequence of our absolute freedom—is denied to
Taystee. Her experiences in the outside world demonstrate her lack of freedom. The
way she is treated by others shows that the interpretation of others impacts her free-
dom. She has no access to safe accommodation, money, food, family, or friends. Her
Orange is the New Other 77

existence outside the jail is as defined by her facticity as her existence inside the jail.
She cannot experience transcendence. Taystee exemplifies the ultimate manifesta-
tion of female oppression happening at the level of consciousness when she breaks
her parole conditions so she can return to Litchfield Prison. Taystee’s voluntary
return acts as a metaphor for the internalised institutionalisation of female
oppression.

The Role(s) of Women

In Volume II, Beauvoir organises her chapters by ‘role’: for example, ‘The Girl, The
Lesbian, The Married Woman, Prostitutes and Heraetas, The Mystic, and The
Independent Woman’. These archetypes are modelled in OITNB, and this provides
a way to understand Beauvoir’s arguments through popular culture rendering of
these archetypes.

The Girl

Beauvoir describes The Girl:

In her eyes, man embodies the Other, as she does for man; but for her this Other appears in
the essential mode, and she grasps herself as the inessential opposite him. She will free
herself from her parents’ home, from her mother’s hold; she will open up her future not by
an active conquest but by passively and docilely delivering herself into the hands of a new
master. It has often been declared that if she resigns herself to this surrender, it is because
physically and morally she has become inferior to boys and incapable of competing with
them: forsaking hopeless competition, she entrusts the assurance of her happiness to a mem-
ber of the superior caste. In fact, her humility does not stem from a given inferiority: on the
contrary, her humility engenders all her failings; its source is in the adolescent girl’s past, in
the society around her, and precisely in this future that is proposed to her. (1949, p. 396)

This sacrifice of selfhood for acceptance is evident in the actions of Janae Watson.
A talented runner, the audience sees in flashback a young Janae being rejected by a
boy in the playground for not acquiescing and allowing herself to be caught in a
game of tag. The boy shouts ‘quit showing off’ and then turns his attention to a gig-
gling girl (Ep 7) who complied with the expectation that the male would be able to
outrun and ‘subdue’ her. The desire for male attention and acceptance sees Janae
neglect her academic and athletic ability and instead become involved in petty crime
with Donte, who showed romantic interest in her. Janae is both literally and meta-
phorically imprisoned by male expectation of compliance when she is caught by the
police fleeing a crime scene, only because she slowed down when Donte, lagging
behind, told her ‘don’t be showing off’ (Ep 7 53:00). In this way, Janae serves as the
perfect example of Beauvoir’s Girl, complicit in her own loss of subjectivity.
78 A. Bedford and E. Chalmers

The Wife

The Wife is the ultimate form of Othering—women become further objectified,

rescinding even their name in the self-effacement of marriage. They are ‘Larry’s
fiancée, Mrs. His Surname’ and they take this mantle willingly. Beauvoir describes
marriage as:
The destiny that society traditionally offers women is marriage. Even today, most women
are, were, or plan to be married, or they suffer from not being so. Marriage is the reference
by which the single woman is defined, whether she is frustrated by, disgusted at, or even
indifferent to this institution. (1949, p. 502)

Keeping in mind Beauvoir was writing in the mid-twentieth century, her insights
about how the institution may be reshaped are prescient:
The economic evolution of woman’s condition is in the process of upsetting the institution of
marriage: it is becoming a union freely entered into by two autonomous individuals; the com-
mitments of the two parties are personal and reciprocal; adultery is a breach of contract for both
parties; either of them can obtain a divorce on the same grounds. Woman is no longer limited
to the reproductive function: it has lost, in large part, its character of natural servitude and has
come to be regarded as a freely assumed responsibility.... but in any case masculine guardian-
ship is becoming extinct. Yet, from a feminist point of view, the period we are living through is
still a period of transition. Only a part of the female population participates in production, and
those same women belong to a society where ancient structures and values still survive.
Modern marriage can be understood only in light of the past it perpetuates. ((1949, p. 502)

Yet despite the changing nature of marriage as an institution, the positioning of

women as objects rather than subjects is established from the outset of OITNB
which serves to highlight that women are not yet free of the potential loss of being-­
for-­self that is still inherent in marriage as a patriarchal historical construct. The
prisoners’ lives, recounted in flashback across the season, establish their pre-­
incarceration lives in terms of relationships with men. Piper’s entry to prison is
framed around her separation from her fiancée, and they ‘perform’ their relation-
ship, feeling obligated to have sex on her last night of freedom (Ep 1). The reason
for her imprisonment is her historical involvement in a drug ring while in a lesbian
relationship with Alex, who she reunites with in prison. Piper’s complicity in her
objectification is evident in her rejection of her former self: ‘I became the nice
blonde lady I was supposed to be!’ (Ep 1, 30:00) and her reliance on the male sub-
ject, who ‘will figure it out’ with the help of his father further cements her lack of
self-identity and agency. While Piper ultimately rejects her role as object to fiancée
Larry’s subject, not all characters do so. Morello continues to define herself in rela-
tion to her male partner, spending her time in prison planning her wedding to
Christopher, despite being involved in a sexual relationship with another inmate and
Christopher having stopped visiting only 3 weeks after her imprisonment (Ep 10).
happy few far above those still riveted to this earthly world. Men’s economic privilege, their
social value, the prestige of marriage, the usefulness of masculine support—all these
encourage women to ardently want to please men. They are on the whole still in a state of
serfdom. It follows that woman knows and chooses herself not as she exists for herself but
as man defines her. She thus has to be described first as men dream of her since her being-­
for-­men is one of the essential factors of her concrete condition (Beauvoir, 1949, p. 189)
Orange is the New Other 79

The most evident embodiment of this is in the character of Morello, who defines
herself in relation to her fiancée Christopher throughout Season 1.

The Lesbian

In fulfilment of every stereotype about women being left in a male-sparse environ-

ment, OITNB features a number of lesbian relationships. Keeping in mind that
Beauvoir was writing in the 1940s, her conceptions of non-hetero-normative sexu-
alities and gender identities do not always align with contemporary thinking.
Beauvoir argues that ‘the Lesbian is not characterized by her preference for women
but by the exclusiveness of this preference’ (1949, p. 482). The ‘threat’ of lesbian-
ism is seen the actions of the otherwise likeable guard, Healy. In his first meeting
with Piper, he warns her ‘And there are lesbians... you do not have to have lesbian
sex’ (Ep 1). She reassures him, pointing out she has a fiancé, Larry. When Piper
reconnects with Alex, dancing intimately with her, Healy has her thrown in isola-
tion, enraged by her homosexual ‘betrayal’ of his expectations. Sadly, Beauvoir’s
conception of homosexuality as ‘an attitude that is chosen in situation; it is both
motivated and freely adopted. None of the factors the subject accepts in this
choice—physiological facts, psychological history, or social circumstances—is
determining, although all contribute to explaining it. It is one way among others for
woman to solve the problems posed by her condition in general and by her erotic
situation in particular’ (1949, p. 499) is reinforced by the trope of the ‘gay for the
stay’ inmate. This is a woman who forms homosexual relationships with the full
expectation of returning to a heterosexual relationship after prison (Morello) or
doing so for protection from a stronger, older, or more feared inmate.

The Third Wave and Beyond

Butler

While Beauvoir’s construction of The Lesbian is now outdated, her ideas about the
lived experience of women informed the thinking of later scholars such as Judith
Butler, whose work on gender underpins much of contemporary queer and feminist
theory. Butler argues there is a fundamental difference between sex and gender,
‘between sex, as biological facticity, and gender, as the cultural interpretation or
signification of that facticity’ (1988). This more nuanced understanding of the idea
that sex and gender are two separate components of identity plays out in the char-
acter of Sophia, a transgender woman. As a man, Sophia took advantage of her
position of authority to steal the money for gender reassignment surgery and gain
the body she desires. As Beauvoir argues, ‘The female is a woman, insofar as she
feels herself as such. Some essential biological givens are not part of her lived
80 A. Bedford and E. Chalmers

situation: for example, the structure of the ovum is not reflected in it; by contrast,
an organ of slight biological importance like the clitoris plays a primary role in it.
Nature does not define woman: it is she who defines herself by reclaiming nature
for herself in her affectivity’ (1949, p. 73). Sophia actively claims her female
nature, yet prison administrator Natalie Figueroa recognises the subjectivity Sophia
has sacrificed: ‘Why would anyone give up being a man? It’s like winning lottery
and giving the ticket back’ (Ep 3, 13:30). Sofia’s complicity in othering herself by
giving up her masculine subjectivity and privilege highlights Beauvoir’s point that
for many women, ‘she often derives satisfaction from her role as Other’ (Beauvoir
1949, p. 30).
Furthermore, Butler describes the performativity of gender, showing that we are
not designated our gender at birth, rather we perform it in ways that our cultural
situation demands of us.
To say that gender is performative is to say that it is a certain kind of enactment; the “appear-
ance” of gender is often mistaken as a sign of its internal or inherent truth; gender is
prompted by obligatory norms to be one gender or the other (usually within a strictly binary
frame), and the reproduction of gender is thus always a negotiation with power; and finally,
there is no gender without this reproduction of norms that risks undoing or redoing the
norm in unexpected ways, thus opening up the possibility of a remaking of gendered reality
along new lines (Butler, 1988, p. i).

This is showcased through Pennsatucky—a reformed meth-head—who has adopted,

and fully performs, her role as a Christian female protector of the unborn. Before
the trail that led to her incarceration, Pennsatucky underwent repeated abortions,
choosing to carry on her drug fuelled lifestyle and without the responsibility of
children. After her fifth abortion, a nurse comments ‘we should give you a punch
card, get the sixth one free’ (Ep 8). Pennsatucky retaliates against the nurse’s ‘dis-
respect’ by getting a shotgun from her car and shooting her. A Christian lawyer
offers to represent Pennsatucky for free and she is introduced to her fans in court—
she is now the poster child for anti-abortionists. Despite her lack of religious senti-
ment, belief, or motivation, Pennsatucky embraces the role she is given and performs
it proudly. She eventually comes to see herself as God’s servant on earth, a motherly
protector to all unborn children. The irony here is strong; however, Pennsatucky
become reliant on the performativity of her ‘mother-protector’ identity as this is
how she defines and values herself.

Kristeva

If women are defined by their physical sex, their bodies become increasingly sig-
nificant. In OITNB the women’s bodies are outside of their control yet also a
weapon. Nudity is the norm, sanitary pads are used as shoes (Ep 1), a used tampon
is served as a meal (Ep 2), and Crazy Eyes urinates on the floor to threaten Piper
after rejection. This foregrounding of the female body and its functions,
Orange is the New Other 81

particularly ones that are considered socially unacceptable, provide a link to Julia
Kristeva’s work on abjection. Kristeva is critical of some of Beauvoir’s thinking,
yet acknowledges the importance of her conception of sex as a subjective experi-
ence. Kristeva argues that abjection is the sense of horror one experiences when
there is a breakdown between self and other. One way this abjection occurs is in
our horror at bodily wastes such as vomit, faeces, and decomposition, when what
was once ‘us’ is now ‘not-I’.
I am at the border of my condition as a living being. My body extricates itself, as being
alive, from that border. Such wastes drop so that I might live, until, from loss to loss, noth-
ing remains in me and my entire body falls beyond the limit—cadere, cadaver. If dung
signifies the other side of the border, the place where I am not and which permits me to be,
the corpse, the most sickening of wastes, is a border that has encroached upon everything.
It is no longer I who expel, “I” is expelled. The border has become an object. How can I be
without border? (Kristeva, 1982, 3–4)

One clear example of this abjection is when Piper is constantly confronted by the
feminine, which is fundamentally herself (she menstruates, she urinates), yet in
Litchfield these feminine acts are used as weapons, invoking horror and disgust—
the female self becomes the abject other. This doubling of otherness (as other from
men, and then abjectly other when confronted with their own bodily functions)
shows how Kristeva took up Beauvoir’s construction of otherness and broadened its
application to apply not only to the male/female binary but to the human experience
of a cohesive singular identity (I) and recognising anything that threatens that sense
of self as ‘other’ or not-I.

hooks

While the inmates of Litchfield share a common gender, they vary in race, class, and
other ways. Here, bell hooks’ ideas on intersectionality are helpful in understanding
the complexities that underpin the male/female binary Beauvoir explores. The open-
ing montage of OITNB features a series of rapidly changing women’s faces, some
white, some black, some Asian, fat, thin, old, young, and so on; this serves to high-
light from the outset that women are not a single homogenous group simply defined
by their gender. This is further established with the clear racial divisions within the
prison, black, white, and Latina women form their own cliques, with one character
explaining ‘its tribal not racist’ (Ep 1). Class and privilege are also highlighted, with
Piper often shocked to find things she perceives as her ‘rights’ are no longer avail-
able to her; prison has made her a lower-class person, denied the rights of others.
Women experience the world not only as women, but as black women, Latina
women, middle-class women, gay women, etc. This complexity of experience is
represented in hooks thinking on intersectionality, which ‘challenged the notion that
“gender” was the primary factor determining a woman’s fate’ (hooks, 1984).
82 A. Bedford and E. Chalmers

Conclusion

Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is a foundational work of feminist theory, particularly in

its construction of the construct of otherness. The impact of Beauvoir’s thinking can
be seen in its wide reach across a number of disciplines: Kristeva’s conception of
the abject draws upon the ‘Other’, hooks’ intersectionality problematises the male/
female binary of Beauvoir’s work, and Butler defines gender performativity on the
idea that ‘one becomes a woman’. Read in isolation, Simone de Beauvoir’s work
offers insight into mid-century feminist thinking; read as a foundational text for
scholarship on gender relationships more broadly we can see the true power of
Beauvoir’s ideas, and how these ideas are still helpful in understanding how pop
culture texts establish and reaffirm our culture’s changing relationship with ideas
about physical sex, gender, race, and other forms of identity construction.

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You are interested in exploring the relationship between bodies and politics
• Turn to p. 47 to read Grant’s explanation of the language games puzzle of
Wittgenstein.
• Turn to p. 163 Valentine’s discussion of the ethics of care.
You like TV shows that push boundaries.
• See how Holland uses Rick and Morty to discuss McLuhan’s theory
on p. 147.
• See how Barnes uses Years and Years to discuss Beck’s theory on p. 59.

References

Crowell, S. (2020). Existentialism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
(summer edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/existentialism/
de Beauvoir, S. (1949). The second sex. Vintage Books. https://uberty.org/wp-­content/
uploads/2015/09/1949_simone-­de-­beauvoir-­the-­second-­sex.pdf
Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and femi-
nist theory. Theatre Journal., 40(4), 519–531.
Elwynn, B. K. (2012). Multiplicity: A new reading of Sartrean bad faith. British Journal for the
History of Philosophy., 20(3), 601–618.
hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory: From margin to center. South End Press.
Kearney, R., & Rainwater, M. (1996). The continental philosophy reader. Routledge.
Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of horror: An essay on abjection. Columbia University Press.
Macey, D. (2000). The penguin dictionary of critical theory. Penguin Books.
McLeod, S.  A. (2013). Freewill and determinism. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.
org/freewill-­determinism.html
Orange Is the New Black. Season One. (2014). Lions Gate Entertainment.
Sartre, J.-P.. (1968). Being and nothingness (H. Barnes, Trans.). Vintage books.
‘Down Here, It’s Our Time’:
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems
and The Goonies

Aimee Quickfall

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In this chapter, Aimee Quickfall provides not simply an explanation of
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory but using the 1980s family film The
Goonies, demonstrates how the theory can be deployed to elucidate the complexity
of a person’s development. Using a conversational style, which is quite acceptable
in academic writing if you know where to submit it, Quickfall brings a personal
touch to the chapter, sharing her love for the classic movie. She gives Bronfenbrenner
status as a philosopher worth knowing. She explains that firstly, his theory is capa-
ble of capturing some of the complexity of childhood development and, secondly, is
often misunderstood. The former makes Bronfenbrenner useful for social theorists
to bring psychological understandings about childhood development to their
research. The latter is all the more reason to include him in an explainer.
Quickfall brings Bronfenbrenner and The Goonies together at multiple points
throughout the chapter, using the events of a main character and Goonie, Mikey as
the key to unlocking the theory. The key political point Quickfall makes in this
explanatory text is that Bronfenbrenner’s theory is usually only considered by social
theorists so far as elucidating the context of an individual’s development.
Understandably this has had Bronfenbrenner criticised for being too general.
Quickfall defends the theorist explaining that the other aspects of his theory, time,
process and person are essential for rigorously using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological
systems theory in social research.

A. Quickfall (*)
Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 83

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_8
84 A. Quickfall

Introduction

In this chapter, I am going to introduce you to a well-loved movie of the 1980s and
an equally well-loved theory from child development, which can also be used for
thinking about complex systems in society. My assertion is that Bronfenbrenner’s
theory has been given a reductive handling, which means the nuances are lost in
many examples of its use and description. In this chapter the theory will be explored
so that it can be considered more fairly as a useful resource for sociologists, psy-
chologists and pedagogues.
There are some good reasons to put the theory and the film together:
1. Both capture some of the complexity of childhood (or adulthood, perhaps).
2. Both are often misrepresented as simple views of childhood (or life).
3. Both are part of the story of the best decade of the twentieth century. Yes, it
really was.
Before we start, it would be useful to watch The Goonies as the theory will be
explored here with direct reference to events in the film. It is also useful to watch
The Goonies as it is a funny, silly movie that works very well on a rainy afternoon,
and now you can claim to be doing sociology whilst you are watching it. We will
look at how events, relationships and understanding in the movie can be modelled
using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems and also think about where the limita-
tions of this theory are, highlighted by the story and characters from The Goonies.
Bronfenbrenner’s theory is not limited to studies of early childhood or child psy-
chology; it has been applied to adult lives (Hoare, 2009) and to explore the spheres
of influence on people working in schools (Kell, 2016). You may come across eco-
logical systems theory in psychology, sociology, education and gender studies.

The Goonies (1985)

Again, I urge you to watch this movie, if not for greater investment in this chapter, just
for your own entertainment. But if you can’t watch it, here is a brief summary of what
happens and who is involved…but as Bronfenbrenner would undoubtedly point out,
life is very complex, and there is no substitute for actually experiencing it first-hand.
The Goonies is best described as an action-adventure-comedy and is set in a small
town, Astoria, in 1980s America. The area of the town where our story is set—the ‘Goon
Docks’—is undergoing redevelopment, and the families there are faced with imminent
foreclosure and movement out of town (it is funny, honestly). The story follows a group
of children on an adventure, attempting to discover the treasure of a local sixteenth
century pirate, ‘One-Eyed Willy’, who is part of the myth and legend of the town.
As a child of the 1980s, I watched The Goonies at a local (probably illegal) cin-
ema that some local shifty characters had set up in an abandoned church hall. Which
in itself sounds like the beginning of a Goonies sequel. At the time, I felt it was very
much a movie aimed at children my age (I was 8 when I first saw it) but after
‘Down Here, It’s Our Time’: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems and The Goonies 85

watching it many times as an adult, I think if you are going to watch it with little
people around, be aware that it contains some strong language, some mild to
medium peril and a dead body in an ice-cream freezer (Fig. 1).
*Spoilers about The Goonies follow—skip to page INSERT PAGE NUMBER if
you want to watch the movie later!*

The Characters
The children who make up The Goonies are all very distinct and unique char-
acters, and time is spent during the first 20 min of the film exploring these
differences and skillsets as the narrative of foreclosure, imminent change to
their way of life is exposed, seen from the viewpoint of the children them-
selves with their understanding of the issues as the focus. Our main protago-
nist, Mikey (a very young Sean Astin), is a quiet, shy and irrepressibly
optimistic boy. His older brother, Brandon (Josh Brolin) represents the transi-
tion from childhood to adulthood, with his obvious care for the younger kids.
Mouth (Corey Feldman) is streetwise, smart talking. Data (Jonathan Ke Quan)
is a creative, inventive genius. Chunk (Jeff Cohen) is honest to a fault, big
hearted and unable to stop talking. Later we meet the girl Goonies—Andy and
Stef (Kerri Green and Martha Plimpton) who are Brandon’s age and join the
rest of the gang by accident.

The Plot
The plot, in a nutshell, sees the Goonies discovering a pirate map and a dou-
bloon which they believe could lead them to treasure that will help them save
their town. They follow the map to an abandoned restaurant where they meet
up with Brandon, who has been chasing after them, Stef and Andy. They
quickly find out that the restaurant is the hideout of a family of criminals—
The Fratellis—who we realise were involved in police chase at the beginning
of the film. The Goonies (minus Chunk) manage to escape from the Fratellis
by dodging down into a hidden tunnel. Chunk is kept prisoner with the gigan-
tic and deformed Sloth, the youngest Fratelli brother. The rest of the Fratellis
chase the Goonies through a series of booby-trapped tunnels, solving tests to
avoid One-Eyed Willy’s cunning traps and tricks. They eventually reach a
huge cavern where the pirate ship is moored and is full of pirate treasure! The
Fratellis set off a final booby-trap which is the cavern cave-in, but with Sloth’s
intervention, the Goonies and Fratellis escape onto the beach. They are met by
the Goonie parents and the police, who arrest the Fratellis apart from Sloth,
who is going to live with Chunk. The parents halt the foreclosure signing just
in time after finding precious jewels stashed in Mikey’s marble bag. The final
scene is of the pirate ship, The Inferno, sailing out to sea, unmanned.
86 A. Quickfall

Fig. 1  The cast of The Goonies on set

A Bit About Our Theorist…

Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917–2005) was a Russian psychologist who is most famous

for ecological systems theory, which is what we are applying The Goonies to in this
chapter. He worked extensively with the US government on their ‘Head Start’ early
childhood education programme and believed that a complex web of interacting
social and environmental systems influence our development. He rejected the devel-
opmental psychology of the time and the tendency for researchers to study children
in strange environments (e.g. labs) carried out by strangers (the researchers) whilst
expecting to see ‘normal’ behaviour (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).

Ecological Systems Theory

Bronfenbrenner (1979) suggested that the world of the individual can be theorised
as an ecological system, where the interaction of different factors, people, objects
and characteristics influences how a child will or will not develop. Bronfenbrenner
encouraged educationalists and psychologists to view the individual child as being
at the centre of such complex systems and to acknowledge and analyse the systems
which constitute their environments and how they interact when trying to under-
stand the child and their personal challenges.
I find ecological systems (and most theories) are usually easier to understand as
a diagram, and if you do an Internet search for Bronfenbrenner, you will probably
see something like this (Fig. 2):
‘Down Here, It’s Our Time’: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems and The Goonies 87

Fig. 2  An interpretation of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (1979)

It is really important to point out here that the classic diagram of ever-decreasing
circles is just one part of the theory, which actually has three other major intercon-
necting parts. This diagram represents the CONTEXT part of the ecological sys-
tems. We will come to the others later in the chapter, but it is useful to bear in mind
that often when people discuss Bronfenbrenner’s theory, they are talking about this
quarter of it. When you join in these discussions, you can now point out wisely that
this isn’t the whole story!
The diagram really only starts to make sense when you think about a specific
example, applied to it. You can try this with your own ecological system at the end
of the chapter. Let’s populate this model with some of what we know about Mikey’s
world, which will help to show what may be included in each part of the ecologi-
cal system.
A word about systems: Like you would expect in a complex theory trying to capture the
complexity of a highly complex system (arghh!), the terms and phrases used in the theory
can quickly add to an over-complication. With this theory, one of the most difficult to pin
down terms is ‘systems’. In the literature, you will read about overarching systems (such as
the microsystem in our diagram) and then read about microsystems within this microsys-
tem. In this chapter I have referred to these microsystems in the microsystem as aspects, as
I think it is easier to understand. As an example, at the microsystem level, an individual will
have lots of ‘microsystems’ or aspects—school, home, grandma’s home, friends (and per-
haps many different groups of friends). Be aware that if you read widely on the theory, you
will see micro-/meso-/exo- and macrosystem as an overarching term and as a subset of
those systems, too.

We are starting with Mikey as our individual, hence locating him at the centre of
a complex system of influences (he is the main protagonist of the tale, although the
88 A. Quickfall

Fig. 3  Mikey’s systems in Bronfenbrenner’s model

Goonies are a fairly democratic gang—like pirates!) and begin by looking at the
basics of his microsystem—the most familiar things in his world (Fig. 3):
Now, between Mikey and his microsystem, there are many processes, interac-
tions, relationships and experiences, that help Mikey to understand the world and to
develop. His relationship with Brandon, although stereotypically boisterous, is car-
ing; that hug between brothers when things start going wrong can be viewed as part
of Mikey’s development. His trust in his friends and sense of comfort around them
are a good indication that they also reside in his microsystem. He also influences his
microsystem. For example, Mikey’s knowledge of local legends, passed to him by
his father, changes the understanding of the world for his friends. In terms of envi-
ronments, the story begins at Mikey’s home, where he has in-depth understanding
of the traditions, rules and objects that constitute its character. He also has a deep
understanding of his family; his horror at the damage to his mother’s statue (and
particularly her favourite part of the statue) when it is dropped early in the film,
displays his awareness (Fig. 4).
The mesosystem is where aspects of the microsystem interact, i.e. how those
people and places who interact with Mikey themselves interact with each other,
thereby influencing his experiences and development. If you think about The
Goonies, this happens in the environment when Mouth, Data and Chunk enter
Mikey’s house. It can also involve less easy to observe interactions which add to the
complexity of how a mesosystem builds up. For example, Mouth has a relationship
with Mikey’s mother, and it develops when he offers to translate her English into
Spanish for Rosalita, the family’s housekeeper. Mouth’s mischievous translation (he
deliberately mistranslates some innocuous directions into instructions about hiding
drugs) also sets up a whole different understanding of the family and house for
Rosalita. This in turn has influences and effects on Mikey’s experience and relation-
ship with Rosalita right the way through to the final minutes of the movie. It is
Rosalita who is suspiciously searching through his pockets and find the marble bag
full of precious gems. It also becomes clear that how the aspects of the microsystem
interact is quite different for every person. If Mikey’s parents lived separately, the
interaction between those aspects (the mother microsystem, the father microsystem)
‘Down Here, It’s Our Time’: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems and The Goonies 89

Fig. 4  Systemic interactions in Mikey’s experience

Fig. 5  The exosystem at work

would be different and happen at different times, places and by different means. The
relationship between parents would also be different and have an influence on
Brandon and Mikey in different ways (Fig. 5).
The exosystem characterises the systems that the individual child is not in direct
contact with, but which they will still feel the influence of, even if they don’t fully
comprehend what they are or what they do. For example, in terms of local politics, the
90 A. Quickfall

Fig. 6  The macrosystem

foreclosure of the houses in the Goon Docks by a developer is not a situation that
Mikey has direct contact with—it seems unlikely that he has been to council meetings
or engaged in the discussions the adults are having about this. But he and the rest of the
Goonies understand the impact the local politics will have on their ecological systems.
They know they are going to have to move to a new house, possibly to other towns,
attend different schools and be moved away from their friends. When they come across
the Fratelli’s hide out, they draw upon local media reports and police car sirens to work
out who the Fratellis might be and why they need to be wary of them (Fig. 6).
The macrosystem concerns the overarching culture that influences the individ-
ual, in this case, Mikey. The macrosystems have their own links to the micro- and
mesosystem. For example, a legend of Astoria, embedded within the local culture,
is that of One-Eyed Willy, the pirate. This legend has its own place in Mikey’s
microsystem, as his Dad has told him stories about the pirate and brought this aspect
of local culture into his familiar world. It also appears in the mesosystem, when
Mikey and his friends find the treasure map and begin comparing their understand-
ing of the legend (and scepticism about its origin and reliability).
Another example of a macrosystem at work is the socioeconomic culture that
Mikey has grown up in. The community and family are not economically secure and
clues to this pepper the script; Brandon has been saving up for a long time to buy
tyres for his bike, for example. However, another part of their community culture is a
sense of fairness and justice. It is tricky to tell whether this is shared by everyone, but
when the Goonies find themselves in the town wishing well whilst exploring the tun-
nels, Mikey petitions them not to take the pennies that have been thrown in, as these
are other people’s wishes. There are other children in Astoria who do not share the
same macrosystem culture as the Goonies—when Andy’s peers try to get her to leave
the rest of the Goonies at the wishing well, they clearly don’t share the same moral
‘Down Here, It’s Our Time’: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems and The Goonies 91

Fig. 7  Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development

beliefs as the gang. For them, there may be macrosystems they share with Mikey, but
others that are different—this is possible even in a small close-knit community.

The Overlooked Three Quarters of the Theory

What we have just looked at, through the lens of The Goonies, is one part of a four-­
part theory (Fig. 7):
Bronfenbrenner added to his theory over time and called this evolved model a
bioecological model of human development (Ashiabi and O’Neal, 2015;
Bronfenbrenner, 1994). Whilst very often the theory is used as if only the ‘context’
quarter existed (Tudge, Mokrova, Hatfield & Karnik, 2009), it is likely that some of
the perceived weaknesses in the model are due to just one dimension of it being
considered. As we look at the rest of the theory, using The Goonies of course, you
will begin to see how the ‘context’ when taken alone strips out much of the com-
plexity that the theory attempts to represent.
92 A. Quickfall

Process

In the process part of the ecological systems model, Bronfenbrenner accounts for
how processes drive development of the individual. He talks about proximal pro-
cesses, theorising that the interactions in the immediate environment of a child are
the basis for human development (Bronfenbrenner and Evans, 2000). Through our
discussion of the context part of the theory so far, we have instinctively and naturally
brought in processes to the model. For example, when we think about Mikey’s inter-
actions with his friends, Mikey and his friends talk to each other, they look at each
other, smile, laugh, play, joke, listen, tease and chastise each other—all within the
first few minutes of the film. These processes are an integral part of the context—the
micro-, meso-, exo- and macrosystem require processes to make them meaningful.
Processes can also occur between the individual and objects, not just people.
Mikey’s interactions with the map are a good example of how he develops through
a process, studying the map to find clues. He does not do this in isolation, so in his
microsystem and mesosystem, interactions between his friends, objects (the map
and the doubloon) through processes of discussion, manipulation, testing and
observing. To then further complicate things, processes are also varied by form,
power, content and direction. The characteristics of the individual and their environ-
ment change aspects of proximal processes. As an example from the film, Mikey
takes charge in the caves and picks a nook for ‘a little girl’s room’ and one for a
‘little boy’s room’. The form of this process is talk, but the power of Mikey’s talk is
diluted by his age and lack of assertiveness — the male Goonies end up following
Brandon into the ‘men’s room’ instead.

Person

The person element of the theory concerns the individual at the centre of the eco-
logical system in terms of context, time and process; it addresses the complexity of
uniqueness. This element has four sub-elements: demand, resource, force (which
are under an umbrella of ‘personal characteristics’) and biological and genetic
factors.

Demand

The immediately obvious characteristics of a person, or easy to find out information

about them. For example, Mikey is white, male, 13 years old and we know what he
looks like. As we know from many research studies, personal accounts and histori-
cal facts, how you look can have a huge impact in what your life is like and your
experience of other people and systems. From being more likely to receive help if
‘Down Here, It’s Our Time’: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems and The Goonies 93

you are perceived as physically attractive (West and Brown, 1975), or well-dressed
(Carvalho et al., 2019) to being more likely to experience disrespect and condescen-
sion as a person of colour with a darker skin tone (Keith et al., 2017), the demand of
the individual is very important to a theory on how a person develops.

Resource

As mentioned previously, Mikey’s family are in a precarious socioeconomic posi-

tion throughout the film, and it seems obvious that this aspect of Mikey’s life is
bound to have an influence on how he develops and how we view his world. This is
only a small part of the considerations of resource, however. Bronfenbrenner also
takes into account mental and emotional resources, past experience, social resources
and intelligence, other skills as well as material resources. As we get to know Mikey
over the course of the story, it becomes evident that his mental and emotional
resources make a difference to how he develops and interacts with his ecological
system. Mikey is optimistic and resilient. He won’t give up on his dreams and thus
manages to convince others to follow his lead, using social skills as well as bound-
less positivity. His past experiences, such as his knowledge of local legends and
strategies for evading babysitters, mean that The Goonies come through their adven-
ture alive but also enable the adventure to happen in the first place and for the chil-
dren to save the Goon Docks. It seems that the other Goonies trust in Mikey’s
intelligence, even when they think his schemes are wild or very unlikely to pay off.
Another theorist, Bourdieu, talks about social, cultural and symbolic resources as
types of capital and you can read more about him in chapter (see Chapter 9: Choose
your Driver).
Force: Whilst demand and resource that relate to aspects of the person can affect
how others perceive them, force is more of a two-way street. Force pertains to the
temperament, motivation, persistence and capacity to bring about change, both
actively and passively that a person has. Mikey appears to be resilient and persistent
with his friends, who then tend to go along with him, and in turn set off a multitude
of other processes in Mikey’s development. It seems unlikely that Mikey is faking
his resilient nature, given the number of opportunities he has to go home and aban-
don the adventure; however, Mikey could be faking that resilience. What he really
feels is his individual force. How Mikey feels about himself is a great contributor to
how he develops and others will have perceptions of what Mikey is really like,
based on their experiences of him, which contribute to their own microsystem and
mesosystem processes. Mikey models active and passive change to the environment
throughout the film; for example, active change occurs when planning and execut-
ing a plan to get Chunk to smash the framed picture. An example of a passive change
is Mikey’s adaptations to accommodate the female Goonies into the gang, which at
times do not seem to be active changes, but simple matters of embarrassment,
expectation and politeness.
94 A. Quickfall

Biological Factors

Bronfenbrenner seems to downplay biological factors in his writing about the the-
ory (Bronfenbrenner, 1994), and certainly there are overlaps between biology and
other aspects, such as demand and resource. Bronfenbrenner acknowledges that
there are genetic factors that influence development, from major factors like a
hereditary disease to interesting but ultimately less impactful quirks like being able
to roll your tongue. Mikey suffers from asthma and uses his inhaler nine times dur-
ing the film, but at the end of the film he throws his inhaler away, suggesting that
what he has been through renders it useless, perhaps an example of Mikey overcom-
ing biological factors with his force and resource. Mikey also has the interesting
situation of having his brother in the gang which would affect his development but,
despite being two genetically similar people, Mikey and Brandon are very different
people, with different interests, physical characteristics and abilities. Where they
are similar, it would seem to be non-genetic factors, such as their ethical stance and
attachment to their community that they have in common. So, whilst Bronfenbrenner
acknowledges the influence of genetics and biology, the film also shows why he
might downplay them.

Time

Time in Bronfenbrenner’s theory is broken down into micro-time, meso-time,

macro-time and the chronosystem.
Micro-time is specific to a proximal process in the microsystem, so those interac-
tions in the most familiar systems of your life. Micro-time feels like it passes much
faster or slower than clock-time, which explains the feeling of time passing so
quickly when learning something new, or how slowly time can seem to pass when
something sad has happened. The series of micro-time events that make up the
adventure the Goonies go on actually covers a very short time frame, just as it cov-
ers a very small geographical area—they never leave the town, and the whole
adventure happens in less than 24 h.
The meso-system is about the familiar repetitions of micro-time events. Meso-­
time is about the consistency of interaction, the repetitions of events in what we
might call normal life. For the developing child, this might be about the routines of
early childhood from waking up to going to bed, but it also covers consistency of
interaction with others as well as routines involving objects (like toothbrushes and
pyjamas!). In an example from the film, Mikey talks movingly about how their rou-
tines are going to change if the Goonies abandon their mission—the next test they
take will be in another school.
Macro-time, also known as the chronosystem, is about the changes to the whole
context of the individual over time. The chronosystem describes how the rest of the
ecological system changes over time, and more specifically, the lifetime of the
‘Down Here, It’s Our Time’: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems and The Goonies 95

individual. This aspect was added to the theory later (Bronfenbrenner, 1994, 1995).
I think of this as taking a snapshot of the whole ecological system every time it
changes, and those changes over time make the chronosystem. In an example from
The Goonies, at the beginning of the film, Mikey’s microsystem of friends includes
Chunk, Mouth and Data. By halfway through the film, Andy and Stef would be
included in Mikey’s Goonie microsystem. Furthermore, Mikey’s ecological systems
changed a lot: his understanding of the legend of One-Eyed Willy; his understand-
ing of his environment in terms of the security of their home; AND the geographical
information about the town that he didn’t know before. His relationships with his
friends and family have changed; he has new friends, too. Mikey also created ripples
out into the systems—so instead of outside factors like the media, local politics and
institutions having ripples inwards that affect him, he has influenced how they think
and behave—by going missing, finding the treasure and ultimately saving the Goon
Docks from demolition. He has become a part of the local media coverage in the
exosystem of others, and a part of the local legends of the town.

Limitations of the Theory

Bronfenbrenner’s theory of ecological systems has been criticised, often with only
one aspect of the theory considered; in this section we will explore some of the limi-
tations and critiques and begin to address these. Further reading at the end of the
chapter will signpost where you can find out more about these critiques. Ecological
systems theory is often reduced to one aspect, but has also been adapted and repur-
posed, or combined with other theories, and criticism may be levelled at a subse-
quent version of the theory to the one Bronfenbrenner outlined (Bronfenbrenner,
1994, 1995; Bronfenbrenner and Evans 2000). Legitimate limitations are pointed
out in the literature, most notably in the following:

Theory Is Too Broad/Oversimplified

Bronfenbrenner’s theory has come under fire for both being too broad in scope and
also oversimplifying the world of the individual. Perhaps because for some com-
plexity theorists, the theory reduces incredibly complex processes, like learning, to
a system of factors. Conversely, for some cognitive psychologists, it covers too
much to be useful. Although Bronfenbrenner’s theory has been criticised for being
oversimplified (Kell, 2016), it gives a framework for thinking about the complexity
an individual world, particularly when the whole theory is used. This also sits with
intersectionality and a perspective of power as a dynamic process (Bilge, 2013).
Bilge discusses how intersectionality works at a microsocial and macrosocial level
(2010, p. 58), reminiscent of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems.
96 A. Quickfall

Detail Required Is Too Extensive

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems are also criticised for requiring too much
detail in practice. As an example, we have just applied a movie character to the
theory, which wasn’t too hard, but applying a real child, with all the interactions,
context and other factors would make the theory very difficult to use as a full model
for analysis of a specific life. However, it can be argued that Bronfenbrenner never
expected this theory to become a form filling exercise in collecting all the informa-
tion about a child in order to analyse their ecosystem or predict their future. What he
perhaps set out to do with this theory is show how complex and delicate the process
of development is, and how small interactions in the microsystem have huge impacts.

Crossing of Boundaries Between Systems Is Too Complex

Another critique of the theory is that crossing between the ecosystems is complex
and never fully explained. For example, how do ideas from the macrosystem filter
through to the microsystem and the individual. There are also some grey areas
where it can be tricky to decide where in the ecological system some aspects of life
should go. For example, how are the not ‘standard’ relationships a child dealt with?
If you have never met your father, does he belong in the microsystem, or the macro-
system as something of a myth? Again, this critique seems to arise when the theory
is pressed into use as a methodical, step-by-step guide to child development.
Bronfenbrenner’s point is to explore just how complex, interconnected and tangled
a life can be, as a sort of antidote to theories that reduced development of the indi-
vidual to single factors such as genetics, parenting style or environment.
Bronfenbrenner attempts to capture something of the wealth of factors that influ-
ence how we learn and grow, which whilst flawed, can be viewed as a refreshing
change to treating individuals as machines that can be programmed.

Lack of Power for Children in the Theory

Some suggest that children lack power in the theory. The suggestion within this
critique is that Bronfenbrenner misses a trick on children changing the world,
rather than being changed by it; that a child in this theory is being ‘done to’ rather
than having any agency of their own. A lot of discussion around the theory, by
Bronfenbrenner and others, is about how the young child is influenced and affected
by the factors included in the theory; but it is a fundamental misreading of the
theory to suggest that the individual at the centre (of one aspect of the
‘Down Here, It’s Our Time’: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems and The Goonies 97

framework!) does not have an effect on their ecosystem. As we have explored

using the example of Mikey, the child in question can have influence and effect in
their micro- and mesosystems, just as Mikey does with his friends, family and
community. He also has influence and effect on the exo- and macrosystems—as
he has (perhaps for a short time) changed the news reporting in the community,
which will now include him and his friends in the reports they are hearing. Local
legends have been changed forever as Mikey and the rest of the Goonies have
revealed the truth about One-Eyed Willy and the pirate ship and have also saved
the Goon Docks—the local legends of the future that Mikey interacts with will
include him as a local hero. Another counter-­argument to this critique is that
Bronfenbrenner’s model is about the individual; a lot of Mikey’s influence in the
world will occur in the micro- and mesosystems of other people more than it does
in his ecological systems.

Try this at home, kids: Try constructing your own ecological system. Put
you (and perhaps an amusing photo/drawing) at the centre and think about the
microsystems that are your closest and most familiar interactions with people
and places. Work your way out, following the system descriptions in this
chapter. Now think about how PROCESS, PERSON and TIME work in those
systems. It is likely that very rapidly you will need a bigger sheet of paper!

Conclusion

In this chapter we have explored Bronfenbrenner’s theory, looking at the most

famous quarter of it, and expanding to consider the whole. We have addressed some
of the critiques of the theory, which in some part have come about because the the-
ory is often reduced to one aspect of the framework. Weaknesses persist, of course—
but I hope that this has helped to clarify where the weaknesses address the theory,
rather than a simplified version of events! In the further reading section, you will
find details of both Bronfenbrenner’s own literature and references you can use to
access the selected critiques and further uses of the theory. Whilst the theory does
have weaknesses, and the complexity that it attempts to capture can be argued as
impossible to reflect, it seems an injustice that it is so often judged on misreading or
simplifications of the original work and intent.
I hope you have enjoyed finding out more about this theory and about a truly
brilliant film of the 1980s. If you would like to find out more about Bronfenbrenner’s
theory, I have suggested some recommended further reading below. If you are inter-
ested in watching some more creative genius from the best decade of the twentieth
century, I have recommended some further watching, too—and how you could
think about Bronfenbrenner’s theory in relation to these (thus rendering their watch-
ing a part of your research and a completely valid use of time).
98 A. Quickfall

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You are interested in other theorists who have developed systems for under-
standing society.
• Turn to p. 101 to read Johnson’s explanation of Bourdieu’s theory.
You are interested in other theorists that are generally misinterpreted in
their usage.
• Turn to p. 9 to read Thomas and McCandless’ chapter on Marx.
You are interested in other theories consistently applied to contexts that
include children.
• Turn to p. 113 to read Firth’s explanation of Foucault’s theories that are
often applied to educational research.

References

Ashiabi, G.  S., & O’Neal, K.  K. (2015). Child social development in context: An exami-
nation of some propositions in Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory. https://doi.
org/10.1177/2158244015590840
Bilge, S. (2013). Intersectionality undone. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race,
10(2), 405–424. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1742058x13000283
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and
design. Harvard University Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1994). Ecological models of human development. In T.  Husen &
T.  N. Postlethwaite (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education (Vol. 3, 2nd ed.,
pp. 1643–1647). Pergamon Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1995). Developmental ecology through space and time: A future perspective.
In P. Moen, G. H. Elder, & K. Luscher (Eds.), Examining lives in context: Perspectives on the
ecology of human development (pp. 619–647). American Psychological Association.
Bronfenbrenner, U., & Evans, G. W. (2000). Developmental science in the 21st century: Emerging
questions, theoretical models, research designs, and empirical findings. Social Development, 9,
115–125. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-­9507.00114
Carvalho, S., Hildebrand, D., & Sen, S. (2019). Dressed to impress: The effect of victim attire on
helping behavior. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4(4), 376–386.
Hoare, C. (2009). Models of adult development in Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory and
Erikson’s biopsychosocial life stage theory: Moving to a more complete three-model view. In
M. C. Smith & N. DeFrates-Densch (Eds.), Handbook of research on adult learning and devel-
opment (p. 68–102). Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Kell, E. (2016). Shifting Identities: A mixed methods study of the experiences of teachers who are
also parents. EdD thesis, Middlesex University.
Keith, V.  M., Nguyen, A.  W., Taylor, R.  J., Mouzon, D.  M., & Chatters, L.  M. (2017).
Microaggressions, discrimination, and phenotype among African Americans: A latent class
analysis of the impact of skin tone and BMI. Sociological Inquiry, 87, 233–255. https://doi.
org/10.1111/soin.12168
‘Down Here, It’s Our Time’: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems and The Goonies 99

Tudge, J., Mokrova, I., Hatfield, I., & Karnik, A. (2009). Uses and Misuses of Bronfenbrenner’s
Bioecological Theory of Human Development. Journal of Family Theory and Review, 1 (Dec
2009), 198–210.
West, S., & Brown, T. (1975). Physical attractiveness, the severity of the emergency and helping:
A field experiment and interpersonal simulation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,
11(6), 531–538.
Choose Your Driver: How Super Mario
Kart Helps Explain Bourdieusian Sociology

Karl Johnson

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In this remixing of Bourdieu and Super Mario Kart, Karl Johnson fully embraces
the idea that Bourdieu would not like it. The core to doing theory is in the asking of
‘but what if’ when reading and subsequently writing an alternative way of seeing
the world. Critique does not need to be serious and judgemental. It can be playful
and cheeky; however, alongside this personal touch, Johnson still respects the cen-
trality of Bourdieu in his chapter. Despite what Johnson says, Bourdieu, a theorist
himself who reworked many philosopher’s and sociologist’s work by resisting
assumptions he saw in their way of thinking, might not have hated this chap-
ter. Maybe…
Johnson gives Bourdieu philosophical status by explaining how he is a highly
cited sociologist in multiple disciplines, possibly on par with the popularity of Super
Mario Kart in the gaming world. Johnson contextualises Bourdieu politically
through the many disciplines his work has informed and the critiques he has
received.
Johnson brings Bourdieu’s theories and the world of Super Mario Kart together
in five core places, indicating that these are the points of Bourdieu’s theory that
Johnson considers most important to be understood. Firstly, the circumstances
someone is born into determines their success in life. Secondly, if there were a rule
book for life, those in the lower classes would have sections redacted. Thirdly, dif-
ferent levels of society have different amounts of economic, cultural and social capi-
tal. Having that capital makes people recognisable as having certain privileges
without really getting to know them. Fourthly, society ranks people in predictable

K. Johnson (*)
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 101

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_9
102 K. Johnson

ways according to their class, status, appearance and taste. Finally, despite the cir-
cumstances people are born into, it is possible to achieve emancipation, but how to
emancipate is a process of personal inquiry into society.

Introduction

In one of the least obvious examples of perfect synergy, the year 1992 saw Nintendo
release the classic video game Super Mario Kart for their Super Nintendo
Entertainment System (SNES) games console, and eminent social theorist Pierre
Bourdieu published his co-authored book An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology.
These combined works of a fictional Italian-American plumber and a quite real
French intellectual offer a practical—though often seemingly abstract—blueprint
for how our everyday experience of society is organised and how we may, or may
not, successfully find our way around it.
Super Mario Kart was a global success for the Japanese electronics and video
game company Nintendo and indeed remains so, not only as one of the most recog-
nisable racing-based video games and with several sequels, but also as a means of
expanding the development potential of its iconic character Mario and the broader
games franchise he exists in. Meanwhile for Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social
Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984) is perhaps his most cited text and one of
the most important sociological books of the twentieth century. For those unfamiliar
with his work, however, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Bourdieu & Wacquant,
1992) offers readers a wide-ranging and accessible overview of his approach to
social research and practice and of his concepts explaining how we navigate every-
day life.
Navigating the racetracks of Nintendo’s Mushroom Kingdom, Mario competes
against seven other characters from his shared in-game universe including his
brother Luigi, the Kingdom’s ruler Princess Peach and Mario’s monstrous turtle-­
like nemesis Bowser. Gameplay options vary from single- and multiplayer tourna-
ments to time trials and Battle Mode, across fantastical and brightly coloured
racetracks on the Donut Plains, in Bowser’s Castle, over the Rainbow Road and
beyond. As well as karting around increasingly implausible (and treacherous)
courses as quickly as possible, players collect coins and an assortment of items to
boost their power or use as non-lethal weapons against their competitors (Nintendo,
1992). Super Mario Kart established cartoon karting as one of the most popular and
enduring variants of the racing videogame genre, inspiring many other similar
titles—including 1994’s Sonic Drift from Nintendo’s rival Sega Corporation, star-
ring its own icon of the global videogame industry, Sonic the Hedgehog.
It is unlikely that any of this would have been on Bourdieu’s cultural radar, how-
ever. Following his understandings of the relationships between how we spend our
money and leisure time, the social groups we belong to and what level of social
standing we have in comparison to others, videogames like Mario Kart would prob-
ably have been categorised as a low form of culture and not worth his (nor necessar-
ily anyone’s) time.
Choose Your Driver: How Super Mario Kart Helps Explain… 103

For much of the formative history of sociology as the study of the relationship
between society and the individual, it had tended towards dichotomous ways of
thinking, e.g. structure vs. agency, local vs. global, public vs. private and so on
(Jenks, 1998). This was common across the social sciences as they sought to estab-
lish themselves as being on a par with maths, physics and chemistry—such as with
the nature vs. nurture debate in psychology. Whatever the starting point in sociol-
ogy, ideas and issues tend to come down to the impact of distinctions between dif-
ferent groups of people in everyday life.
That society organises people into class-based economic categories in a form of
social hierarchy was generally accepted, but Bourdieu went deeper to examine how
individuals themselves reproduce their social position via everyday cultural means
too (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Jenks, 1998). In part he saw this as being achieved
by the forms of culture we spend our time and money on, and those which we use
to express our sense of self and group identity. Lower forms of culture (for Bourdieu)
such as heavy metal music and blockbuster films would be associated with people
lower down the social hierarchy in the working class, which higher forms such as
classical literature and opera would denote people from the upper class (Bourdieu,
1984; Maton, 2008; Moore, 2008). At this level of explanation, it still sounds like a
dichotomy of thought, but Bourdieu’s contribution has further layers to work
through. Rather than society being an external force which determines our standing
(and thus the level of control we have over our lives) in a top-down process, Bourdieu
reframed it as more of a chicken-and-egg scenario (or to put it in Nintendo parlance,
a Yoshi-and-egg scenario) in which individuals instinctively establish themselves in
the class-based social categories they find themselves in.
The interrelated mechanisms by which Bourdieu (1984, 1993) explains this
ongoing process are at first (and even second) glance somewhat abstract and com-
plex, employing concepts of field, capital and habitus. Though this sociological
blueprint can be limiting as it assumes a particularly Westernised understanding of
society—indeed, Bourdieu can be criticised for having a singularly France-based
perspective in much of his theorising, which he appears to have recognised in An
Invitation to Reflexive Sociology—these Bourdieusian sociological concepts have
proven incredibly popular. Bourdieu’s name appears in studies of anthropology,
culture, education, health and wellbeing, social inequality and increasingly in legiti-
mising popular culture.
Over the course of the 30  years since Super Mario Kart and An Invitation to
Reflexive Sociology were produced, academia has increasingly seen Bourdieusian
sociology applied to popular (low) culture, including comics and graphic novels
(Brienza, 2012; Woo, 2011), fandoms (Brown, 1997; Fiske, 1992), stand-up and TV
comedy (Friedman, 2011) and massively multiplayer online games (MOOGs) such
as Second Life (Malaby, 2006). It stands to reason then that in order to break down
and understand Bourdieusian sociology itself, we may turn to Mario Kart as the
ideal guide. Indeed, Bourdieu would begin by using a game analogy to introduce his
concept of field (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).
104 K. Johnson

To the Starting Line

Society—the everyday social reality that our lives take place in—is in many respects
a game that we collectively play, sometimes in collaboration with one another,
sometimes in competition. Its creation was longer ago than any known generation,
and so today we find ourselves existing within a pre-formed social world, where our
participation—as individuals and as part of groups—is simultaneously what main-
tains society and constrains us within it. Now, that can be quite a big idea to come
to terms with so it can help to start off from each of our own, singular, lived experi-
ences. We participate in society on several different playing fields. For Bourdieu, it
is upon these fields we come to subconsciously recognise the ‘rules or, better, regu-
larities’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 98) directing our everyday attention and
actions. We play out our strategies on these fields despite the realisation that whether
we win or lose is largely predetermined—perhaps we will have better luck on one
particular field of play, perhaps we’ll never be called up from the bench on others.
But surely that cannot be fair, can it? Well, that is entirely the point.
A field is a structured social space ... It contains people who dominate and others who are
dominated. … Constant, permanent relationships of inequality operate inside this space.
(Bourdieu, 1998, p. 40)

Driving around the Mushroom Kingdom, competing for the Star Cup, Mario’s
world can seem entirely random at first and one might assume that the fastest com-
petitor will naturally be the winner. It is when we take a more structured view of the
Kingdom, however, that we realise that in dividing it up into collections of themed
racetracks—Mario Circuit, Bowser Castle and Koopa Beach—there are clear fields
of play designed to be advantageous to certain drivers over others. That’s not to say
that Princess Peach, with her faster acceleration, won’t achieve a high ranking in
Bowser’s Castle, but unless she can develop competencies in avoiding getting
‘Thwomped’ (Nintendo, 1992, p. 28) by the Castle’s signature giant stones falling
from above, her skills will only get her so far.
Bourdieu (1993) identified a number of key fields upon which we play, including
the field of art, the field of law, the field of politics and the field of education.
Consider again your own, individual lived experience—the position you hold on the
field of education has and will be formative and in many respects set the bar for your
performance on other fields of play (Rocamora, 2002; Thomson, 2008). Different
people fulfil different roles on the field of education, students, teachers and profes-
sors obviously, but also politicians and policy makers, managers and inspectors,
journalists specialising in education and other individuals who perform a contribut-
ing function.
The strategies of agents depend on their position in the field, that is, in the distribution of
the specific capital, and on the perception that they have of the field depending on the point
of view they take on the field as a view taken from a point in the field. Bourdieu and
(Wacquant, 1992, p. 101)
Choose Your Driver: How Super Mario Kart Helps Explain… 105

Here is where the inherent power imbalances, found on all fields, begin to reveal
themselves along with the origins and overseers of a field’s rules/regularities,
resources and structures. The structure of a field and its boundaries are partly imag-
ined and partly physical, with key institutions like schools, colleges, universities
and government education department buildings to help identify territories. The
capital—forms of knowledge, expertise, resources and relationships—that an indi-
vidual may accumulate on one field of play distinguishes their position and will
often translate into a comparable level of standing, or ranking, on another field
(Bourdieu, 1984, 1993; Brienza, 2012; Thomson, 2008). As indicated, however, not
everyone has an equal chance of victory or even does everyone begin from and end
up at the same point. Much of Bourdieu’s work returns to the argument that an indi-
vidual’s class-based identity and social background will have the most fundamental
impact on this chance.
The Special Cup is a secret cup race for 100cc racers. Only drivers who have won the gold
in the other three cups can compete here. (Nintendo, 1992, p. 28)

In Mario Kart, Koopa Troopa and Toad have ‘better than average control in cor-
ners’ (Nintendo, 1992, p. 24) and their karts grip the track particularly well, which
makes them ideal drivers for players new to the game. They are less likely to spin on
tight corners or miss a bridge and perish in lava, but apart from that they have no
other ‘qualities that make them stand out’ (ibid.). To rank highly on the track
requires above average skills. To better understand the rules of the game and gain
insight into how to play successfully, players would benefit from having the Super
Mario Kart Instruction Booklet (Nintendo, 1992) at their disposal.

Racing Rules

Bourdieu conceived the habitus as being like an internal guidebook to help us navi-
gate society and play on its different fields—though not everyone has access to the
same instructions. An individual’s habitus produces and defines their social identity
and lifestyle, organising behaviours relevant to their associated social groups, class
and fields and informing their cultural tastes and the practices involved (Bennett,
2007; Bourdieu, 1984; Brown, 1997; Maton, 2008). Their position across and within
fields contributes to their habitus.
On the one side, it is a relation of conditioning: the field structures the habitus … On the
other side, it is a relation of knowledge or cognitive construction. Habitus contributes to
constituting the field as a meaningful world. (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 127)

Essentially an organised, internalised system of personal values and preferences

which inform participation in society (Bennett, 2007; Bourdieu, 1984), the habitus
begins as a Mario Kart instruction book—although with certain amendments and
redactions depending on the player’s class background. Working class players begin
with the first nine pages of instructions to equip them with the basics of what to
106 K. Johnson

expect, how the controls work and a general idea of how the tournaments, time tri-
als, etc. are organised. Middle-class players have more insight into the details and
subtleties, with an extra dozen or so pages to help them appreciate the best uses of
weapons such as the different coloured shells. While they may not collect all the
coins on the track, they understand how to avoid losing what they have. These play-
ers recognise the different drivers’ skill sets, helping them to select Donkey Kong Jr.
for his high top-speed while accepting where his slow acceleration might be tacti-
cally useful. Upper-class players have the privilege of reading the full set of instruc-
tions—and even if they do not pay attention to the whole thing, they have the
‘Master Tips’ on page 33 which will remain out of reach of players from social
backgrounds below them. Of course, the habitus is not a fixed, deterministic concept
and individuals will vary in the opportunities and outcomes that life presents them.
All of the go carts [sic] are more or less the same, it’s the individual drivers that make the
difference when it comes to winning. Each driver has their strengths and weaknesses.
(Nintendo, 1992, p. 2)

Which is true up to a point. The habitus emerges as part of a person’s socialisation

as they grow up and typically establish a sense of belonging within a particular par-
ent class culture, learning and sharing similar class-based lifestyles. This is an inter-
nalised process where one’s developing self-identity interacts with the everyday
norms of the established groups that they are a part of, within the boundaries of
societal institutions like the family or the school. Accepted and (perhaps more
importantly) expected behaviours are learnt and ingrained in this way, as the inter-
nalised organisation of a person’s habitus is acted out in their everyday life; the
external influence of the habitus maintains and reproduces class-based group habi-
tus over successive generations (Bourdieu, 1984; Maton, 2008). We constantly
observe and participate in this process of remaking society, but what does this
(admittedly still quite abstract) Bourdieusian interpretation look like in reality?
Bearing in mind that this is coming from the perspective of the so-called Western
world, people from the same class typically dress in similar ways, follow certain
styles (Rocamora, 2002) and express themselves through similar gestures and ways
of speaking (Addison & Mountford, 2015). It is quite common to find that they have
a particular shared sense of humour (Friedman, 2011). They enjoy socialising and
using leisure time in ways that distinguish them from other classes, spending their
money on things more identifiable with their shared class culture than another
(Bourdieu, 1984; Maton, 2008). We might associate betting shops and reality televi-
sion with the working class, ski holidays and weekend farmers’ markets with the
middle class, and opera and country estates with the upper class. Crude examples
perhaps, but recognisable and instinctively class-based, nonetheless. From this
starting point, we might extrapolate further to imagine the broader scope of what
class-based culture looks like and how we ourselves share certain cultural tastes
with people from social backgrounds similar to our own. Bourdieu (1984, p.  6)
points out that while ‘(t)aste classifies’ someone as belonging to a particular social
group, the act of us identifying someone else in this way simultaneously ‘classifies
the classifier’.
Choose Your Driver: How Super Mario Kart Helps Explain… 107

Secret Weapons for Winning

Practices of cultural consumption allow for the accumulation of physical and imag-
ined resources that Bourdieu categorised as forms of capital: economic, social, cul-
tural and symbolic (1984, 1986). In classifying people and groups, and cultural
objects and practices as being different to the tastes and values that we hold, we
display judgements based on the amount and types of capital our habitus subcon-
sciously and systematically collects for us.
Economic capital is perhaps the most straightforward, suggesting an individual’s
wealth in cash, investments, pension, property and family financial support. Picking
up coins on the racetrack will make your kart go faster and offer a small amount of
buffering protection when ‘an enemy hits you’ (Nintendo, 1992, p. 19). It is unclear
whether the Mushroom Kingdom’s economy is built around a socially democratic
ideology, or perhaps a pay-what-you-can system, but should a player go off-course
and need to be towed back to the race, they will be charged a towing fee of two coins
if they have the money available. In Mario Kart, as in real life, there remains a clear
benefit to financial security and an incentive to pursue it.
Social capital is best understood with regard to the breadth and diversity of one’s
social circles, connections, positive frequency of interactions and the potential
opportunities and securities they provide. Outside of the video game itself, online
forums such as marioboards.com are environments for gamers with a particular love
of the wider Super Mario franchise to socially interact, compete and share their
expertise with each other. Economic and social capital are perhaps the more overt
forms and more obviously denote the class a person can be identified as belonging
to (Bourdieu 1984, 1986; Moore, 2008).
With cultural capital, however, there is more to consider—cultural capital is a
type of knowledge and expertise in what fashions, art, music, films, décor, etc. are
held in high regard by the status quo. It requires an amount of cultural literacy, gath-
ered and experienced over time, to equally know about different cultural objects and
practices, to appreciate them for their artistry and to be able to communicate their
significance in relation to and/or above others (Bourdieu, 1984, 1986; Moore, 2008).
Cultural capital may be embodied ‘in the form of long-lasting dispositions of the
mind and body’ or objectified ‘in the form of cultural goods’ (Bourdieu, 1986,
p.  243). Think of someone you know who always seems to dress well, has read
books other people have only heard of, enjoys highly acclaimed music and cinema,
goes to galleries and museums, eats and cooks a variety of cuisines and is especially
articulate when talking about it all; this is someone (maybe it is you?) with a high
amount of cultural capital. Judgements made about other people as being snobs or
philistines, refined or superficial, are in many ways competitive (and perhaps con-
frontational) judgements on their cultural capital. Mario et al. can use weapons and
other items on the track which are distributed randomly via Question Blocks. To
know that there are two types of Shell to use against other drivers is one thing but to
appreciate when to fire a bouncing Green Shell, or a more direct Red Shell, is more
skilful. Cultural capital, in its forms and amounts, may also be dependent on field to
some extent, i.e. the (inter)actions and resources associated with one field may lend
108 K. Johnson

itself to different types of capital than another field. For example, the Ghost item is
singly a feature of Battle Mode races (Nintendo, 1992).
…the distribution of the different types and subtypes of capital at a given moment in time
represents the immanent structure of the social world, i.e., the set of constraints … which
govern its functioning in a durable way, determining the chances of success for practice.
(Bourdieu, 1986, p. 241)

Those with especially high amounts of cultural capital—and we might generally

assume notable amounts of economic and social capital too—are held in high
esteem, having a level of authority and prestige attributed to them. In these cases we
find individuals at an intersection of class and social status, with what Bourdieu
(1986) designated symbolic capital. We might imagine professors and senior politi-
cians as high-ranking members of (predominantly) their respective fields of special-
ism, but also across wider society. Collecting coins, navigating the track and
skilfully using the various items/weapons will likely see a driver finish in the top 4;
these top racers earn points which improve their Standing in the game and allow
them to progress to the next track.
The place you finish in will be your starting position for the next race. For example, if you
come in 2nd place, you’ll start in the 2nd position in the next race. (Nintendo, 1992, p. 11)

Privilege and power are granted over time as tangible outcomes of symbolic capital,
thus cementing the inequalities of social distinction that Bourdieu described.

Performance Chart

So much of Bourdieu’s work is concerned with picking apart the minutiae of con-
tributing factors to the existence of a class-based social hierarchy in everyday
life—the categorised differences between/within communities and culture. That
this social hierarchy has persisted into the twenty-first century is a situation we all
recognise to a greater or lesser extent, but what is important to note for Bourdieu
is that we misrecognise those with higher amounts of capital and/or from social
class(es) above our own as being entitled or inherently deserving of their position
and status (1984; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). This imagined value and superi-
ority reproduces the social domination of the least-deprived over the most-
deprived, though the key point in Bourdieu’s understanding of society is that this
is not simply an arrangement one submits to or resists, but rather that our habitus
is inclined to subconsciously keep us at the level of social hierarchy we were born
into and hence, usually, found a sense of belonging (Bourdieu, 1984; Bourdieu &
Wacquant, 1992).
When left to its own programming, for example, when there is a single human
player in Mario Kart, the videogame will revert to having the other drivers rank in
predictable ways. Mario and the Princess are more likely to be at the top of the
scoreboard, while the less popular or successful competitors—like Bowser and
Koopa Troopa—can expect to find themselves at the bottom. Is it because some
Choose Your Driver: How Super Mario Kart Helps Explain… 109

people in the Mushroom Kingdom are naturally more worthy than others? Perhaps,
more accurately (computer programming aside) it is because that is where their rac-
ing experience, knowledge of the rules and capabilities of their kart have designated
their position in relation to those around them. Similarly, in our reality, we designate
those with a higher level of intellect or speciality, those who appear to communicate
more articulately and achieve more impressively as being above ourselves.
…intellectual or artistic position-takings are also always semi-conscious strategies in a
game in which the conquest of cultural legitimacy and of the concomitant power of legiti-
mate symbolic violence is at stake. (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 137)

Social domination of some over others is not strictly speaking a physically violent
act yet can still be seen and felt in everyday life. As a social domination that exists
more solidly in the mind than anywhere else, then, Bourdieu explains that the more
aware of it and more able we are at ‘uncovering mechanisms’ that support it, we
may individually have the opportunity to try and think our way out of it somehow
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 194). It is also possible then, that ‘sociology can
help free intellectuals from their illusions’ (ibid., p. 195).
Increasingly, people are said to be upwardly, or socially, mobile—to fulfil their
aspirations of moving from one social class to another above them (usually from
working class to middle class). More than ever in the so-called Western world,
career development via business acumen and/or higher education is commonplace,
and thus working-class people may increase their share of economic and/or cultural
capital. Raising one’s position financially tallies with raising it socially too, but the
habitus is not so easily upgraded. Indeed, when an individual is no longer participat-
ing in and recognised as part of the social environment their habitus formed in,
where they learned the rules of the road as their social group understood them, one’s
sense of cultural security and belonging is affected (Bennett, 2007; Friedman,
2016). Following an earlier analogy, a driver is not given a new and expanded Mario
Kart Instruction Booklet upon ranking higher up the scoreboard, but rather must
make do with adding their own notes in the margins as they carry on playing
the game.

Conclusion

It cannot be purely coincidental that the complex social, structural and cultural
mechanics of Western society are unpacked with added entertainment value by
Super Mario Kart. The core theme of Pierre Bourdieu’s influence on sociology is
that although we are expected to stay in our own lanes and play the game from the
position, we find ourselves in; there are tools and strategies for us to succeed and
climb the rankings. Though certain fields favour certain groups of people over oth-
ers (and to some extent the reproduction of our established social order in this way
is necessary), forward momentum and the gathering of personal resources are tried
and tested means of improving status at any level.
110 K. Johnson

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You are interested in ideas of class and power in society.
• Turn to p. 9 for Thomas and McCandless’ explanation of Marxism.
• Turn to p. 21 for Prosser’s exploration of The Circle and hegemony.
You are interested in the ‘rules’ which govern interaction and social order.
• Turn to p. 179 for Záhora’s chapter about Rancière.
You are interested in how Bourdieu might be used to frame a theory.
• Turn to p. 193 and read the conclusion on critical editorship.
 ou are interested in another chapter where the theorist was reportedly not a
Y
fan of pop culture.
• Turn to p. 135 to read Sidebottom’s explanation of Deleuzean thought.

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5 Ways Hogwarts Helps Us Understand
Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’

Katherine Firth

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In this first of two chapters that introduce Foucault alongside a popular text,
Katherine Firth remixes Foucault’s Discipline and Punish with JK Rowling’s Harry
Potter series, specifically the core setting, Hogwarts. Firth’s authorial style is very
organised and clear and shows that she is aware of the audience that might read this
text. For example, she uses advance organisers to explain how the chapter is struc-
tured and makes clear that the purpose of the genre is an explanatory text through
transparent sentence structures and vocabulary.
So how does Firth ‘do theory’ through remixing Foucault with Hogwarts? As
explained in the introduction, she moves through Foucault’s four stages of establish-
ing authorship: she individualises Foucault and Hogwarts as the two concepts she
will remix by endowing each with status. Foucault’s philosophy has been influen-
tial in multiple fields and a significant influence on postmodern thinking that under-
scores the rest of the chapters. Firth also contextualises Foucault’s Discipline and
Punish, grounding her chapter in history—a theorising technique essential for polit-
ically contextualising an argument.
In remixing Discipline and Punish with events at Hogwarts, Firth also makes
some theoretical moves that expand on what is written in the Foucauldian text to
briefly explore resistance and subversion as a part of discipline. This shows per-
sonal criticality. Intimately knowing the events of the Potter series would have
alerted Firth to the idea that the Harry Potter stories are more complicated than the
theories in Discipline and Punish. She then expands her explanation to other

K. Firth (*)
University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 113

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_10
114 K. Firth

Foucauldian texts to account for the anomalies, making her chapter a rigorous,
organised and academic engagement with the explanatory text.

Introduction

In the Harry Potter novel series, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry con-
trols and shapes the experiences and adventures of the protagonists in ways that can
directly help us understand the work of Michel Foucault on schools. Michel Foucault
(1926–1984) is a French post-modern philosopher most notable for his theories of
power and social structures. Foucault is one of the most influential thinkers in the
humanities, and thousands of academic books and articles use theoretical tools
based on his work. The Harry Potter novels (1997–2007) by JK Rowling are the
best-selling book series in history and have become the centre of a pop culture trans-
media network including blockbuster films (2001–2011, 2016–ongoing), a digital
platform Pottermore, video games, spin-off books, amusement parks, a play and fan
works. This essay focuses on Hogwarts as depicted in the original seven books, the
spin-off book Quidditch Through the Ages (2001) and the published script of the
play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016).
Foucault’s chapter ‘Docile Bodies’, from perhaps his best-known book Discipline
and Punish (1975), is often taught at foundation level in sociology, cultural studies,
historical studies, literary studies and education. Foucault’s recurrent ideas about
how societies structure organisations are explored in ‘Docile Bodies’ through the
organisations of schools and the army. Like hospitals and prisons, schools and the
army are analysed in ways that help us see wider patterns of power, oppression and
resistance play out across workplaces, governments and families. Foucault’s writing
is famously challenging for undergraduate students, for example, the ideas about
school governmentality in ‘Docile Bodies’ are what Foucault would later call ‘con-
tact between technologies of domination of others and those of the self’ (1988,
p.  19). Foucault is also challenging because, while his individual ideas can be
straightforward, he puts them together into time, manner and place and then mobil-
ises them through networks.
Many academics have previously considered questions of Foucauldian surveil-
lance and resistance in the Harry Potter books. Shira Wolosky (2014) maps
Hogwarts’ disciplinary regimes, focusing on the actions of teachers such as
Umbridge, Snape and Dumbledore; an approach also used by Aaron YK Chan
(2019). In contrast, Noel Chevalier (2005) has suggested that Dumbledore embod-
ies a radical justice in opposition to the Foucauldian school. Chappell (2008) dem-
onstrates how students are directly controlled by magic, mind control and pain into
Foucault’s docile conformity. Similarly, Heffernan et al. (2018) make a case for the
policy environment at Hogwarts to be read through a Foucauldian disciplining lens.
However, Cantrell (2011) argues for Hogwarts as a place that allows or encourages
resistances through what Foucault calls ‘heterotopias’ or ‘other places’. While they
show that Foucault’s ideas in ‘Docile Bodies’ can be useful to understand Harry
Potter, this chapter uses Harry Potter to explain Foucault.
5 Ways Hogwarts Helps Us Understand Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’ 115

This chapter will explain how Rowling’s vision of Hogwarts is parallel to

Foucault’s understanding of the traditional school. Foucault’s theories show how
school rules and norms train students to be members of modern society through class-
room discipline, school sport, timetables, being watched and being punished. These
are also central aspects of Hogwarts’ organisation, and they are what makes it easy
for Hogwarts to be transformed into other sites of disciplinary control and observa-
tion across the series: a prison (Prisoner of Azkaban), a sporting arena (Goblet of
Fire), a totalitarian state (Order of the Phoenix) and a battlefield (Deathly Hallows).
Foucault’s ideas become much clearer when explored through concrete examples that
are likely to be familiar even to people who have never read the books: in Hogwarts’
official institutional structures like the Hogwarts’ Express train, the sport of Quidditch
and House Points, as well as apparently subversive magical items like the Time-
Turner (which allows time travel) and the Marauder’s Map (designed to help students
get into mischief). We will also put the ideas together, so that the reader understands
how these ideas function through time, across space, and interrelate.

Docile Bodies

Foucault sets out a theory of school in the chapter that begins the third part of
Discipline and Punish. Placed after ‘Torture’ and ‘Punishment’, and before ‘Prison’,
‘Discipline’ includes three chapters: ‘Docile bodies’, ‘The Means of Correct Training’
and ‘Panopticism’. Each of these chapters uses school as an important example of
Foucault’s ideas. Schools are not the only organisations that use these techniques, and
Foucault also gives examples from the army, factories and from the government.
Foucault shows that there was an increase in the scale of the control over people in
the eighteenth century. The new techniques were about controlling individuals even
when they were part of a larger group. Foucault focuses on a period when many mod-
ern innovations were being brought in to make institutions more professional, effi-
cient and scientific, so that they could be more productive. Systems were developed
to control the processes that the body goes through: ‘movements, gestures, attitudes
[ways of standing or sitting], rapidity [the speed at which you do the movements]’
(1991, p. 137). The purpose of the new control was to have individuals who worked
productively together in a team or organisation. The new control was also spread over
more of life, so that there were no moments or situations where a person was free of
this ‘discipline’, but it was ‘uninterrupted constant coercion’ imposed both by superi-
ors (like teachers), but also by students on other students, and, most importantly, by
students on themselves. When students leave school, they will experience similar
controls in their workplaces, their social groups or in their families. These disciplined,
obedient, useful, unified, efficient bodies are, in Foucault’s words, ‘docile’.
This overarching situation is the playing out of what Foucault calls ‘power’ (see
The Will to Knowledge, 2008, p. 94). ‘Power’, according to Foucault, is not some-
thing you can gain, lose or share. Power is not held by the people at the top, nor by
the masses. Power is instead distributed across ‘relationships of force’ in ‘non-­
egalitarian’ interactions, systems, situations and structures (p. 94). Power is made
116 K. Firth

up of the network of these interactions, which might be ‘mobile’, or might use ‘local
tactics’, but all these tiny slippery moments combine in society or politics or institu-
tions to mean people are not free.

5 Ways Hogwarts Explains Docile Bodies

Foucault’s ideas are complex because they make us think in ways that we might not
be quite so used to. We need to think both at the atomic, individual level, and also at
the social or organisational level, at the same time. We have to think about events that
are both ‘mobile and transitory’, with power and resistance relating as each other’s
‘irreducible opposite’ (2008, p. 96), and also see how these things come together to
form webs or swarms or networks or matrixes. In ‘Docile Bodies’, Foucault argues
that ‘discipline proceeds from the distribution of individuals in space’ via ‘enclo-
sure’, ‘partitioning’, ‘functional sites’ and ‘rank’ (1991, pp. 141–145). The individu-
als are then organised through partitioned time and sequential development, before
combining them. In Foucault’s terms, there are ‘four great techniques’ of discipline
(1991, p. 167): drawing up ‘tables’, including timetables; prescribing ‘movements’;
imposing ‘exercises’; and combining ‘forces’ together into ‘tactics’. When we try to
understand these ideas in the abstract, it can be difficult and confusing. This is why
Foucault gives so many examples to help us understand what he means.
In the next section, I will therefore use five examples of aspects of Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry that might help us understand ‘Docile Bodies’:
the castle itself, the spaces within the castle, the timetable, Quidditch and sports
fields and House Points.

‘Enclosure’: Dementors/Hogwarts Castle

The school building sets the institution apart, in a way that makes it easy to turn it
into a walled fortress or a prison, which helps us to understand Foucault’s concept
of ‘enclosure’. The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is a medieval
castle in the remote Scottish Highlands, built about a thousand years before the first
book is set (1999a, p. 114; 2003, p. 156). The school is typically only accessible by
a secure magical train that leaves from a secret platform in London’s King’s Cross
Station (e.g. Cursed Child, 2016, p. 60). The school grounds are fenced off from the
surrounding countryside, which can only be reached through the massive front
gates. Even the supposedly secret passage to the Shrieking Shack in the nearby vil-
lage of Hogsmeade is protected by a violent moving tree, the Whomping Willow.
This makes Hogwarts an ideal example of a place of ‘enclosure’: ‘a place hetero-
geneous [different] to all others and closed in upon itself’ where discipline takes
place (1991, p.  141). According to Foucault, a boarding school is ‘the most per-
fect… educational régime’ (1991, p.  141). Like a factory, it can be ‘explicitly
5 Ways Hogwarts Helps Us Understand Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’ 117

compared with the monastery, the fortress, a walled town’ (1991, p. 142). Separating
students from the world enables them to be protected and to protect others from the
nuisance of undisciplined students. It enables Hogwarts to focus on learning and to
set up systems that support doing that job efficiently.
Sarah Cantrell has argued that Hogwarts is closer to Foucault’s related concept
of ‘heterotopias’, sites that are ‘outside of all places’, ‘different spaces’ as Foucault
defined it in his essay ‘Of Other Spaces’ (1986, p. 24). Foucault identifies ‘crisis
heterotopias’, where people are sent out of society at a moment of transition, such
as ‘adolescents’ sent to ‘the boarding school in its nineteenth-century form’ (1986,
p. 24). However, heterotopias are more complex than simply places of enclosure, in
ways that go beyond the scope of this chapter (see Cantrell, 2011, pp. 198–201).
Hogwarts is, over and over again through the books, described as one of the most
carefully guarded and secure places in the wizarding world. Yet throughout the
series, extra security is regularly being added to the perimeter. The most notable of
these is in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when the supernatural guards
of the wizard prison are brought in to protect the train and the castle from the
escaped mass murderer, Sirius Black. The Dementors, according to the Headmaster
Professor Dumbledore, only understand the logics of the prison (1999b, p.  73).
Thus, the students become prisoners without officially having entered the prison
system (1991, pp. 302, 402).
Even when the castle is not surrounded by Azkaban’s guards, the school is
designed to keep students in, to keep an eye on them at all times and to punish them
if they break the rules. Security is achieved through geography, magic, beasts and
plants; security systems like passwords; and guards including ghosts, a caretaker,
portraits, statues and gargoyles. Security such as the caretaker Filch using a magical
scanner to search people entering or leaving the grounds (2005, p. 228) are imposed
to keep students enclosed away from the outside world, to protect the students and
to place them under surveillance and under control.

‘Partitioning’: Houses/The Marauder’s Map

‘Partitioning’, dividing up into ever smaller groups, enables surveillance within the
school. Staff and magical objects can keep an eye on students and be certain they are
not freely moving around. According to Foucault, partitioning ‘prescribes move-
ment’ (lays down rules about movement); it allows certain students into certain
places and not others.
Hogwarts is famously divided up into ‘Houses’, a typical aspect of British board-
ing schools. Hogwarts has four Houses, each named after one of the four founders
of the school: Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw (see further Lavoie,
2003, pp. 35–36). Each House has a common room with attached dormitories in
which students sleep, socialise and do homework. The House spaces are completely
segregated in the books—each House common room is situated in a different part of
the castle, entered only with a secret password. Students do not visit other common
118 K. Firth

rooms: Harry Potter never enters the Hufflepuff dungeon, enters the Slytherin dun-
geon only once through some very complex magic (Half-Blood Prince) and enters
the Ravenclaw tower only during a battle (Deathly Hallows). The students are fur-
ther divided in their Houses by gender, as Harry Potter discovers when he tries to
enter the girl’s dorm (2003, p. 314).
Placing a mass of people into ever smaller groups is designed to ‘eliminate… the
uncontrolled disappearance of individuals’, according to Foucault (1991, p. 141).
For most of Hogwarts’ history, students have been forbidden to be out of their dorm
rooms after dark. This rule is regularly flouted by Potter and his friends, as it was by
his father and his friends who first created the magical Marauders’ Map which
shows secret passages, unusual rooms but also the location of every person on the
school grounds. The Map together with the Invisibility Cloak enables Potter to seek
freedom of movement by evading security by literally disappearing in the ear-
lier books.
Greater imposition of security and surveillance inside the Hogwarts buildings
and grounds is brought in when the school is made into a totalitarian state under
Dolores Umbridge in The Order of the Phoenix. After Umbridge leaves the school,
however, security does not reduce. Across the final two books, The Half-Blood
Prince and The Deathly Hallows, the school repeatedly increases the policing of the
school’s corridors. At the same time, the Map increasingly becomes another tech-
nology of surveillance, as Potter becomes part of the matrix of power relations.
Rather than using the Marauders’ Map to resist the partitioning, prescription of
movement and surveillance, Potter uses the Map to spy on others. For example,
Potter obsessively tracks Draco Malfoy’s movements via the Map through almost
the entirety of The Half-Blood Prince. In The Cursed Child, Potter actually imposes
the Map on the Headmistress, Professor McGonagall, requiring her to spy on his
son Albus. Even the tools ostensibly created to contest the school’s controls are part
of the same systems of power.

‘Timetables’: Lessons/The Time-Turner

Foucault explains that partitioning also takes place in time (1991, pp. 149–156). As
well as partitioning students into strictly defined spaces, schools also control people
by dividing up their time (1991, p. 157). In particular, the timetable controls time by
‘dividing duration into successive or parallel segments’, with a defined end and
beginning that enables students to be trained in different places according to talent
and experience. For example, second form Potions takes place at a different time
than third form Potions. These segments are then organised into a plan to build from
simple steps to more complex ones and is finalised by an exam. The examination,
Foucault says, has a ‘triple function’: it confirms that the student has achieved the
5 Ways Hogwarts Helps Us Understand Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’ 119

required level; it guarantees that every student has undergone as consistent appren-
ticeship; and it differentiates ‘the abilities of each individual’ (1991, pp. 157–158).
Every student at Hogwarts, and every teacher, is subjected to this format: they
move their bodies to their allotted place, for the allotted time, and carry out their
allotted tasks in the prescribed manner—slowly building towards the confirmation
of their curriculum in the final examination. Throughout the series, the state controls
the school (see Chappell, 2008, pp. 285–286; Heffernan et al., 2018, pp. 38–43), for
example, through the external examination of OWLs and NEWTS (public qualifica-
tions). Thus, timetable and the ‘curriculum’ are ways in which ‘power is articulated
directly onto time’ (Foucault, 1991, p. 160).
The formal timetable, however, spreads out into all the available spaces in the
school. Schedules control when students eat and sleep, when they engage in extra-
curricular activities such as sport and clubs, but also extra lessons and homework.
Individual and group study is required to take place in supposedly ‘free’ time, such
as free periods, evenings, on weekends and in the holidays (Rowling, 2005, p. 163).
Students cannot afford to waste time and have to learn to become steadily more
efficient in order to keep up with the rising challenges of academic work imposed
by the school. In ‘Docile Bodies’, Foucault says: ‘It is a question of extracting, from
time, every more available moment and, from each moment, ever more available
forces’ (1991, p. 154).
In the world of Harry Potter, the drive for increasing productivity is taken to its
logical conclusion through the ‘Time-Turner’, a magical item that allows a person
to go back in time and then return to the present (1999b, p. 289). In The Prisoner of
Azkaban, Granger is loaned a Time-Turner (owned by the Ministry of Magic) to
enable her to pack more classes into her timetable and then more exams into her
exam timetable. The Time-Turner might not seem to have its desired effect of mov-
ing Granger towards ‘an ideal point at which one maintained maximum speed and
maximum efficiency’ (Foucault, 1991, p.  154), instead leaving her exhausted,
stressed, grumpy and ‘cracking up’ (Rowling, 1999b, p. 218). However, the more
instructive use of the Time-Turner is when Granger, Potter and Ron Weasley use it
for simultaneously rescuing a dangerous animal and a condemned prisoner from the
Ministry of Magic, both being punished due to miscarriages of justice. Foucault
claims that schools and the government function on a continuum of discipline. The
Ministry of Magic’s highly regulated technology and the instructions of the
Headmaster correct an individual misapplication of the law. Thus, the students
prove, via practical extracurricular examination, their fitness for future jobs leading
the Ministry when they complete their ‘time of training’ (Rowling, 1999b, p. 289;
cf. Cursed Child passim; Foucault, 1991, p. 159). By the time of The Cursed Child,
Granger is the Minister for Magic (the highest political office) and Potter is the
Head of the Department for Magical Law Enforcement.
120 K. Firth

‘ Functional Sites’: Quidditch/The TriWizard Tournament

/The Battle for Hogwarts

The school thus ‘becomes a machine for learning’ (Foucault, 1991, p.  165) with
every student and teacher and classroom and extracurricular activity perfectly work-
ing together, so that the students are always being taught or teaching (Foucault,
1991, pp. 162–167). Foucault argues that the individual learns ‘exercises’ of increas-
ing complexity by making each segment part of a series of gradual development
towards the adult world, for example, by having different year levels where the les-
sons gradually get more difficult until you can start a job (1991, pp. 156–162).
The development takes place in ‘functional sites’, spaces designed for a specific
function or purpose. The school is divided into many functional sites, such as the
Library, the Herbology greenhouse, the dorms, the Great Hall or the Hospital Wing.
In each of these spaces, students can be supervised en masse, but also individu-
ally—for example, by a teacher or referee who can see the whole group, but also
moves among them to listen and observe them undertaking their exercises or carry-
ing out their tasks (Foucault, 1991, p. 141). Students are expected to be in the cor-
rect space for the correct task and to focus on that task while they are there.
At the same time, in many of these sites, the students are being taught to become
‘a body-weapon, body-tool, body-machine complex’, that is, to use a tool such as a
wand in a way that it is almost part of the body (Foucault, 1991, p. 152). In order to
correctly use a wand, the user must have a precise ‘correlation of the body and the
gesture’ (Foucault, 1991, p. 152; cf. Rowling, 1998, p. 126). Like the ‘gymnastics’
required for good handwriting, or the precise ‘manoeuvre’ required by the new pre-
cision weapon, the rifle, the perfect action is created by ‘exercise’, Foucault sug-
gests (Foucault, 1991, pp. 152–153, 164).
According to Foucault, exercise divides large jobs into smaller tasks and then
repeats them, until they can be carried out habitually (1991, p.  161). This is the
purpose of the Duelling Club at the School (Chamber of Secrets) or the extra
Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons in the Defence Association (DA, also known
as Dumbledore’s Army, Order of the Phoenix), where offensive and defensive spells
are produced under pretend combat situations. On the Quidditch field, highly exer-
cised and disciplined bodies come together in a mock battle against the other team.
This is what Foucault means by ‘tactics’, the way in which individual ‘body-­
machines’ are brought together to function as a combined force.
Military or sporting ‘tactics’, Foucault says, ‘are no doubt the highest form of
disciplinary practice’ (1991, p. 167). The direct line from violence to modern sport
is explicitly drawn by Rowling in the companion book Quidditch Through the Ages
and in the Quidditch World Cup in The Goblet of Fire. The game of Quidditch is
carried out in a specialised ‘functional site’, a sporting pitch. In the TriWizard
Tournament the entirety of Hogwarts is made into a sporting arena, with tasks of
increasing difficulty (The Goblet of Fire).
Hogwarts is often a site of battle. In every novel except The Order of the Phoenix,
the story’s climax involves a scene of combat based in the school. In The Deathly
5 Ways Hogwarts Helps Us Understand Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’ 121

Hallows, the climactic Battle of Hogwarts takes place across a range of functional
sites, including the Room of Requirement, the Ravenclaw Dormitory, the Forbidden
Forest and the Great Hall. The narrative specifically recalls the students’ rehearsal
exercises, fighting for their lives ‘as if… this was simply spell practice for the DA’
(2007, pp. 521–522). When the school becomes a battlefield, the practice enables
the school to mount a creditable military response to its enemies: the spaces and
students act together to combine their forces in well-practised ways through the
‘arrangement of tactics’ (Foucault, 1991, p. 167).

‘Rank’: Prefects and the Inquisitorial Squad/House Points

‘Rank’ functions on two intertwined levels, according to Foucault: it structures the

design of ‘buildings, rooms, furniture’ and how students move in, and through them;
but it also explains an ‘ideal’ of ‘characterizations, assessments, hierarchies’ (1991,
p. 148). These ranks can be seen in the ‘corridors’ and ‘courtyards’ of the School,
and in the House dining tables in the Great Hall, for example.
House Points are particularly notable for the way they rank, assess and inscribe
values onto students’ behaviour in every part of their lives at the school. Hogwarts
House Points are represented as coloured precious jewels displayed prominently in
the Entrance Hall. House Points explicitly quantify practical discipline, but they
also show the ‘disposition’ of the local and personal power relations that make up
the school body (Foucault, 1991, p. 148). Points are given for actions of which the
school approves, for example, winning a Quidditch match. Points are similarly
removed for actions of which the school disapproves, such as not wearing the uni-
form. Breaking a rule in a way that conforms to the spirit of one of the school’s
founders (e.g. being brave like Gryffindor, or cunning like Slytherin) may show
instead a deeper understanding of the values of the school. For this reason, the
Headmaster regularly gives House Points for seemingly disobedient actions across
the series.
House Points are also used to enact unequal power relationships between stu-
dents and staff, as staff are able to give and remove House Points to reward or pun-
ish student behaviour. According to Foucault, a school works to become ‘an efficient
machine’ in which every student is a ‘cog’, part of a complex machine which acts
under a ‘precise system of command’ (Foucault, 1991, p. 148; c.f. Rowling, 1998,
p. 119; Rowling, 2003, p. 551). Students with a certain rank are able to give House
Points. Similarly, senior children are trained to lead junior children as sports cap-
tains, Prefects, in the Inquisitorial Squad, or as informal student teachers (a role
Granger and Potter both regularly take on).
The cogs of school children move seamlessly into the cogs of the state, with the
barriers between the Ministry for Magic and the school becoming less distinct with
each book. Increasingly direct control of the school is effected, for example, by
imposing Dolores Umbridge as Hogwarts High Inquisitor from the Ministry of
Magic (Order of the Phoenix); or when Voldemort makes attendance at the school
122 K. Firth

compulsory as part of his plans for control of the wizarding world (Rowling, 2007,
p. 173). The school and the ministry are ‘local tactics’, ‘connected to one another’
that ‘end by forming comprehensive systems’ of power, as Foucault would explain
it (1991, p. 95). The swarm of banal similarities between the School and the Ministry
of Magic form part of the same continuum of discipline and create the same docile
bodies in both spaces: the security systems; the setting out of ‘buildings, rooms,
furniture’; the way each person and space and movement in both the Ministry and
the School are characterised, assessed and hierarchised; and each department and
classroom and House kept separate and yet mobilised together through ranks of
order and control (1991, p. 95).

Conclusion

At the end of the Battle of Hogwarts (Deathly Hallows), Hogwarts has been
destroyed physically and systemically. The boundaries that made the school a ‘place
apart’ have been violated by Voldemort’s Death Eaters and giants but also by the
school’s allies, by the centaurs and spiders who come into the school from the
Forbidden Forest, by the villagers of Hogsmeade, by parents and by the house-elves
who march out from the kitchen. The marble staircase is missing sections, and one
of the great hourglasses that track House Points has been smashed, and green
Slytherin emeralds spilled across the floor (Rowling, 2007, p.  519). The house
tables have been replaced, ‘but nobody was sitting according to house any more: all
were jumbled together, teachers and pupils, ghosts and parents, centaurs and house-­
elves’ (Rowling, 2007, p. 597). In the aftermath of a revolution and resistance, the
‘dense web’ of the ‘network of power’ has been disrupted. For a moment, Hogwarts
is not enclosed, partitioned into functional sites and students partitioned by rank.
The timetable is suspended.
Foucault claims that while you cannot escape oppressive power relations, you
can resist them: ‘Where there is power, there is resistance’ (1991, p. 95). Resistance
can be a ‘reaction or rebound’ to power, or as the ‘underside of domination’. Like
power, resistance exists as a ‘multiplicity of points’, again using many local tactics.
These resistances may ‘play the role of adversary, target, support or handle in power
relationships’. Thus we can see that, ironically, resistance can sometimes be part of
the power system—for example, where a school values cunning and initiative as
well as intelligence and caring, then breaking the school rules might be not only
condoned but encouraged and rewarded. Still, there is a hope for freedom where
these ‘mobile and transitory points of resistance’ spread throughout society (that is
to say ‘apparatuses and institutions’ and individual relations), disrupting the ‘dense
web’ of the ‘network of power’ through the ‘swarm of points of resistance’
(Foucault, 1991, p. 96).
However, it is at precisely this moment of seeming disruption that the underlying
discipline of the school is shown to have been effectual. All of those exercises, all of
that ‘docility-unity’, have produced a fighting force that combined, with effective
tactics, to overcome overwhelming odds. In this way, it is no surprise to find that the
5 Ways Hogwarts Helps Us Understand Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’ 123

systems of Hogwarts have been restored in the epilogue ‘Nineteen Years Later’
(Deathly Hallows) and in the sequel play: the Sorting Hat, the Hogwarts Express,
the house tables, the Quidditch teams, the Library and the Potions dungeon are all
restored. In whichever version of the future Albus and Scorpius create with their
Time-Turner in The Cursed Child, there are always a Ministry of Magic, a Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and a world of leaders and followers, of pupils
and students, of exercises and development towards qualifications. As Farah
Mendlesohn explains, the books posit ‘a status quo and a formal understanding of
authority in which hierarchal structures are a given’, where ‘the hierarchy itself’ is
not disrupted although the people who occupy its ranks may be challenged (2001,
p. 306). There is, therefore, also always built into the physical and social structures
of Hogwarts, a ‘swarm of points of resistance’ (Foucault, 1991, p. 96): hidden pas-
sageways and underground cells of people working to destabilise the current Head
teacher and the current Minister of Magic, whether he or she is for or against
Voldemort.
This chapter has shown how Rowling’s vision of Hogwarts parallels Foucault’s
understanding of the traditional school. Foucault’s theories show how school rules
and norms train students to be members of modern society through classroom dis-
cipline, school sport, timetables, being watched and being publicly punished.
Hogwarts is created through multiple layers of interrelated systems and habits that
create ‘docility-unity’ in students, but also resistance and initiative. These systems
and habits outlive the period of any one Headteacher or set of students. Instead, as
Foucault concludes his chapter, the school systems maintain a pattern for the ‘con-
struction or reconstruction of the social body’ and ‘elaborating procedures for the
individual and collective coercion of bodies’, in the eighteenth century and today
(1991, p. 169).

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You are interested in how power operates in other settings, such as workplaces
and social media networks.
• Turn to p. 21 for Prosser’s exploration of hegemony.
You are interested in resistance and subversion.
• Turn to p. 9 for Thomas and McCandless’ clarification of Marxist thought.
You are interested in how institutions shape behaviour and identity.
• Turn to p. 71 for Bedford and Chalmers’ exploration of the identities of
women in the prison drama Orange Is the New Black.
• Turn to p. 135 to explore Sidebottom’s explanation of Deleuze and The
Great British Bake Off.
You want to know more about Foucault.
• Turn to p. 125 for Norman’s exploration of Foucault.
• Re-read the first chapter on how the interludes are organised.
124 K. Firth

References

Cantrell, S.  K. (2011). “I solemnly swear I am up to no good”: Foucault’s heterotopias and

Deleuze’s any-spaces-whatever in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Children’s Literature,
39(1), 195–212.
Chan, A. Y. K. (2019). Surveillance in Hogwarts: Dumbledore’s balancing act between manageri-
alism and anarchism. Children’s Literature in Education, 50, 417–430.
Chappell, D. (2008). Sneaking out after dark: Resistance, agency, and the postmodern child in JK
Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Children’s Literature in Education, 39(4), 281–293.
Chevalier, N. (2005). The liberty tree and the whomping willow: Political justice, magical science,
and Harry Potter. The Lion and the Unicorn, 29(3), 397–415.
Foucault, M. (1986). Of other spaces (J. Misokwiec, Trans.). Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. (Original
work published [1967/1984]).
Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the self. In L. H. Martin, H. Gutman, & P. H. Hutton (Eds.),
Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault. University of Massachusetts Press.
Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and punish (A. Sheridan, Trans). Penguin. (Original work pub-
lished 1975).
Foucault, M. (2008). The will to knowledge, the history of sexuality: Vol. 1 (R. Hurley, Trans.).
Penguin. (Original work published 1976).
Heffernan, A., Brabazon, T., & Heffernan, T. (2018). Scarring thoughts: Harry Potter and the neo-
liberal education reform. [Inter]sections, 21, 26–49.
Lavoie, C. (2003). Safe as houses: Sorting and school houses at Hogwarts. In G. L. Anatol (Ed.),
Reading Harry Potter: Critical essays (pp. 35–49). Praeger.
Mendlesohn, F. (2001). Crowning the King: Harry Potter and the construction of authority. Journal
of the Fantastic in the Arts, 12(3), 287–308.
Rowling, J. K. (1998). Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone (paperback edn). Bloomsbury.
(Original work published 1997).
Rowling, J. K. (1999a). Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets (paperback edn). Bloomsbury.
(Original work published 1998).
Rowling, J. K. (1999b). Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban. Bloomsbury.
Rowling, J. K. (2000). Harry Potter and the goblet of fire. Bloomsbury.
Rowling, J. K. (2001). Quidditch through the ages. Bloomsbury.
Rowling, J. K. (2003). Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix. Bloomsbury.
Rowling, J. K. (2005). Harry Potter and the half-blood prince. Bloomsbury.
Rowling, J. K. (2007). Harry Potter and the deathly hallows. Bloomsbury.
Thorne, J., Rowling, J. K., & Tiffany, J. (2016). Harry Potter and the cursed child. Little Brown.
Wolosky, S. (2014). Foucault at school: Discipline, education and agency in Harry Potter.
Children’s Literature in Education, 45(4), 285–297.
Power, Knowledge and Palpatine

Pat Norman

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In this chapter, Pat Norman brings the evolution of Foucault’s work on power
together with the Star Wars universe. Claiming that Foucault would have made a
good adviser to the Jedi, Norman converges Foucault and Star Wars to construct
knowledge of power. Three of these points are aligned with contextualising
Foucault’s work across his lifespan. Foucault’s early work was more philosophi-
cal—exploring the edges of the known universe, trying to make sense of why
knowledge is constructed in different ways at different points in time. Foucault’s
middle phase was more political, focusing on how power produced categories of
knowledge, like the light and dark sides of The Force. His last phase of work was
more personal, and he wondered how power produced categories in the first place
and what practices reinforce those categories.
Norman concentrates on the events in the prequel trilogy of Star Wars, namely,
the transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader, with five selected ele-
ments of Foucault’s theory. Firstly, power is not a repressive but a more neutral
productive force. Secondly, how power is produced in shifts over time and across
categories. Thirdly, power functions through disciplinary discursive practices, like
the requirement to confess. Fourth, such practices produce ways of governing soci-
ety that do not require bureaucratic structures, just assumptions about how society
works. Finally, Norman concludes by re-explaining that all of these systems of
power are not judgements about power, rather analytical tools.

P. Norman (*)
University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 125

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_11
126 P. Norman

Like many of the chapters, Norman also contextualises his explanation in social
media which can be used to demonstrate how the world is governed and how humans
govern each other’s behaviour.

Introduction

If power were never anything but repressive, if it never did anything but to say no, do you
really think one would be brought to obey it? What makes power hold good, what makes it
accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that
it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasures, forms knowledge, produces discourse.
(Foucault, 1980, p. 119)
My ally is the force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy sur-
rounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the
Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes.
Master Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

For any student interested in the way institutions come to influence our personal
lives, the name ‘Foucault’ inevitably features in their reading. Michel Foucault’s
work explores the categories and constructions that we take for granted as we go
about our day in complex societies. Right now, as you read this chapter, a range of
subject positions are produced within you: student, scholar, reader, author and so
on. My position as writer is produced as well. The way I understand myself and the
disciplines and discourses that shape my writing will be very different to your own.
The language available to me is productive in the sense that it opens possibilities to
me, at the same time as it is limiting. Foucault’s theoretical legacy gives us a way to
explore the boundaries of this understanding—to feel our way to the edges of the
very concepts we use to make sense of our intellectual galaxy.
While Foucault’s work can tell us a lot about the way power produces concep-
tual ‘institutions’—madness, criminality and sexuality—one crucial thing to
remember is that context is king in applying his approach. Foucault never consid-
ered his ‘theory’ to be an explanatory theory that can be applied in any context, but
rather what Bent Flyvbjerg (2001) calls an ‘analytics of power’ that can help us to
tease out the strategies and tactics of power. Foucault gives us a method of analysis
and a sense of the way power operates, which we can then apply in other contexts.
In this chapter, we will explore how this ‘analytics of power’ can be understood
through the personal and political dynamics of the Old Republic in Star Wars.
At the core of Star Wars is the dichotomy of the light and the dark sides of the
force. Foucault’s theoretical apparatus is often used to challenge and dismantle
dichotomies, and my aim is that this chapter will do the same. Social theory func-
tions as a kind of lens that we can use to make sense of the world. We can apply one
lens to many examples, or we can apply multiple lenses to a single example. In
either case, philosophising with pop culture helps us to better understand the lenses
we’re working with. The challenge with Star Wars is that it is set in a morally unam-
biguous galaxy. Emperor Palpatine is unapologetically evil, and his sole pursuit is
Power, Knowledge and Palpatine 127

absolute power. For me, this is a fascinating world in which to apply Foucault’s
question as to ‘the proper use to be made of the concept of power, and of the mutual
enwrapping, interaction and interdependence of power and knowledge’ (Gordon,
1980, p. 233). Foucault brings a neutrality to his analysis of power—it foregoes a
moral position, placing itself ‘beyond good and evil’. Foucault would have been a
helpful adviser to the Jedi then, both in understanding the relations of power that
eventually lead to their fall, but also in understanding the personal tension that
ripped apart Anakin Skywalker.
The prequel trilogy in the Star Wars saga is a story of power and knowledge, and
for that reason it is a good access point for understanding Foucault. This chapter
begins by tracing Foucault’s project, in particular how he came to understand power
and knowledge as ‘regimes of truth’. We will then turn to a more complex idea of
Foucault’s—governmentality—which helps us to understand the way these regimes
of truth come to shape our day-to-day lives and the way we present ourselves in the
world or, in the case of the Jedi Knights, how they disciplined themselves into being
the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy.

Who Was Michel Foucault?

Michel Foucault was a French intellectual whose work strongly influences social
science today. His lectures were heavily attended, and he was politically engaged
for much of his life. He was active in the gay scene, particularly during his time liv-
ing in California. His life and practices were a personal freedom: in an interview he
once said ‘I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main
interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the begin-
ning’ (Martin, 1988, p. 9).
As an ‘historian of ideas’, he engaged in deep analysis of a given institution, but
he also moved his projects along when a new problem captured his attention.
Because of this, scholars often divide Foucault’s work into periods. Dreyfus and
Rabinow (1983) describe a fairly straightforward methodological split: the early
archaeological phase and the later genealogical phase. Other scholars sometimes
describe early, middle and late Foucault, which broadly correspond to a triad of
concerns in his work: systems of knowledge, mechanisms of power and practices of
ethics. While Foucault’s interests were often moving, however, it isn’t accurate to
say that these phases were a clean break with each other—his ideas built on and
evolved the projects that came before.
Foucault’s early work developed in response to the structuralist tradition.
Foucault did not believe that there were deep, persistent structures to be found that
could explain human society. Instead, there are momentary and contingent ways to
understand the world—accepted sets of meanings and categories that reproduce
themselves for a time, before slipping into something else. He referred to these
understandings as ‘regimes of truth’ and the order in which they operate as dis-
course. Imagine, for a moment, that Foucault were a wise scholar living in the Old
128 P. Norman

Republic of Star Wars: what would he have regarded as the regimes of truth in the
galaxy? He might have considered the construct of the Jedi as the ‘guardians of
peace and justice’ as such a narrative, particularly given the Jedi are so bound up in
a pervasive and all-powerful ‘force’ that few people fully understood. In this sense,
‘early’ Foucault was quite interested in the problem of knowledge, but in particular
the edges and limits of the discourses we use to understand the world. Slavoj Žižek
(2018) describes Foucault’s project as being similar to playing an open-world
PlayStation game—say Grand Theft Auto—and exploring the edges of the map: he
was concerned with the houses we cannot enter, the structures on the horizon that
we cannot cross, but which seem to give texture and substance to the horizon.
Foucault’s later work coincided with a shift in focus from the problem of dis-
course to the way discourse and knowledge is structured by power. While he still
explored the production of categories—such as criminality or sexuality—he did so
with a keen interest in the way these categories are shaped by the strategies and tac-
tics of power. Consider the conflict that underpins the prequel trilogy: the battle
between the Separatists and the Republic. Had Foucault been living a long time ago
in that galaxy far, far away, he would have questioned the power games that produced
these categories. While everyone in the galaxy fell into the conflict unquestioningly
on the side of the Jedi or the Separatists, Foucault would have wondered how these
two sides came to exist in the first place. He might well have realised that the entire
war was a manipulation—a power play—by Darth Sidious himself. This is some-
thing of a pity for the Jedi: while Yoda struggled to understand why the Jedi can’t
perceive the dark threat clouding the force, Foucault would have been able to pin-
point exactly the problem. Even Yoda was caught in a regime of truth, one that pre-
vented him from seeing the way the very structure of the war was a product of power.
Foucault’s final project before he died was The History of Sexuality, which was
intended to be five volumes. Only three were completed, though his later lectures
indicated the directions the final volumes were heading: understanding the way
power and discourse interact as we seek to produce the self. In The History of
Sexuality, Foucault asks how it is that power functions in the way that it does such
that that it produces something like ‘sexuality’. In Volume I, he gives his most con-
crete definition of ‘power’ as a ‘multiplicity of force relations’ that ‘comes from
everywhere’ (Foucault, 1978, pp. 92–93), something that sounds quite akin to ‘the
Force’ in Star Wars. This final project began to explore the ethical identity of the
individual. He did this through a ‘genealogy’ of sexuality. Foucault sought to under-
stand how the notion of ‘sexuality’ came to be, no doubt partly informed by his own
sexuality. Beginning with the Victorian era, he explains that power is not merely
‘repressive’: it is productive. Where Victorian morals sought to classify and con-
strain sexual practices, there was a proliferation of discourse about sexuality, and
categories—such as ‘homosexuality’—were produced as a result. A similar morally
repressive power exists in the Old Republic, where the Jedi Council seems to define
what constitutes the light and dark sides of the force. This ‘repressive’ power that
restricts what a Jedi can do has the perverse effect of producing the dark side. Users
of the Force who engage in these restricted practices are classified as ‘dark’, and this
repressive law ends up transforming Anakin into Darth Vader. In later volumes of
Power, Knowledge and Palpatine 129

The History of Sexuality, Foucault went back to classical Greek and Roman culture,
noting that the various ways in which regulation of the body, or ‘care of the self’,
has been bound up with the formation of identity. This suggests that power is not
only a fixed commodity or a position from which control can be exercised. Discourse
and knowledge, argues Foucault, are always bound up in relations of power—they
are shaped by it. What counts as ‘knowledge’ is intimately related to how power is
arrayed in a given moment.

The Jedi’s Soul and the Terrors of Performativity

Foucault has—perhaps unfairly—gained a reputation for equating a lot of the things

we find in life with prisons. This idea is a product of arguably his most famous
work, Discipline and Punish, which looks at the birth of the prison, and the shift
from punishment of the body to the disciplining of the soul. Foucault was always
interested in ‘carceral’ spaces: his early work dealt with mental asylums and leper
colonies, clinics and hospitals and later, of course, prisons. However, Foucault’s
project wasn’t simply to demonstrate that these spaces are all like each other, but
rather to look at the way these spaces produced particular modes of behaviour and
being: what we call subjectivity. The classic construct that Foucault explores here is
Bentham’s panopticon—a mechanism by which prisoners feel constantly under sur-
veillance, and in so doing begin to police their own conduct. In his lectures at the
time, in particular the series Security, Territory, Population, Foucault explored how
the contemporary liberal-democratic welfare state evolved out of the Christian pas-
toral concern for the ‘soul’. These technologies of power—surveillance, accounting
and discipline—all fall under the rubric of governmentality, which he broadly
defined as an ensemble of institutions, practices and logics that target the population
for technical administration: a mentality of ‘government’ (Foucault, 2007,
pp. 108–109). These technologies are not inevitable, but they are instrumental in
understanding how contemporary subjects are produced. These ideas began the final
turn in Foucault’s work: a concern with power, subjectivity and ethics.
Underpinning his work lies Foucault’s core theoretical conceit: the interdepen-
dence of power and knowledge, and the way this works to produce the institutions
and social structures we take for granted. Discursive constructs in a sense pull
something into focus. The Jedi, for instance, are occupied with the problem of
peace, justice and the ‘dark side’ throughout the prequel trilogy. One of the ways
this preoccupation manifests is in the stoic code that underpins the Jedi order. They
are deeply suspicious of emotion and attachment, particularly as it relates to Anakin
Skywalker. Even the wisest of the Jedi—figures like Yoda and Qui-Gon Jinn—con-
tinually remind Anakin to be ‘mindful of his feelings’ and to avoid attachment. For
Anakin, this relentless focus comes to produce a resistance. Without the discourse
around attachment, it would not be constituted as a social ‘problem’. However, the
strict code of the order—and the sense of surveillance that inheres in the force—
drives Anakin further towards the dark. It is as though the Jedi are reaching into and
regulating Anakin’s soul.
130 P. Norman

Discipline is a hallmark of the Jedi, and the difference between the Jedi and the
Sith is analogous to the different techniques of power Foucault describes in
Discipline and Punish. The Sith generally do not seek to control how their adherents
think or behave—they simply demand physical subservience to their master. This is
perhaps why resistance amongst the Sith almost always involves the servant killing
the master or, to borrow from Foucault, ‘cutting off the head of the sovereign’.
Foucault didn’t use this expression literally; he was referring to the need to remove
the idea of the ‘Sovereign’ from our concept of power. For Foucault, power wasn’t
only exercised as a repressive function—it also acted to produce or enable certain
behaviours. This shift from the repressive power of the Sith to the disciplinary
power of the Jedi is similar to the shift Foucault noticed in regimes of criminal jus-
tice. The Jedi sought to produce a particular disciplined subject. A Jedi Knight was
required to think in a particular way, act in a certain way and fundamentally commit
themselves to the order in a way that reached into the fibre of their being. The Jedi
order was a kind of panopticon—the masters could even sense when Jedi Knights
had improper ‘feelings’.
Foucault notes in The History of Sexuality Vol.1 that the regulation of sexual
practice that is ascribed to the Victorian era was both productive at the same time as
it was repressive. He explains that, per the religious tradition of confession, the
proliferation of sexual discourses and sins demanded:
…the nearly infinite task of telling – telling oneself and another, as often as possible, every-
thing that might concern the interplay of innumerable pleasures, sensations, and thoughts
which, through the body and the soul, had some affinity with sex. (Foucault, 1978, p. 20)

This act of telling transforms sex from a physical practice into one of discourse, and
discourse operates in the domain of power. The Jedi exemplify the kind of pastoral
power that Foucault describes in Security, Territory, Population, a power that
demanded ‘confession’. This is the way that a discursive structure can be built
around a pre-discursive thing. It is also the way that the Jedi maintain power and
government of the soul, something with which Anakin Skywalker struggles most:
the need to continually confess his doubts, his feelings and his emotional state.
These states are positioned by the Jedi as unacceptable and as a pathway to the
dark side.
Repeatedly ‘telling’ the self might also be considered a form of performance.
Judith Butler (1990), building on Foucault’s work, has argued that the category of
gender is a performance that is continually reinforced as it is enacted in our day-to-­
day lives. This idea of identity as a performance is an extension of the power of
governmentality to shape the way we understand and portray ourselves in the world.
It is a way of manifesting our ‘soul’ in public—we constitute our identities by per-
forming them for the world. Stephen Ball (2003) talks about the way teachers, like
many other workers, are subject to a culture of performativity which ‘employs
judgements, comparisons and displays as means of incentive, control, attrition and
change’ (p.  216). This culture uses feelings of obligation and guilt to produce a
particular type of person, compelling individuals into compliance with a broader
institutional objective, framing our sense of who we are and who we might aspire to
Power, Knowledge and Palpatine 131

become. Consider the way this idea of performativity is represented in Star Wars.
Anakin consistently voices how desperately he wants to be incorporated into the
Jedi order—he underwent years of training, has close friendships with his mentors
Obi Wan and Yoda and yearns to be on the Jedi council. And yet he is continually
asked by the Jedi to ‘tell’ himself, to confess his feelings. His soul is probed and
surveilled—ineffectively—by the Jedi and they determine that it is impure. In this
way, the seeds of resistance are implanted in Anakin by the Jedi order itself, but it’s
important to recognise that resistance like his is the exception, not the rule. The Jedi
are remarkably effective at achieving a disciplined order, and they achieve this not
by punishment but using these techniques which Foucault called governmentality.
Governmentality refers to the way that an individual internalises the rules and
regulations of a power figure, like a government. Governmentality is about produc-
ing particular regimes of compliance and obedience, without the need to police and
enforce law. Governmentality is about the way we come to police ourselves, con-
cerned perhaps that we are being watched or surveilled. This is one of the reasons
why Foucault’s work is so enduring—it describes elements of our world under
social media so perceptively. We are always being watched, measured and expect to
perform:
Power it tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. Its success is
proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms. (Foucault, 1978, p. 86)

Contemporary scholars have observed this relationship play out in public policy. In
a study of the city of Aalborg, Danish researcher Bent Flyvbjerg (1998) noted that
powerful actors—the chamber of commerce, the council alderman and the local
media—used their power to shape the very rationality of a redevelopment project.
What constituted a rational policy decision and a sensible course of action came to
be shaped by the power of key actors with the power to shape discourse. Flyvbjerg
notes this phenomenon appears whenever political interests are put in tension in any
kind of public policy. The point is that what we regard as ‘knowledge’ is always
mediated by power relations: there’s no pure point from which we can understand
something in a way that isn’t mediated by these relations. Political actors who
understand this don’t simply rely on propaganda to manipulate perceptions: this
kind of discursive construction enables certain forms of rationality. Power/knowl-
edge is about the very way we understand a problem is caught up in the webs of
power around it.
Perhaps most significantly for our world today, the idea of governmentality has
implications for the way we think about ourselves and our relationship with the
regimes of truth that organise our lives. For many of us, social media has become—
like the Force—a vast technology that surrounds and binds us. We perform a par-
ticular identity for our social networks, posting photos, comments, opinions and
articles for others to consume. There are particular discourses that permeate this
social sphere as well: practices that are unique to Facebook—such as ‘liking’ and
commenting—are different to those on Instagram (‘filtering’) or Twitter (‘hashtags’
and ‘retweets’). Our responses to these networks are a performance and the net-
works themselves represent another mode of governmentality and surveillance,
132 P. Norman

even if it is one that we choose to opt into. In a way, that’s exactly the point about
governmentality: it produces behaviours and identities through the use of these
invisible ‘technologies of the self’.
Foucault’s analysis was focused not on a particular set of values— his analytic
tools don’t help us to understand why Palpatine is evil or why the Jedi are good.
These things can only be understood as good and evil from inside a particular
discourse or regime of truth. What this theory does is to help us to get at some-
thing much more significant, which is the way that these discourses might be put
together in the first place. As I mentioned earlier, had he been around in the time
of the Old Republic, Foucault would probably have been able to warn the Jedi
about Palpatine. He is famously quoted as saying that ‘everything is dangerous’,
which he sees as a reason to study the world and the powers that structure our
understanding of it even more closely. His theory enables us to get a sense of how
these relations of power come to shape the very terrain of knowledge, reason and
understanding.

Conclusion

Rather than understanding power as a commodity, Foucault reminds us that free-

dom is a necessary precondition for the exercise of influence (Foucault, 1982).
Power is a ‘multiplicity of force relations’ (Foucault, 1978, p.  92). It ‘incites,
induces and seduces’ (Foucault, 1982), just as it compels and controls through its
regimes of truth. It manifests as a technique of governance, rather than one of total
domination. Like the Force in Star Wars, power surrounds us and binds us; it is
omnipresent: ‘not because it has the privilege of consolidating everything under its
invincible unity, but because it is produced from one moment to the next, at every
point, or rather in every relation from one point to another’ (p.  93). This is the
essence of Foucault’s understanding of power. He never intended for his work to be
a ‘theory of power’, but rather a mode of analytics for understanding its applica-
tions. Power isn’t merely constraining and repressive, it is also productive. The Jedi
no doubt thought that they were doing the right thing in banning members of the
order from engaging in practices that they considered pathways to the dark side;
however in doing so, they also reinforced the discourse of light versus dark. And
perhaps most significantly, this absolute dichotomy meant that Anakin Skywalker
had nowhere to turn but the dark side: the repressive law of the Jedi produced the
very thing they were hoping to avoid. This is the circuit of power and resistance that
Foucault’s project maps so effectively.
Foucault’s historical work on madness, criminality, sexuality and the types of
governance that emerged in these spaces is compelling. His research can tell us a lot
about the exercise of power in these domains, but it’s important to remember that his
work here doesn’t constitute a universal ‘theory’. Context is king in Foucault’s
work, and he always reminds us that the particular structures and phenomena that
we observe are unique. There is nothing inevitable about surveillance, or the
Power, Knowledge and Palpatine 133

particular way governmentality has come to exist in the world today. While his work
can help us to understand how certain behaviours and subject positions are pro-
duced by things like social media and regulation, this is only ever a particular con-
figuration of power and discourse. But therein sits the underlying theoretical novelty
of Foucault: the very terrain of knowledge is shot through with power relations. The
way we express a problem—the problems we choose to express—we only express
within the boundaries of a particular discursive field. For theorists such as Judith
Butler, this might lead us to challenging gender dichotomies or received under-
standing of masculinity and femininity. For a Foucault living in the age of the Old
Republic, the conflict between the Separatists and the Republic was itself an obvi-
ously false one engineered by Palpatine.
Some will argue otherwise, but my view is that Foucault’s theory is not a system
building or liberating project. His work invites us to critique knowledge, and it can
help us to understand the strategies and tactics of power. His deliberate neutrality
and theoretical ambivalence about power means that his project can’t be applied
easily to the important work of telling us what we should strive to be and what mat-
ters in our societies. Foucault is often positioned opposite scholars who build sys-
tems and structures, like Jürgen Habermas and Noam Chomsky. But theories are
like lenses we use to understand the world, and we aren’t limited to using only one.
The task of critique and of interrogating the regimes of truth that govern our lives is
important—maybe just as important as proposing new ways of living them.
Foucault’s work plays in the grey zones of our institutions and the order of things as
we understand it. Popular culture can be one of those grey zones too: a place for us
to apply Foucault’s thinking, where the galaxy of Star Wars becomes a kind of
‘intellectual sandbox’ to play with and become comfortable with theory.

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You are interested in other discussions of power in society.
• Turn to p. 113 to read Firth’s explanation of Foucault’s work Discipline
and Punish.
• Turn to p. 21 to read Prosser’s explanation of hegemony.
 ou are interested in how power has been discussed in feminist and gen-
Y
der theory.
• Turn to p. 71 to read Bedford and Chalmer’s chapter on Simone de
Beauvoir.
• Turn to p. 163 to read Valentine’s chapter on care ethics.
You want to know more about Foucault.
• Re-read the first chapter on how the interludes are organised.
134 P. Norman

References

Ball, S. J. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy,
18(2), 215–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268093022000043065
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble. Routledge.
Dreyfus, H. L., & Rabinow, P. (1983). Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics
(2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.
Flyvbjerg, B. (1998). Rationality & power: Democracy in practice. University of Chicago Press.
Flyvbjerg, B. (2001). Making social science matter. Cambridge University Press.
Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality (Vol. 1: An introduction). Random House.
Foucault, M. (1980). Truth and power. In C.  Gordon (Ed.), Power/knowledge (pp.  109–133).
Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777–795. https://doi.
org/10.1086/448181
Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population (G. Burchell, Trans.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Gordon, C. (1980). Afterword. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/knowledge (pp. 227–259). Vintage Books.
Martin, R. (1988). Truth, power, self: An interview with Michel Foucault. In L.  H. Martin,
H. Gutman, & P. H. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault
(pp. 9–15). Tavistock Publications.
Martin, R. (1988). Truth, power, self: An interview with Michel Foucault. In L.  H. Martin,
H. Gutman, & P. H. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault
(pp. 9–15). Tavistock Publications.
The Radical Revolution. (2018, 10 December). Slavoj Zizek — Michel Foucault & Free Will
[YouTube Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/GSgl4WgN7hc.
A Thousand Gateaux: Rethinking Deleuze
and Guattari Through The Great British
Bake Off

Kay Sidebottom

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In this chapter, Kay Sidebottom applies the idea of mixing theory and pop culture
together by bringing Deleuze and Guattari into conversation with the baking game
show, The Great British Bake Off. This is another of a few chapters in this volume
which ignore the theorist’s aversion to popular culture to construct knowledge. This
approach to doing theory positions the authors of the chapters as theorists rather
than just analysts because they challenge authorities in their field whilst still respect-
ing the contribution they make. It is possible, as Sidebottom argues, to put theory to
work, rather than simply engaging with it as a description of epistemology (knowl-
edge) or ontology (world view). Whilst over time theorists have been criticised for
not being ‘Deleuzian’ or ‘Foucauldian’ or ‘Boudieusian’ enough, the act of deploy-
ing theory as a tool rather than canon is an increasingly accepted approach to engag-
ing with theory in social research.
Sidebottom gives Deleuze and Guattari status as philosophers through restating
Foucault’s prediction that the twentieth century would one day be known as the
Deleuzian century. She contextualises that statement by linking it to another signifi-
cant twentieth-century theorist, Gramsci, who is often drawn upon by what have
come to be known as ‘post-socialists’ or those who believe the lessons of Marx are
still important without supporting the Stalinist outcomes of theoretical application.
In doing so, Sidebottom not only remixes Deleuze and Guattari with pop culture but
also political theory, another remix Deleuze may not have approved of. Sidebottom’s
refusal to be a Deleuzian purist does not mean that Deleuze and Guattari’s work gets
ignored, just remixed.
Sidebottom constructs knowledge about capitalism and change by converging
Deleuze and Guattari’s work with Bake-Off in five selected points. Firstly, she

K. Sidebottom (*)
Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 135

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_12
136 K. Sidebottom

explains how capitalism territorialises resistant ideas by bringing what is perceived

as different into the fold of marketisation. Secondly, she explains that once acts of
resistance and capitalism as mixed together, it is impossible to separate them, and
the new mixture becomes part of the body of work that we know of as capitalism.
Thirdly, once the mixture of resistance and capitalism has completed its work and
become ‘cake’, rules and restrictions apply to it. Fourth, the finished product is then
engaged with outside of the cake itself, subjected to analysis, critique and desire,
which then allows capitalism to again begin the act of territorialising resistance and
desire. The cycle continues. Finally, Sidebottom explains that this process does not
produce permanence but a continuous state of impermanence that shifts society
slightly or seismically over time.
Like many authors in this volume, Sidebottom’s personal observation link is
social media. Social media makes the whole process of territorialisation, mixing,
regulations and iteration visible.

Introduction: Ingredients

This chapter will focus on the major works of Deleuze and Guattari, in particular the
two-volume opus Capitalism and Schizophrenia. In the first book, Anti-Oedipus,
they take on capitalism, analysing desire and oppression through an anti-fascist lens
and proposing new modes of being and seeing the world. Their theory promotes the
celebration of difference, emphasising flows and movement through a process
ontology that draws on a variety of phenomena (natural, organic, mechanical, etc.)
to facilitate connections with philosophical ideas. Using the lens of The Great
British Bake Off (a popular reality TV show in which amateur cooks take part in
weekly baking competitions), I will aim to apply and relate their complex notions to
popular culture in order to both critique and explicate their meaning.
The philosophical writings of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari are often
described as dense and indigestible, yet their work is becoming increasingly rele-
vant for our troubled and complex times. Our current state of ‘interregnum’
(Gramsci, 1971), with its associated features of environmental degradation, mass
migration, global inequality and species extinction (amongst many other things),
calls for new approaches and solutions, yet the work of the work of these philoso-
phers who specifically examined the anatomy of advanced capitalism is often over-
looked. When Michel Foucault stated ‘…perhaps one day this century will be
known as Deleuzian’ (1970, p. 885), he may have been a little ahead of the game;
but increasingly there is a sense that we need break with engrained and binary ways
of thinking which fail to address our ecological and democratic predicament. As
Geerts and Carstens (forthcoming, p. 2) state ‘Such a [Deleuzian] analysis is needed
to frame the rise of neo-fascist political and economic regimes operating under the
guise of neoliberal capitalism today’.
The authors’ extensive and critical explorations of capitalism, consumerism and
culture begs the question however; what would Deleuze and Guattari make of their
A Thousand Gateaux: Rethinking Deleuze and Guattari Through... 137

work being seen through the lens of a reality TV show that is arguably embedded in
the paradigms that they deconstruct so eloquently? Deleuze in particular has been
dismissive of popular culture, and of course neither philosopher was around to
experience the rise of interactive or reality television. As such it would be wrong to
anticipate their views, although Deleuze’s take on the creative limitations of pop
videos is telling: ‘…they could have become a really interesting new field of cine-
matic activity…but were immediately taken over by organized mindlessness.
Aesthetics can’t be divorced from these complementary questions of cretinization
and cerebralization’ (Deleuze, 1977, p. 60).
However, it is notable that Deleuze also borrows heavily from other disciplines.
Theories, for him, are a ‘toolbox’ (Deleuze & Foucault, 1972, p. 2), not to be anal-
ysed and debated, but to be put to work. As Adrian Parr states, concepts ‘…become
the means by which we move beyond experience so as to be able to think anew . . .
in other words, concepts must be creative or active rather than merely representa-
tive, descriptive or simplifying’ (Parr, 2005, p. 54). It is certainly true that the inac-
cessibility of Deleuze and Guattari can form a barrier in times that call for radical
and transformative thinking. Using familiar concepts, and pop culture metaphors,
whilst being a practice they may have resisted, can help us to reflect and think their
ideas through, as we resist the separation of theory and practice. As Quinn et al.
(2018, p.  62) state: ‘Metaphors do more than help us conceptualise pre-existing
reality. As one of our most powerful and ubiquitous ways of structuring our concep-
tual systems, they structure our reality, influence the way we think about our prac-
tice, and guide our actions and practice’ (p. 62). As Deleuze and Guattari stretched
and pushed concepts to their limits, this chapter also seeks to challenge and probe;
de-­territorialising and troubling the ideas in the way that they would perhaps have
welcomed.
Strom (2017, p. 112) discusses the exclusionary role of high theory, and the bar-
rier of inaccessible language that can lead to feelings of intellectual inferiority. As
she states: ‘…we must commit ourselves to finding ways to interrupting those dis-
courses and other exclusionary mechanisms that keep ‘high theory’ off limits for all
but a select elite few’. What better place to start, then, than with cake?

The Great British Bake Off

The Great British Bake Off (GBBO) came onto our screens in 2010, first airing on
BBC2 and by 2018 drawing in average viewing figures of nine million. At the time
of writing, the programme has been sold to over 21 countries and resulted in a
number of spin-off programmes emulating its format. In the show, 12 amateur bak-
ers come together to compete in a series of challenges, under the watchful eye of 3
expert judges. Each week the contestants take part in three rounds in which they
aim to demonstrate their prowess in baking improvisation, technicality and creativ-
ity. The programme follows a common reality TV formula whereby the judges
138 K. Sidebottom

eliminate contestants week by week until the one remaining finalist is crowned
champion.
The popularity of the show has been explained in a number of ways. Firstly, the
motif of the village fete, played out through the location and setting in a mock-­
marquee filled with kitsch culinary items, hark back to an idealised time (Lewis,
2016). In a turbulent period incorporating the Scottish Independence and Brexit
referenda, nostalgia can provide comfort and familiarity; arguably, viewers seek
comfort by immersing themselves in what appears to evoke a happier time in UK
history. Yet this explanation also exposes the complex and contradictory nature of
GBBO; taking an alternative feminist interpretation, for example, problematises the
sheen of domesticity and the nature of feminised labour. As Munford and Waters
(2013, p. 93) state: ‘In celebrating these models of privileged ‘housewifery,’ popular
culture repeats a fairy-tale idealization of feminine idleness and indulgence that has
long been a source of frustration within feminist discourses’. It is at this point that
we turn to Deleuze and Guattari in order to make sense of the complex role of the
programme within popular culture today.

Recipe

In this chapter, I will mix, re-mix and merge the following Deleuzian1 concepts and
ideas in order to interrogate features of The Great British Bake Off and explain
wider social developments connected with associated phenomena:
• Bake-Off as Capitalism and Schizophrenia
• Cake as Body (without Organs)
• Cake as fascist machine
• The Fold
• Rhizome
• Assemblage

Bake-Off as Capitalism and Schizophrenia

In Anti-Oedipus (1972), Deleuze and Guattari explore capitalism as a kind of

machine that can ‘plug in’ to any culture, de-coding it and opening it up to exchange
and profit. At first glance the GBBO format appears to emulate the dire state of
society within this model of advanced capitalism. Heightened competition, predict-
able advantage of contestants of privilege, spin-off products available for purchase,
vast amounts of waste (what happens to all those cakes?) and hidden labour (who

1
 For the purposes of this essay, ‘Deleuzian’ will be used as a catch-all descriptor for works which
may include the ideas of Felix Guattari.
A Thousand Gateaux: Rethinking Deleuze and Guattari Through... 139

does the washing up?) all speak to our complex times. Sales in baking-related ingre-
dients and products have notably increased since the programme’s inception, with
Marks and Spencer reporting an average increase in flour sales of 30% (Nikkah,
2012). As Casey (2018, p. 592) states, the show ‘…encapsulates a ‘post-feminist
sensibility’…which is entrenched in neoliberal discourses around choice, personal
pleasure and unfettered consumerism’.
Baking here is packaged as a skill that is not purely domestic; it is one over
which women have agency, and within which they are positioned as entrepreneurs.
And men bake too, taking up equal numbers of contestant positions; one third of the
winners have also been male. Baking is seen as a route to self-actualisation, although
of course this is never fully attainable. There will always be new recipes to try, new
products to purchase and new kitchen tools to improve baking outcomes. Yet GBBO
also exposes advanced capitalism as being a more complex machine, and this is
where Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas laid out in Capitalism and Schizophrenia can be
employed. Much like a schizophrenic patient, they suggest that capitalism pays no
heed to codes, signifiers and cultures; it has no ego, or unique identifying character-
istics. Its mobile nature means that it can quickly move from one territory to another,
not necessarily profiting by exploitation or consumption, but also subtly jumping
onto other human needs or desires. Capitalism is embedded and we are enmeshed in
it, as it both enables us and restricts us. One example of this contradictory nature is
demonstrated through the somewhat surprising GBBO response to competition. In
GBBO, there is no large monetary prize; only flowers and a cake stand for the win-
ner. What is prized and revered, however, is the unexpected support and solidarity
amongst contestants, who are often seen comforting each other, offering advice and
collaborating. Whilst this phenomenon appears to push back against the competitive
and individualising nature of reality TV, spin-off opportunities for contestants con-
tinue to support capitalist ends; the winners can make millions through associated
activities such as cookery books, personal appearances and social media promotion,
whilst groups emulating the series in workplaces or with friends can buy official
cookery books and other GBBO merchandise in order to replicate feelings of com-
munity and collaboration at home. In this way, capitalism can be seen to be territo-
rialising ideals of community, profiting on the back on affective responses of
solidarity and belonging.
The success of the Nadiya Hussain (a Muslim hijabi), and the promotion of other
diversities (an openly gay presenter; equal numbers of men and women in a baking
show; numerous participants of colour) in a time of Brexit-driven existential crisis
provided an important reminder about the diverse nature of Britain in the early-­2000s.
This resistance to heterogeneity is welcome, yet can also be seen as a way of capi-
talism ‘re-territorialising’ a site of difference. Capitalism constantly overcodes, so
that whilst, for example, difference is accepted and lauded in the form of contestant
choices, it then becomes a vehicle for profit and exploitation.
GBBO presents other schizophrenic provocations. A show that promotes the
home-made and the development of professional-level baking skills simultaneously
creates gaps in the market for manufacturers to profit from. As Casey (2018, p. 590)
states ‘…the show… reflects the onslaught of neoliberal norms of consumerism,
140 K. Sidebottom

which are often used as a resource to help recreate idealized ‘homemade’ aestheti-
cally appropriate versions of the past’.
In this way Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas of capitalism and schizophrenia can be
used to expose the way in which programmes like GBBO buy into consumerist ide-
als and tropes which simultaneously suggest a route out through ideals of commu-
nity, tradition and shared identity.

Cake as Body (Without Organs)

‘Body’ for Deleuze is defined as any whole composed of parts, where these parts stand in
some definite relation to one another, and has a capacity for being affected by other bodies.
(Baugh, in Parr, 2005, p. 35)

Understanding the concept of the body is key to accessing Deleuze and Guattari’s
ideas of power, creativity and affect. At the mention of the word body, however, our
thoughts generally turn to the human body, a physical figuration, bounded by skin,
limited by the ends of limbs. In their terminology, however, a body is not just the
human or animal body but a collection of different elements; as in a body of work,
a community or society; or perhaps even cake mix. Rather than being defined by its
own components or physicality, a body is defined by its relations to other elements
and what it does, through its actions and reactions. In this way it will develop par-
ticular characteristics and will be affected in different ways, by different things.
Bodies hold huge amounts of potential, in that we do not fully understand what they
are capable of doing or becoming when acting in conjunction with others; as
Deleuze draws on Spinoza to iterate ‘We do not know what bodies can do’ (2001,
p. 17). In the same way, a cake mix is a body full of different elements and poten-
tials, continually in the state of ‘becoming otherwise’. A typical cake batter might
incorporate eggs, flour, butter and milk. Each separate element is divested of its
body—be that a container, shell or packet—and opened outwards into a new prox-
imity with other ingredients. The new body cake is then subject to movement, force,
and will have agents acting on it, whilst it also acts on other agents. At this stage it
is emergent and unfixed—‘a pure immanence … an ongoing experiment’ (2002,
p. 150).
In a body, everything comprises sets of flows—and the same is true for our cake
mix, which undergoes an intra-action of ingredients, processes of mixing, cooking
and association with other material components and machines such as the baking
tin, mixer and spoons. Various elements come together to construct a ‘cake-­
machine’, in which the world is multiply constituted. The ensuing cake is dependent
on the entire assemblage of ingredients, processes, materials and mechanisms; it
cannot be separated from the elements with which it intra-acts.
In order to develop our own potentials in a relational (rather than individualistic
sense), Deleuze and Guattari suggest we also attempt to remain in this state of
becoming, open to relations with other human and non-human entities, invoking
power as a process rather than an identity and not becoming petrified and static in
A Thousand Gateaux: Rethinking Deleuze and Guattari Through... 141

our beliefs or action. In short, we should ‘be more cake mix’ (rather than aiming at
being a finished product—which is ultimately unattainable as we are always in the
process of change and development). This call to invoke ourselves as bodies puts us
back into the position of the eager and inquiring child, who knows that the cake mix
tastes better than the final cake anyway!

Cake as Fascist Machine

The Great British Bake Off relies as much on its baking failures as its successes. In
an early series, presenter Mary Berry coined the phrase ‘soggy bottom’, describing
the way in which moisture collects at the bottom of a pie or tart to render it unpalat-
able and indigestible.
The notion of Body Without Organs, often shortened to BwO, was first intro-
duced by Deleuze in The Logic of Sense (1969) and since then has continued to
perplex and confuse many. The phrase was borrowed from French performer and
poet Antonin Artaud’s play, ‘To Have Done with the Judgement of God’:
When you will have made him a body without organs, then you will have delivered him
from all his automatic reactions and restored him to his true freedom. (1976, p. 571)

We know from the previous section what a body can be, a set of potential elements,
opened out to form relations within any number of productive configurations. A
BwO further emphasises the potential that a body (human or otherwise) can have,
before organs render it fixed and petrified; as Deleuze and Guattari state ‘This body
without organs is permeated by unformed, unstable matters, by flows in all direc-
tions, by free intensities or nomadic singularities, by mad or transitory particles…’
(1972, p. 40).
Bodies can be formalised in a restrictive way by the external coding of society
(think gender identity), or through an individual reluctance to open out and form
productive relations with other entities. Despite its complexity, the concept is useful
as a means of understanding and overcoming fascist tendencies, which, as Deleuze
and Guattari state, are as much within us (at a micro level) as external—that is,
demonstrated within totalitarian regimes. A BwO pushes the boundaries of what
bodies constrained by social and political systems can do; but as in the Bake-Off, we
need to be wary when we are too experimental. Just as an overambitious GBBO
‘showstopper’ cake can end in disaster (e.g. think of the collapse of the overambi-
tious ‘Gingerbread Barn’ in series four), so a Body without Organs can develop in
ways that are unhealthy and counter-productive. The development of a BwO is an
on-going process, situated and local, without a fixed end point.
Deleuze and Guattari thus identify three kinds of BwO: full, empty and cancer-
ous. Full BwOs, like a healthy cake mix, are like ‘… well-constructed experiments,
which can sustain dynamic flows and energies without interruption’ (1987, p. 153).
The empty BwO is reminiscent of the GBBOs classic trope—the cake with the
‘soggy bottom’. It has remained immobile and has calcified, allowing itself to be
142 K. Sidebottom

controlled by outside forces (in humans this may be manifest in issues like drug
addiction). The cancerous BwO is a replicating system that clones and homoge-
nises, like an assembly line cake which must appear uniform and easily replicable.
This is micro-fascism on a molecular level, whereby each unit or body is geared
towards unity but at the expense of the acceptance of difference and growth.
The ‘Signature Bake’ round in GBBO is one example of a striving to become
Body without Organs. Contestants use recipes that are often handed down through
family generations but remain open to new developments, ingredients and tech-
niques in order to stay fresh and contemporary. In a similar way, the concept of
BwO requires us to expose ourselves to new flows, differences and relations in order
to avoid micro-fascism and stultification. However, we need to beware the cult of
ego and overambition that can turn our own body cakes into unpalatable and
unhealthy organisms that are, quite literally, showstoppers.

The Fold

Folding is an action frequently seen on GBBO, as contestants complete a delicate

manoeuvre intended to combine ingredients whilst maintaining the air bubbles nec-
essary to give the ensuing cake a light and airy texture. In a similar way to the idea
of Body without Organs, Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of the ‘fold’ speaks of
the merging and integration of difference in order to sustain the ongoing growth and
development of species. The concept appears in numerous works but is specifically
explored in The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (1993) where the idea of interior/
exterior and organic/inorganic binaries is challenged in relation to our own subjec-
tivities. Rather than focusing on the internally sited development of the ego, the idea
of the fold suggests the continual bringing in of the new, through an opening out of
the mind and body. This might be in the very act of thinking with others, as we oper-
ate as sets of relations that are interconnected, dependent and continuously emerg-
ing. Like the indivisible nature of cake mix ingredients, we form ‘...a flexible or
elastic body [that] still has cohering parts that form a fold, such that they are not
separated into parts of parts but rather divided to infinity in smaller and smaller
folds that always retain a certain cohesion’ (1993, p. 8). Viewing ourselves as sub-
jects who affect and are affected by others and form and re-form as we fold in and
around each other in a variety of formations can help us to re-imagine ways of living
and working together.

The Rhizome

The consumption of TV shows has changed radically in the past 10 years. Multiple
channels, on-demand viewing, mobile devices and streaming have led to new forms
of engagement. Rather than gathering round ‘the box’ at set times to watch a pro-
gramme together, viewers turn to social media to discuss and unpick the happenings
A Thousand Gateaux: Rethinking Deleuze and Guattari Through... 143

in front of them. This phenomenon, known as ‘second screen’, is enacted through

the introduction of secondary companion devices (mobile phone or tablet) and con-
nects the viewer to others. The hashtag #GBBO is used to join viewers of The Great
British Bake Off in real-time conversation, as they share the highs and lows of each
bake-off episode; over ten million people saw GBBO tweets on their Twitter time-
lines in just 2 hours at the start of the 2016 season (Tait, 2016). This phenomenon
can be seen as a digitally enhanced continuation of previous social viewing prac-
tices; as Doughty, Rowland and Lawson discovered in a 2011 study: ‘The media
experience for users changes from the conventional norm; rather than existing as a
static viewer of broadcast media in a bipartite arrangement, a tripartite, dynamic
relationship is formed between the broadcast media, the twittering audience and
their networked audiences’ (2011, p. 5). These connections manifest through a sys-
tem which Deleuze and Guattari would describe as ‘rhizomatic’. But what does
Twitter and GBBO have to do with organic systems, and how are the implications
of this concept useful for ourselves as social beings?
In botanical terms, a rhizome is a continuously growing plant stem, a complex
network of nodes, shoots and tendrils which often spans a wide area, spreading out
horizontally and vertically. Examples include bamboo, couch grass, ferns and the
humble buttercup (rhizomes are often known as ‘weeds’). Plants with rhizomatic
stem systems are difficult to contain and if pulled up in one place, will often reap-
pear in another. Rhizomes are also key to the functioning of seemingly unrelated
natural systems; for example, the mycelium of fungi are known to form vast branch-
ing subterranean networks, connecting individual plants together and sharing nutri-
ents for mutual benefit.
Deleuze and Guattari have given ‘rhizome’ a distinct meaning in philosophy,
suggesting that many systems in the world are also rhizomic. In A Thousand
Plateaus (1987), the writers suggest that generally we are led to understand what
constitutes knowledge through arboreal metaphors—roots and branches—and lin-
ear processes of growth and development. This binary thinking is unrepresentative
of how the world actually works: ‘One becomes two: whenever we encounter this
formula, even stated strategically by Mao or understood in the most ‘dialectical’
way possible, what we have before us is the most classical and well reflected, oldest,
and weariest kind of thought. Nature doesn’t work that way: in nature, roots are
taproots with a more multiple, lateral, and circular system of ramification, rather
than a dichotomous one. Thought lags behind nature’ (Deleuze & Guattari,
1987, p. 5).
Putting the concept of the rhizome to work helps us to avoid binary thinking, as
anything can be connected to any other thing at any point. Separations, such as those
between home and work life, are artificial as the world does not exist of discrete,
isolated objects. Realising that we are all connected and part of interdependent mul-
tiplicities (as in the mycelium example) requires us to acknowledge complexity
within our social systems, as in our ecological habitats. In advanced capitalism,
with the advent of smart devices, precarious work via the gig economy and less
demarcated home-work locations, rhizomatic networks such as Twitter further blur
the boundaries between the different facets of our identities and expose the various
ways in which we are connected. In this way we see that, despite the rhetoric around
144 K. Sidebottom

the individualising nature of modern technologies, TV watching continues to be a

deeply social practice. The rhizomic connections extend further into workplaces
through emulations and re-enactments of the show, creating new manifestations and
gatherings, as the final section will show.

Assemblage

In ‘Dialogues’, Deleuze’s series of philosophical discussions with Claire Parnet, an

assemblage is defined as ‘...a multiplicity which is made up of many heterogeneous
terms and which establishes liaisons, relations between them, across ages, sexes and
reigns—different natures’ (1987, p. 69). As we have seen, the GBBO is not an indi-
vidual experience but a collective one that spans television, family, work and com-
munity. Assemblages may be virtual in this way, or real, for example, in a workplace
scenario where employees create their own spin-off baking competitions. Through
rhizomatic conversations on social media, different constellations are formed, gath-
ering around a hashtag which depends on both human and non-human elements
(person, device, algorithm, message, gif and so on). These assemblages may only be
together for a short time, can be seen to produce many outcomes, both social and
material. The presenter assemblage and format of season one (Mary Berry, Paul
Hollywood, Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins; BBC2; contestants; and audience) has
morphed into new presenters, new participants, new constellations of viewers and a
different television channel, shifting and altering the outcome produced over time.
Understanding the impermanence of assemblages can help us to focus on how
things act, rather than what they are, knowing ourselves as sets of multiplicities,
always in a process of ongoing construction and re-construction.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have read Deleuze and Guattari through the lens of The Great
British Bake Off, utilising their ideas and concepts to shine a light on a particular
element of pop culture and simultaneously exploring how they can be used to help
us understand and overcome the modern predicament of the twenty-first-century life.
Much like the amateur bakers turning simple ingredients into unexpected works
of edible art, our own pressures of time call for the imaginative rethinking, re-­
imagining and reshaping of human life as we know it today. As Parr states: ‘We
urgently need creative responses that will transform what is seemingly hopeless into
something hopeful’ (Parr, 2015). By putting the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari
to work through our thoughts and actions, we can—like the most successful bakers
on the show—rise to the challenge of creating something new, ideas and concepts
both for, and with our times.
A Thousand Gateaux: Rethinking Deleuze and Guattari Through... 145

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You are interested in exploring perspectives on capitalism and Gramsci’s
ideas further.
• Turn to p. 21 to read about how he influenced the concept of hegemony.
You are interested in another chapter where the theorist was reportedly not a
fan of pop culture.
• Turn to p. 101 to read Johnson’s explanation of Bourdieu.
You are interested in ideas of belonging and identity.
• Turn to p. 71 to explore Beauvoir’s feminism.
You are interested in the ways in which society is structured.
• Turn to p. 113 to explore Firth’s explanation of how space defines interac-
tions using Foucault and Hogwarts.

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“You Pass Butter”: The Messages of Media
and Technology in Rick and Morty

Travis Holland

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In this chapter Travis Holland unpacks Marshall McLuhan’s most famous claim—
the medium is the message—through Adult Swim’s cartoon, Rick and Morty.
Holland’s chapter centralises the popular cultural object, unpacking its layers, just
as many have worked to unpack the meaning of McLuhan’s statement. In remixing
the theory in this way, Holland presents his own theory earlier in the chapter than
many of the others in this volume. It is in his opening paragraphs that he posits that
“media and technology are prostheses that allow us to sense and interact with the
world beyond what is immediately at hand”. By stating his own interpretation of
McLuhan’s theory so close to the beginning of the chapter, Holland has, from the
outset, alerted the reader to his authorial authority, expertise and intention to insert
his own original ideas into the text. This is a technique that many academic writers
use, and it situates the text in the genre of application and analysis, rather than
description and explanation.
Nevertheless, Holland still situates his theory in the discourses of both McLuhan
and Rick and Morty in much the same way as Foucault suggests this happens, as was
outlined in the Introduction. Holland unpacks McLuhan giving him status through
how his oblique statement has attracted multiple interpretations from well-known
theorists. He also contextualises McLuhan as a media theorist commenting during
the proliferation of television. However, because Holland chooses to individualise
McLuhan through his most famous statement—the medium is the message—the
convergence of that single utterance with Rick and Morty acts to centralise the car-
toon as a work of postmodern theory. As such, Holland’s engagement with the car-
toon as an authorial work is what we draw attention to in this interlude.

T. Holland (*)
Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, NSW, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 147

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_13
148 T. Holland

Holland contextualises Rick and Morty by highlighting its importance in the devel-
opment of adult cartoons. Placing it in the same genre as The Simpsons and Family
Guy, he explains how Rick and Morty became a broadcast television phenomenon
through parodying Back to the Future. The history of the development of the idea to
create “humourous postmodern science fiction parody television show” is outlined in
the chapter. In aligning with McLuhan’s theory that the media object needs to be
considered beyond the content (in other words, political), Holland also contextualises
Rick and Morty as a technological experience that erupts across platforms including
streaming services, gaming, social media and broadcast television. In contextualising
Rick and Morty in this way, Holland illustrates McLuhan’s statement through how
technology (the medium) has shaped the way that humans interact (the message).
Holland gives Rick and Morty philosophical status as a cultural object worth con-
verging with theory by illustrating the various ways the cartoon examines human inter-
action with technology. Concentrating on the postmodern nihilistic elements of the
show’s content, Holland gives various examples within the cartoon’s storytelling that
illustrate the absurdity and consequence of human detachment caused by technology.
In converging McLuhan’s warnings about the risks of blasé detachment caused
by technology and the deliberate selection of hyperbolic examples of that playing
out in Rick and Morty, Holland begins to paint his personal theory of technology.
His methodology uses a science fiction cartoon that takes consequences of technol-
ogy to the extreme as an aid for imagining how important it is for technology liter-
acy and critique. In developing this theory and method, Holland writes a chapter
that shows it is possible to take a small piece of theory and interrogate through
multiple lenses and over many layers.

Introduction

One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-­
environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in.—Marshall
McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, War and Peace in the Global Village, 1968

This chapter describes how examples from Rick and Morty (Roiland & Harmon,
2013a-) can be used to explain and describe the work of Canadian media philoso-
pher Marshall McLuhan, whose most central concern was bringing attention to the
effects of media and technology upon human society. McLuhan’s work is best
summed up in an aphorism he first coined in Understanding Media: The Extensions
of Man (1964): “the medium is the message”.
McLuhan and Fiore’s (1968) claim, shown in the epigraph above, that fish know
nothing of water is emblematic of the broader and more famous theme of McLuhan’s
work. They were not talking precisely about fish but about the broader matter of the
need to examine the media and technological environments that surround us. In this
context, media and technologies are best considered as “connective tissue of soci-
ety” (Shirky, 2010, p. 54) or, as McLuhan defines the media simply “the extensions
of man” (1964/2013). I suggest that media and technology are prostheses that allow
us to sense and interact with the world beyond what is immediately at hand. The fish
“You Pass Butter”: The Messages of Media and Technology in Rick and Morty 149

are a metaphor for human inability to perceive the media environments that we have
created. It was a recurring theme of McLuhan’s work, in particular, to establish the
critical foundations for consideration of these environments.
The idea that we must radically re-examine technologies in order to really under-
stand them, and their impact upon us, is hardly unique to McLuhan. This preoccupa-
tion can also be found in the work of multiple prominent philosophers and other
scholars, past and present. Among them are German philosopher Martin Heidegger
(see especially The Question Concerning Technology, 1977) and Donna Haraway
who suggested that all humans are hybrids consisting of both human and techno-
logical elements (A Cyborg Manifesto, 1985/2016). In his treatise on “elemental
media”, The Marvelous Clouds (2015), John Durham Peters notes that Plato,
Aristotle and Newton are among those who have raised the matter of fish being
unaware of the nature of the water in which they live, although McLuhan and Fiore
were likely the first to extend this story to demonstrate the ways in which media
have become so pervasive that we cannot perceive them any better than fish can
perceive their pond.
McLuhan’s widely known aphorism that the medium is the message is developed
in two key books, Understanding Media (1964/2013) and The Medium is the
Massage (1967, with Fiore).1 The first chapter of Understanding Media is titled
“The Medium is the Message” and features most prominently in the discussion in
this chapter. The concept also features in War and Peace in the Global Village (1968,
with Fiore) as suggested by fish being unaware of their watery environment. It is a
claim that a medium can only be understood by examining its impacts upon society,
rather than the content it carries. To expound this claim, which is also a call to action
for closer examination of media and technology, I draw upon examples from the
American science fiction cartoon Rick and Morty (Roiland & Harmon, 2013a–pres-
ent), which debuted in 2013 as part of the adult-oriented “Adult Swim” program-
ming block on Cartoon Network. The show centres on a conflicted character: Rick
Sanchez, who is all-at-once an alcoholic, intelligent, careless, protective, scientist,
technologist, dimension-hopping and intergalactic criminal. Throughout the series,
he is accompanied by his grandson Morty and, though less often, Morty’s sister
Summer, father Jerry and mother Beth (Rick’s daughter). The family dynamic gives
this show a kind of sitcom feel reminiscent of The Simpsons (Groening, 1989–pres-
ent), Family Guy (MacFarlane, 1999–present) and other prominent sitcom cartoons
of the 1990s–2000s.
Rick and Morty has had a significant, but mixed, impact on pop culture. Koltun
(2018, p.  99) proposes that the show has drawn such a large millennial fanbase
because of its “distinctive style of humor that materialized as a means for compre-
hending the absurdities of modern life”. Similarly, Williams (2016, p. 147) suggests
it “exposes the terrible void at the heart of contemporary liberal US culture, while
aggressively seeking relief from this knowledge in grotesquery”. Rick and Morty
arrived at a time when controversies over toxic masculinity in media were rife and

1
 The origin of this title is evidently in an error by the typesetter that McLuhan embraced because
it offered four possible interpretations: “Message”, “Mess Age”, “Massage”, and “Mass Age”. See
https://marshallmcluhan.com/common-questions/.
150 T. Holland

itself became caught up in them (Evangelista, 2019), with Parker (2018) noting “a
small and well-documented subset of the Rick and Morty fan base exhibits terrible,
snickering, alienated-white-male troll behavior”. Irate fans were criticised for abu-
sive behaviour towards McDonalds employees when that company conducted a pro-
motional tie-in with the series but could not supply the demand generated (Parker,
2018). But the show has also been praised for its intelligence and focus on science
and philosophy (Abesamis & Yuen, 2019; Williams, 2016). The creators have signed
an unusually long-term deal to continue producing new episodes even while their
slow production schedule has been criticised by fans (Parker, 2018). This chapter
leaves aside the bulk of those concerns to draw upon the show’s preoccupation with
technology—a nod to its sci-fi background—as an illumination of McLuhan’s
sometimes difficult-to-grasp thesis.
The pilot episode of Rick and Morty sets much of the tone for what is to follow
both within and beyond the show. The opening scene shows Rick bursting into
Morty’s room in the middle of the night, clad in the white coat that is a cultural
shortcut for a particular kind of knowledge creator (i.e. a scientist) and holding a
bottle of alcohol. He is clearly intoxicated. As the scene rolls on Rick explains to
Morty that he built a flying car out of parts he “found in the garage” and that he has
made a bomb with the intent to “drop it down there and get a whole fresh start”
(Roiland & Harmon (2013b)). Rick’s nihilism, violence and technological solution-
ism are on full display here. He has examined the world in depth and found it want-
ing. Like McLuhan, he is asking us to look at what we have made and how that, in
turn, has remade us.
The title of this chapter is drawn from another moment in the show that draws
attention to the unfulfilling nature of technological extensions of humanity. In the
episode “Something Ricked This Way Comes”, Rick creates a robot whose sole
purpose is to pass butter. A scene set during a family breakfast shows Rick tinkering
and welding at the table while Jerry plays with his iPad and Beth uses her phone to
send a text message to Morty that Jerry is insecure as the family converses about
whether Jerry or Rick might help Morty at a school science fair. Rick places his
finished robot on the table and it asks, “What is my purpose?” Rick tells it “pass the
butter”, which it does. The scene progresses and eventually the robot again asks its
purpose. Rick restates the point “you pass butter”, to which the robot shrinks dispir-
itedly and exclaims “oh, my god”. Each piece of technology here is used mindlessly
to mediate connections between the humans at the table. Rick would rather build a
robot from scratch than ask his daughter to pass butter, while Beth and Morty use
their phones to work around Jerry’s feelings. It is a rich illustration of McLuhan’s
advice to observe the ways in which technologies might reshape human interaction
and sociality.
McLuhan’s phrase, “the medium is the message”, simultaneously reveals and
conceals. On one level, the meaning is straightforward enough: that to understand a
medium, we must look at it for itself and discard whatever content it carries. And
yet, considering that alone would conceal a second meaning which for McLuhan is
found in the recursive nature of media: that any medium contains as its content
another medium. This chapter addresses both of these levels of meaning in the
“You Pass Butter”: The Messages of Media and Technology in Rick and Morty 151

phrase and demonstrates how they might be understood with, through and in Rick
and Morty.

How to Watch Rick and Morty

McLuhan gave Understanding Media (1964/2013) the subtitle “the extensions of

man” (sic). In doing so, he conceived of media as “any extension of ourselves”. In
defining “the medium is the message”, McLuhan stated it as “merely” (my empha-
sis) the observation that the “personal and social consequences of any medium…
result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of
ourselves” (Chap. 1). That is, we should not and cannot perceive the nature of a
medium by the content that the medium carries, but by the ways in which our inter-
actions with that medium might alter our interactions with each other and the world
at large. The nature of the distribution platforms of Rick and Morty, it’s place within
Adult Swim, the transmedia extensions of the show and other associated media all
demonstrate this fundamental point made by McLuhan: to judge the impact of the
series, we must look beyond the content itself and to what changes it has invoked or
in which it is implicated. Therefore, I begin this chapter with consideration of dis-
tribution and audience engagement methods employed by Rick and Morty’s produc-
ers, rather than examples drawn directly from the episodic content, arguing that the
origin and distributive practices of the show itself demonstrate changing modes of
consumption of significant concern to McLuhan even though, given the time period
in which he was writing, he was interested in primarily documenting the emergence
of television as a medium compared to other media forms. At this moment, we are
instead witnessing the transformation of television according to the logics of media
convergence (Jenkins, 2006), about which McLuhan’s insights were prescient.
Although Rick and Morty in some ways mimics the logic of episodic broadcast
television because it is most often released in self-contained episodes and appears
on broadcast television, it also throws off and challenges those established patterns
in format, distribution and transmedia extensions. The Adult Swim programming
block was established on Cartoon Network in the United States in 2001 as a way to
hold and attract audience share after the channel’s main audience, children, had
gone to bed. The Adult Swim schedule was emblematic of what Raymond Williams
(1974/2003) identified as “flow”: the specific sequence of programming with con-
sidered interruptions of commercials, previews and other promotions. While
Williams recognised early phases of the development of programming flow in radio,
it was television in which the form truly came to fruition as “a new kind of com-
munication phenomenon” (1974/2003, p.  91). However, as Gurney and Payne
(2016, p. 178) note, Adult Swim has “grown from a television (TV) programming
block into a transmedia brand.” In part, as their analysis shows, this has occurred
through the introduction of games designed to advertise the block and its content.
Additionally, Adult Swim was, in and of itself, a break in the daylong flow of
152 T. Holland

Cartoon Network. It established a moment in which the programming switched

from that aimed largely at children to that designed to appeal instead to adults.
Supporting Gurney and Payne’s observations, Rick and Morty has also been part
of the broader development of transmedia within Adult Swim, with tie-in promo-
tions, cross-media appearances and parodies, video games and web-only videos
separate from the flow of the main series. Additionally, a certain style of “behind the
scenes” video from the creators, featuring co-creator Justin Roiland recording
voices while drunk, have also proved a popular extension of the Rick and Morty
brand (Adult Swim, 2017, 2018). Finally, Roiland has developed other media, such
as the videogame Trover Saves the Universe, that is separate from Rick and Morty
but unmistakably of the same brand in that it uses familiar voices, set pieces and
animation styles (Squanch Games, 2019). Indeed, this style is common across much
of Roiland’s work both prior to and since Rick and Morty.
The origins of Rick and Morty lie in Adult Swim commissioning in 2012 a new
show for their schedule from Dan Harmon, who subsequently bought in Justin
Roiland. Harmon had a well-established reputation for hit television shows, having
created Community (which aired on NBC and Yahoo! from 2009 to 2015; Harmon,
2009-2015). Roiland was primarily known as a voice actor on animated shows such
as Adventure Time (Ward, 2010–present) while he and Harmon knew each other
from the Channel 101 festival. Roiland, in turn, had created a series of sorts for
Channel 101 featuring two characters called Doc and Mharti in an attempt to elicit
a lawsuit from the copyright owners of Back to the Future (produced by Zemeckis
and Gale, 1985–1990; see Roiland, 2006). These characters and their science
fiction-­inspired world became the blueprint for Rick and Morty. In this example, we
can see a further break in the role of Rick and Morty compared with other forms of
televisual media. It’s origin as a lawsuit-baiting parody of another popular media
franchise indicates its reliance on irony, humour and pastiche. It is, in short, a post-
modern television show. Williams notes that it “registers the fundamental instability
and degeneration of a postmodern irony filtered into popular consciousness” (2016,
p.  150). The show draws attention to the media environment and cultures from
which it was spawned and which support it, evidencing in a practical sense
McLuhan’s call for examination and also his suggestion that media and technology
is best examined by the social changes brought forth from them.
Given its premise and its origin as a parody of Back to the Future, the show is most
obviously categorised as science fiction, a genre which, as Baudrillard (1994, p. 125)
notes “[always] speaks specifically of simulacra”. Baudrillard’s (1994) assessment of
science fiction is instructive for analysing Rick and Morty. He notes that science fiction
“played on the double, on doubling or redoubling, either artificial or imaginary” (1994,
p. 125). In this vein, Rick and Morty and their ensemble cast exist in a world which is
deeply layered by other versions of their world, and other discrete worlds. I return to
this multi-layering and abstraction later in the chapter.
Importantly for McLuhan, since the medium is the message, the multitudinous
methods of entering into the overarching text Rick and Morty demonstrate a post-­
television mode of production and distribution. Outside of the United States, Rick
and Morty is largely distributed by the Internet video on demand service Netflix,
rather than on broadcast television. Even within the United States, and accessible
“You Pass Butter”: The Messages of Media and Technology in Rick and Morty 153

elsewhere via a virtual private network, the Adult Swim website offers streamed
episodes of Rick and Morty after their broadcast debut. In one notable case, the
series premiered on the Adult Swim streams as an April Fools’ Day prank (Rife,
2017). Services that stream traditional television content over the Internet, such as
Netflix, allow for “a viewing experience not structured by regular commercials and
[encourage] the creation of television content notably different from that supported
by advertising” (Herbert et al., 2019, p. 7). That is, they break apart the longstanding
flow of traditional television programming. They also fall within what Jenkins has
influentially defined as media convergence:
the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple
media industries ... and the migratory behavior of media audiences who would go almost
anywhere in search of the kind of entertainment experiences they want. (2006, p. 282)

The multiple methods of distribution and access that audiences have to Rick and
Morty, including streaming on Netflix and the Adult Swim website, are an example
of how “new media strengthens existing cultural forms and languages [and] simul-
taneously opens them up for redefinition” (Manovich, 2001). They also demonstrate
the flow of content across forms and migratory audiences, aligning with Jenkins’
definition of convergence. The show’s distribution methods, and even the way in
which it came to be, demonstrate McLuhan’s call to pay attention to and examine
the media environments in which we exist are changing the ways in which we
behave, in this case through the forms in which we access and use media.
There is another way in which the distribution and multimedia approaches evi-
denced in Rick and Morty are useful for examining McLuhan’s ideas. McLuhan
argues that media and other technologies were at once at their height and reaching
obsolescence while other media found their zenith. He notes, for example, that “no
medium has its meaning or existence alone, but only in constant interplay with other
media” (1964/2013, Chap. 2). The subsumption of television into content for the
Internet is an example of this move, which the somewhat haphazard distributive
methods of Rick and Morty demonstrate.

Episodic McLuhanisms

Having examined the ways in which non-content aspects of Rick and Morty can
assist in understanding McLuhan’s claim that “the medium is the message”, I turn
now to examples drawn from within the show itself. That is, from the content. Such
a move might be anathemic to McLuhan, but the argument presented here is not
intended to either further or counter his claims and so it is not contrary to the point.
Rather, this chapter is using Rick and Morty to illustrate McLuhan’s claims and one
of the more obvious ways in which that might be achieved is to examine what is said
within the episodes that might be of relevance to them. This section and the next aim
to achieve that end.
Rick is the archetypal achievement of abject rationality and reason. As a scientist-­
creator, he has reached what McLuhan characterises as a “detachment” brought
154 T. Holland

about by the affordances of literary technology, the creation and use of which
induces literacy. The necessary correction to this detachment, in McLuhan’s view,
is the invention of electronic communication technology that caused an “extension”
so that “we necessarily participate, in depth, in the consequences of our every
action” (1964/2013, Introduction to the First Edition). Rick embodies both of these
perspectives as, despite his detachment from society, he has a particularly strong
and regularly displayed sense of care and responsibility (even love) for his grand-
children Morty and Summer. His detached actions against the world at large play
out strongly onto his grandchildren, typically motivating him to seek a corrective
course. Rick’s detachment can be read as a result of his apparently unlimited knowl-
edge of the universe. He has seen everything and determined it to be absurd.
We might think of Rick’s depth of knowledge as the archetype of what McLuhan
terms “the artist”, somebody who can see the influences of technology upon society.
In Understanding Media, McLuhan claims that the arts serve as a kind of “early
warning system”, useful to “enhance the perception of our technologies, and their
psychic and social consequences” (1964/2013, Introduction). He claims also that
“The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity,
just because he [sic] is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception”
(1964/2013, Chap. 1). From this position, Rick’s nihilism can be seen as emerging
from his deep knowledge of the background to human existence, and the emptiness
he perceives there. His use of technology as an attempt to mediate such existence
through fulfilment of his hedonistic desires lays bare the nature of the artist in
McLuhan’s conception of media.
There is a recurring episodic example of Rick and Morty that demonstrates an
aspect of how, in McLuhan’s argument, technology can offer an unimaginably large
extension that all available information becomes absurd precisely because we are
forced to confront its effects: interdimensional cable. As is typical of the show’s
formula, interdimensional cable is an invention of Rick’s. It is a modified cable
television box that can receive an inconceivable number of channels from every
dimension. Rick’s actions in developing and deploying interdimensional cable dem-
onstrate his initial technologically determined solution as a method of detachment,
but he is then forced to confront the impact his technology has upon his grandchil-
dren. Two episodes of the show, the first season’s “Rixty Minutes” (Newton et al.,
2014) and season two’s “Interdimensional Cable 2” (Meza-León et al., 2015) revolve
around the characters binge-watching and channel flipping across these other-­
dimensional television feeds using this box.
In “Rixty Minutes”, the television viewing offered by interdimensional cable is
riveting until the family stumbles across dimensions in which they live alternative
lives playing out on their television set (and another gadget, Rick’s interdimensional
goggles). Each reality they encounter is another kind of abstraction from the one in
which they live. In a sense, the increasing levels of abstraction or detachment from
their own lives demonstrate the kind of media-induced detachment from reality
warned about by philosopher Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation (1994).
Baudrillard claimed that: “this is where McLuhan’s formula leads, pushed to its
limit—there is not only an implosion of the message in the medium, there is, in the
same movement, the implosion of the medium itself” (p.  82). Sure enough, the
“You Pass Butter”: The Messages of Media and Technology in Rick and Morty 155

alternate possibilities viewed in the two interdimensional devices bring the rest of
Morty’s family to confront and question the material conditions of their lives.
Summer’s malaise at discovering that she was an accidental pregnancy (so realised
because she did not exist in many of the other realities viewed), is resolved when
Morty, pointing to the grave of a different-dimensional version of himself, tells her:
“Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody is going to die....
Come watch TV?” Baudrillard’s suggestion that McLuhan’s call to examine the
medium results in an “implosion of the message in the medium and of the real”
(1994, p.  82, original emphasis) is demonstrated strongly by the Smith family’s
experimentation with interdimensional cable.
“Interdimensional Cable 2” offers an interesting extension to the initial episode
featuring that particular piece of technology. While “Rixty Minutes” was concerned
with examining what happens when characters become involved in the actions of
alternate versions (or abstractions) of themselves, “Interdimensional Cable 2”
examines the detachment brought about by this device itself; this is the basis of the
claim for the absurd nature of detachment described above. McLuhan claimed
“Western man acquired from the technology of literacy the power to act without
reacting” while “In the electric age… our central nervous system is technologically
extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of
mankind into us”  (1964/2013, Introduction to the First Edition). In this episode,
Jerry is undergoing treatment in an alien hospital for exposure to mutant bacteria.
While they wait, the rest of the Smith family turns once again to interdimensional
cable for distraction. Jerry is asked to donate an organ to help save the life of a
galactic civil rights leader but refuses and, following a press conference, ends up
holding doctors at the hospital hostage, which is shown on the television through a
breaking news segment. Rick and Morty’s ongoing detachment is evident as they
continue watching the television while Beth and Summer rush to the scene of Jerry’s
crime. Jerry’s life and sense of self becomes intimately bound up with the life of
another while Rick and Morty indifferently watch television. The intertwining
threads from McLuhan’s work—that a blasé detachment is no longer possible since
media and technology entangle us and so technological literacy and critique is a
must—are clearly evident in this episode.
In contrast to the interdimensional cable episodes, in which the characters’
actions are driven by unlimited media choice, a more recent episode of Rick and
Morty demonstrates what might happen within a constrained choice-making
medium. The events of “Edge of Tomorty” (Hayes & McMahan, 2019), the season
four premiere, see Morty come into contact with a death crystal, an object which
simultaneously shows the holder all possible versions of their future death from that
moment in time. Morty gloms onto a vision of his death in which he dies at an old
age cared for by his long-time crush Jessica. From that point forward, all of Morty’s
decisions in the episode are guided by what he sees in the crystal so that he may
attain what he sees as this most perfect of deaths.
The death crystal represents a potent version of a medium that determines and
shapes the messages that it sends and, in doing so, shapes the world around itself.
During his quest, Morty becomes increasingly destructive, both of himself and of
his world. Eventually, Morty discovers that the death crystal only told a part truth.
156 T. Holland

In fact, the vision he had been pursuing was of Jessica as an aged care nurse who,
although diligent in her work of easing his end of life pain, did not know who he
was. Even in its absence, the death crystal is able to shape Morty’s actions as he then
makes a rash decision to accompany Rick into his next adventure in contrast to his
usual reticence. This episode is a logical extension, though pushed to extremes, of
what McLuhan warned in urging careful consideration of medium over content. It
again also reifies the role of the artist as someone who perceives what is coming but
whose attempts to warn or intervene may be “puny and peripheral” (1964/2013,
Chap. 7).
Finally, another season four episode, “The Old Man and the Seat”  (Hair &
Waldron, 2019), presents a clear illustration of McLuhan’s claim that “it is the
medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association”
(1964/2013, Chap. 1). In this episode, Rick introduces his “intern”, an alien creature
named Glootie. Jerry quickly notices that Glootie has a message stamped on his
forehead which says “DO NOT DEVELOP MY APP”. However, Glootie constantly
asks the human characters whether they want to develop his app. Rick tells Jerry
that the message is there to deter Jerry specifically from taking up Glootie’s request.
Disregarding Rick,  Jerry and Glootie partner to develop the app, and it quickly
becomes apparent that the alien’s pleas were part of a master plot to take over Earth
for its natural resources, specifically water.
In Glootie’s app, we have an obvious example that can be used to explain
McLuhan’s claims. The app, called Lovefinderrz, bioscans users and immediately
suggests to them a “soulmate”, who is quickly replaced with a different soulmate
whenever a user finds something they do not like about the original soulmate. The
humans of Earth are distracted by the constant new matches proposed by
Lovefinderrz, to the extent that they abandon all daily activities, previous partners
(and children), jobs and evidently even sleep in search of the perfect soulmate. The
“content” on the app is irrelevant when compared with the overall change intro-
duced to human affairs by the app’s intoxicating promise to not only find a soulmate
but being able to move from one soulmate to the next rapidly. In this way, the epi-
sode is a strong illustration of McLuhan’s suggestion of the need to be wary of
seductive media which might introduce unexpected alterations to social structures
and behaviour.

Investigating a Black Box

Given McLuhan’s habit of describing medium in expansive terms, I turn now to an

episode that focuses upon a technological object that, in and of itself, does not carry
a message. McLuhan himself comfortably interred such technology in his definition
of media, noting, for example, “The electric light escapes attention as a communica-
tion medium just because it has no ‘content’” (1964/2013, Chap. 1). The light, like
any medium, “shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and
action” (1964/2013, Chap. 1). So too does the technology, a car battery, that features
in the second-season episode, “The Ricks Must Be Crazy” (Polcino & Guterman,
“You Pass Butter”: The Messages of Media and Technology in Rick and Morty 157

2015). In this episode, Rick and Morty investigate Rick’s faulty car battery by
shrinking themselves and travelling inside it.
Inside the battery exists a miniature universe, created by Rick (which he calls a
“micro-verse”) complete with an Earth-like planetary civilization whose excess
productive capacity is directed to powering the battery. Morty considers the micro-
verse’s inhabitants to be slaves and protests about this to Rick, who dismisses his
concerns. The pair discover that the micro-verse’s version of Rick has also created
what he calls a battery-contained “mini-verse”, which has eliminated the need for
local power production and thus caused the faulty battery in Rick and Morty’s
world. The same scenario plays out twice more at increasingly smaller scales. In
each case, the protagonists—Rick, Morty and the other scientists—investigate the
insides of what had previously been a “black box” notable only for its output: power.
Each smaller universe is as complex as the last, right down to concerns about the
freedom of the citizens contained within, given their whole social structure is deter-
mined by the need to create power not only for themselves but for those at the
level above.
In addition to McLuhan’s concern for a form of media/technology that “shapes
human association and action”, the batteries portrayed in this episode are helpfully
explained by the “black box” theory of Bruno Latour. Black boxes are conceptual
devices “used by cyberneticians whenever a piece of machinery or a set of com-
mands is too complex” (Latour, 1987, pp.  2–3). Instead of a complex diagram,
Latour explains, “they draw a little black box about which they need to know noth-
ing but its input and output” (Latour, 1987, pp. 2–3). The black box is both a meta-
phor and a function of activity or progress. Its presence and operation in this show
also displays some assumptions about the scientific process that accord with
Latour’s argument. The closing of the box is necessary for new processes to occur
since “scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success” (Latour
1999, p. 304). The invisibility and therefore frictionless action of any given compo-
nent of a more complex system allows that very system to function. Although Rick
created the battery/box, to this point in the show, it had functioned as it was meant
to and there was no need to visit the micro-verse inside. At the end of the episode,
the box functions again, completing the conceit and allowing other episodes
to unfold.
Frictionless function, however, can be undone. Luckhurst (2006, p. 7) notes that
Latourian black boxes denote “a statement fixed as an uncontested scientific fact,
with any history of contest or controversy in its production completely erased”.
Once the box is closed, it is an accepted fact and only the output/outcome matters.
Although the car batteries are literal devices within the Rick and Morty cosmology,
they perform the same function as those described by Latour, and they shape the
associations of the actions and characters who rely on them, including Rick and
Morty and each of the scientists (as well as their whole worlds) that exist inside the
boxes. It is only once the device stops working that it becomes necessary to open the
black box and see what is inside: to once again draw the diagram in all its complex-
ity and help to trace the associations with which both McLuhan and Latour are
concerned. For Latour, such an examination entails tracing the networks of associa-
tion between the various components which had formerly been considered part of
158 T. Holland

the same, hitherto functioning, object. For McLuhan, the act of examination of the
box in and of itself is a worthy act for helping to understand the “change of scale or
pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs” (1964/2013, Chap. 1).
Importantly also, the car battery serves as a literal example of McLuhan’s claim
that “the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium” (1964/2013, Chap.
1). Thus, the concept of the black box also assists to explain and understand another
of McLuhan’s central claims about the nature of media, to which I referred earlier
as its recursive form. Thus, McLuhan claims:
“The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print and print
is the content of the telegraph. If it is asked, ‘What is the content of speech?’ it is necessary
to say, ‘It is an actual process of thought, which is in itself nonverbal.’” (1964/2013,
Chapter 1)

The batteries portrayed in this episode of Rick and Morty are literally recursive
structures in which one world is contained within another world and so on. Each
world might usefully be considered a metaphor for a type of medium which is con-
tained within the other and whose output—electrical power—is the important mes-
sage it carries to the wider society of which it is unknowingly part. The importance
of the worlds is not what happens within them but their output and the influences
upon the larger world just as the importance of each medium is not the content
within it (itself another medium) but the influence that medium has upon the world.
Bourdieu’s theory of habitus is a useful addition to the focus on both Latour and
McLuhan in consideration of “The Ricks Must Be Crazy” (Polcino & Guterman,
2015). Bourdieu suggested that habitus consisted of “systems of durable, transpos-
able dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring struc-
tures” (1990, p.  53). The miniature universes created by Rick contain societies
explicitly structured to produce power for the level above them. The scientists at
each level are preoccupied with finding more efficient methods for energy produc-
tion, which in turn leads to their own invention of a smaller universe, rendering their
own output less. It was this process that resulted in the original disruption to Rick’s
power supply. The “structured structures” imposed by Rick upon his battery inhab-
itants and then upon each further level of universe lead to particular practices and
behaviours throughout each of the societies.
The forms of examination described by Latour play strongly into the overarching
call for examination of media from McLuhan for which this chapter provides illu-
minating examples and more explicitly make useful metaphors for considering the
recursive or nested nature of media in McLuhan’s conception of “the medium is the
message”. The black box concept presented here, and evidenced by the battery in
“The Ricks Must Be Crazy” (Polcino & Guterman, 2015), is a classic McLuhanesque
device. It requires examination in order that its functioning be truly understood and
all its faults be considered in the light. Morty’s insistence that the operation of
Rick’s battery is simply “slavery with extra steps” is likewise a call for the re-­
examination of this medium of power generation while the structures imposed from
above in each case create a particular form of habitus as suggested by Bourdieu.
McLuhan’s contention that all media carries other media as content is illuminated
vividly by the worlds-within-worlds nature of Rick’s car battery.
“You Pass Butter”: The Messages of Media and Technology in Rick and Morty 159

Conclusion

In War and Peace in the Global Village (1967), McLuhan and Fiore make the claim
that the launch of artificial satellites has “put a man-made environment around the
planet, ending ‘nature’ in the older sense” (p. 36). As with other technologies, these
are perceived by McLuhan and Fiore to be “direct extensions of our own nervous
system” (p.  36) that “can be programmed at will to produce any effect desired”
(p. 37). While these claims appear hyperbolic, they are illustrated in the exploits of
our “mad scientist” Rick Sanchez, although Rick’s technological embrace reaches
well beyond the low-Earth orbit satellites to which McLuhan and Fiore referred and
into inter-galactic and inter-dimensional space. This frame of reference is broadly
common to other science fiction media, which suggests that further analyses might
locate ideas germane to McLuhan’s thought elsewhere in this genre.
Rick has a habit of creating and controlling sentient beings for his own purposes. In
addition to the miniature societies of “The Ricks Must Be Crazy” (Polcino & Guterman,
2015), other examples include “Meeseeks and Destroy” (Newton & Ridley, 2014), in
which a button pressed on a blue box produces a single creature, called Mr. Meeseeks,
whose sole purpose is to complete whatever task the button-­pusher requires; “Something
Ricked This Way Comes” (Rice & McMahan, 2014), in which Rick created the butter-
passing robot referenced in the title of this chapter; and “Anatomy Park” (Rice et al.,
2013), wherein a Jurassic Park-like theme park featuring marauding viruses and dis-
eases is created inside a human body. Each of these, and others within the show, force
viewers to confront ethical questions of how technology structures our societies by way
of the conditions of enforced existence imposed upon these various creatures.
McLuhan’s observations of the recursive nature of media (within media) and that
those who pay attention to the background effects of media environments (artists)
will find themselves able to “encounter technology with impunity” (1964/2013,
Chap. 1) are also borne out by specific examples from within Rick and Morty. Rick’s
car batteries are just one of the discursive environments encountered within the
show, but one which has drawn much commentary and attention (e.g. as a central
example in several chapters within Abesamis & Yuen, 2019). The deceptive simplic-
ity of that idea, like McLuhan’s phrase “the medium is the message”, helps to dem-
onstrate the ways in which media and messages can be both revealed and concealed
simultaneously by their relationship with other media. Silverman and Channer won-
der whether Rick is a God (or, more precisely, whether someone who is a “clever,
crass, flatulent jerk” like Rick could be God) (in Abesamis & Yuen, 2019, p. 35).
Maybe, but more pertinently in this context, he can be considered an artist with the
foresight to see the media and technological environments in which he (and we)
operate. McLuhan’s hope for these people was to be the “early warning system” of
the changes being wrought in our affairs by our own technologies. He is, in short, a
fish who knows it swims in water.
In watching Rick and Morty, audiences can take upon themselves the opportunity
to respond to McLuhan’s call for closer critical examination of the media and tech-
nological environments that surround us. Newcombe and Hirsch (1983) argue that
“television as a cultural forum… offers a perspective that is as complex, as
160 T. Holland

contradictory and confused, as much in progress as American culture is in experi-

ence” (p. 53) and therefore worthy of careful consideration as medium. Rick and
Morty co-creator Justin Roiland recently noted that the initial popularity of a non-
sense catchphrase of Rick’s annoyed him because, in part, it suggested this critical
reception was not common. In an interview with EW (Hibberd, 2019), Roiland said
he was “sick of hearing” references to “wubba lubba dub dub”:
because we were making fun of the idea of stupid catchphrases. [At first] it wasn’t at all that
and then it was funny because it was a dumb catchphrase, and then we subverted it by mak-
ing it mean something really depressing. The hardcore fans get the irony behind it. But I
think some fans maybe don’t?

Answering the same question, Dan Harmon noted “the whole Szechuan sauce
thing”, where anti-social behaviour at McDonalds stores in the United States after the
fast food chain revived the condiment because it was mentioned in the show, but failed
to cater to demand. These issues both respond to the content of the show, and not the
show as medium (a definition that includes its method of creation and distribution).
Rick and Morty, while remaining of course merely a humourous postmodern science
fiction parody television show, nonetheless demonstrates in both its form and content
the key concern of McLuhan’s scholarship: that our media and technological achieve-
ments ought to attract greater attention for the modifications they impose upon us,
including our way of seeing the world, than for the content they carry. That we should
be able to see the water in which we swim. In short, that the medium is the message.

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You are interested in a theory that tries to address nihilism.
• Turn to p. 59 to read Barnes’ explanation of Beck and a risk society.
• Turn to p. 163 to read Valentine’s explanation of an ethics of care.
You are interested in the ways in which media (the medium) shapes our
society.
• Turn to p. 47 to read Grant’s explanation of the language games puzzle of
Wittgenstein.
• Turn to p. 21 to read Prosser’s explanation of the hegemonic power struc-
tures imposed by social media in The Circle.
You are interested in Rick and Morty’s exploitation of beings in other dimen-
sions/realities.
• Turn to p. 9 to explore the treatment of robots in Thomas and McCandless’
use of Westworld.
Yous are interested in other chapters where the pop cultural object is posi-
tioned as a philosophy in their own right.
• Turn to p. 163 to read Valentine’s usage of Murakami’s magical realism.
“You Pass Butter”: The Messages of Media and Technology in Rick and Morty 161

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Ordinary Care in Extraordinary Worlds:
Murakami and Decentered Care in The
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Riley Clare Valentine

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In this chapter, Riley Clare Valentine brings together scholarship on the ethics of
care with Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. This chapter is one of the few
in this volume that individualizes a theory, rather than a theorist; however, Valentine
does outline the development of the theory through key thinkers in the field. In order
to ensure the reader understand the importance of their construction of knowledge
about the ethics of care, Valentine also individualizes the novelist, Murakami, as a
philosopher in themselves because Murakami uses magical realism to explore
human relationships and self, but also in drawing on scholarship associated with
Murakami.
Valentine builds knowledge about the ethics of care at three points where they
converge the novel with their explanation of the theory. Firstly, an ethic of care is
more than just embodied practices, but also mental and emotional—an act of caring
can quickly become thoughtless if there is an unawareness of needs that cannot be
voiced. Secondly, an ethic of care is intersectional and pluralistic—resisting the
binary created by who is traditionally socialized to be a carer and who is not but also
being responsive to every person’s different needs for care. Thirdly, embodied care,
or that where people are physically present with each other, limits the ability for
someone to have an ethic of care—being in the same space as someone can be more
toxic than being away from them, where communication is key to understand-
ing needs.
Valentine connects the importance of understanding the ethics of care as a theory
by further contextualizing it within practices that became apparent by necessity dur-
ing the COVID-19 pandemic. They draw links between Murakami’s magic realistic

R. C. Valentine (*)
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 163

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_14
164 R. C. Valentine

dream world and the disembodied technologies that were used to connect people
during the pandemic. Valentine makes a good argument for the vital role technolo-
gies play in making disembodied care ethical.

Introduction

The interactions that we have with others, even away from the public gaze, have moral
relevance. The private sphere of life, which is considered ordinary, is important and
care ethics centers around a discussion of the ordinary. Care ethics focuses on main-
taining the world and assisting those who are vulnerable to have meaningful interac-
tions with the world (Ellis, 2004;  Nussbaum, 2011; Laugier, 2015). This theory
affirms the importance of the body in moral deliberation, focusing on ethical practice.
Care is an unassuming action, which occurs throughout our lives. We depend
upon care to survive and easily forget its importance. An ethics of care is a reminder
that the ordinariness of care is remarkable. It undergirds our lives without us notic-
ing, and by drawing attention to the unassuming interdependence throughout our
lives, there is potential for radically different relationships. As literature provides an
imaginative space in which we can explore different aspects of what it means to be
human by assisting us to engage in thoughtful critique of ourselves through charac-
ters similar to us by stepping outside ourselves and the everyday, as such, using The
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to challenge the argument that care must be embodied, I
argue that care is first and foremost a mental and emotional process.
The novel tells the story of a man, Toru Okada, whose wife Kumiko leaves him
after she has multiple affairs. Throughout the book, Toru persistently reflects on
how he and his wife chose their life together. When reading The Wind-Up Bird
Chronicle (1997) by Haruki Murakami, we see embodied care, or what it means
when care is present but still forgotten. Care ethicists often analyze care as concrete
practices that need to meet people’s needs and require mutual vulnerability.
However, the relationship between Kumiko and Toru demonstrates that care goes
beyond embodiment.
Toru is passive throughout their relationship, never actively engaging with
Kumiko’s depression. After Kumiko leaves Toru, he searches for her in a dream
world in which she is trapped. The dream world, for Kumiko, locks her into reliving
trauma. The dream world demands that Toru become attentive to his wife’s depres-
sion and that instead of receiving care from Kumiko that he also provides care. In
searching for Kumiko in the other world, Toru pushes himself to confront the
Kumiko whom he always accepted that he knew. Kumiko, in the single conversation
they have in the non-dream world, taking place through a private chat room, types
out, describing her perspective of herself, “‘Going bad’ is something that happens
over a longer period of time” (Murakami, 1997, p. 492). To save Kumiko from suc-
cumbing to her depression, and her feelings that she has “gone bad,” Toru must
acknowledge that in the real world he has failed to notice Kumiko’s depression.
Toru assumes that Kumiko’s depression revolves around work stress and does not
Ordinary Care in Extraordinary Worlds: Murakami and Decentered Care … 165

ask her about how she is doing. The dream world is the space in which he realizes
that he has not engaged with Kumiko’s emotional and mental needs for support. The
dream world is a way that he can see his own failures in the real world.
Magical realism is a genre in which the everyday world has elements of the fan-
tastic  (Arva, 2008). Murakami scholarship (Orgad, 2017; Martnya et  al., 2012;
Strecher, 1999) argues that he uses magical realism to force characters to confront
themselves. In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Toru is pushed to acknowledge his
own personal failures—to be present with his depressed wife. His problem is very
ordinary; he has lost interest in his marriage. Kumiko feels forgotten and lost, and
Toru does not try to help her in the real world. The dream world, for Toru, is where
he sees Kumiko most clearly. Toru learns when he can no longer see or touch
Kumiko, that even though he has been physically present, he has not been there
emotionally or mentally.
Magical realism is a tool to examine morality and ethics as concrete actions
within a dream world. It helps us understand the gap between caring for another
person in a dream, as opposed to caring for them in the real world. A key figure in
the founding of care ethics is Carol Gilligan. Gilligan’s work argues that women
develop an affinity for care as an ethic instead of men. She claims men are more
interested in ideas of justice focused on autonomy and individualism. Contemporary
care ethics, however, has moved away from this view of care as primarily a part of
women’s ethical development instead of men’s ethical development. Now, scholars
such as Sandra Laugier (2015), Joan Tronto (1993), Maurice Hamington (2015),
and David Engster (2009), among others, examine care as a non-gendered practice.
This shift is significant in intersectional analyses of care.
In this chapter, I look at the singular theory of care ethics, rather than one specific
theorist. In doing this, I look at how this novel illustrates care ethics. The Wind-Up
Bird Chronicle points out how everyday failures to demonstrate care to those around
us through Toru and Kumiko’s relationship. The text shows a man who unknow-
ingly centers himself in his relationships. Toru is a character with whom we can
empathize, and Murakami writes him as a character who earns the audience’s
respect through becoming a caring person. I treat Haruki Murakami as a theorist
because of his usage of magical realism as a way to grapple with caring relation-
ships and what it means to respond to another person’s needs. Murakami’s usage of
the dream world as the prominent site of caregiving challenges the idea that care has
to be physically done with others; it demonstrates that care can be practiced at a
distance. This point is more salient than the ever given COVID-19 pandemic. People
have been pushed to learn how to show care of those we cannot be around. Through
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I explore the argument that care does not need to be
embodied and instead requires a decentering of the self. I do this by first discussing
the ordinariness of care ethics. Second, I engage arguments around identity and
intersectionality within the literature. Third, I interrogate ideas of embodiment as
necessary. I conclude that good care, because it decenters the self, can be a painful,
uncomfortable practice of growth. By providing good care, we accept potentialities
of that practice, embracing discomfort.
166 R. C. Valentine

A Careless Dinner

It is easy not to notice the people around us after a time. The ordinary everyday
interactions we hold have a rhythm. When Toru and Kumiko’s relationship is intro-
duced to us, it is through a fight. Toru has made food that she hates and bought paper
towels with patterns that she equally despises. Kumiko angrily tells Toru, “You’ve
been living with me all this time…but you’ve hardly paid any attention to me. The
only one you ever think about is yourself” (Murakami, 1997, p. 27). Kumiko’s care-
fulness to maintain her life in a specific order is something that Toru has not noticed.
Angrily, he argues that even though he ignores what she does, he still knows her.
The quiet interactions and recognition of other people’s patterns demonstrate that
we pay attention to them. We learn immediately that even if Toru loves Kumiko, he
does not pay attention. This pivotal interaction between Toru and Kumiko estab-
lishes what I argue is the main criticism of care ethics—embodied care is not enough.
Embodied care is not enough, because care is a contextualized practice.
COVID-19 exemplifies the need to contextualize care. Our need for support contin-
ues, but they have to be met in different ways. For example, instead of cooking for
someone, one may order a person food. Context is important for care, because we
perform care. Performing care well requires that we respond accurately to the situ-
ation we are in. Sandra Laugier (2015) argues that, “Our ethical selves are a perfor-
mative and thus an iterative response to our embodied and contextual circumstance”;
care is never outside of what we are doing at that moment (p. 83) We use our bodies
to demonstrate our care for others, and also our need for care. In an embodied,
physical sense, our bodies can capture the nuance of what is seen as caring and
make it possible for us to replicate that care. When Kumiko saw someone close to
her, forget that she despised a specific meal, the caring performance of cooking for
someone is suddenly no longer caring. Cooking for others is a common way of
demonstrating affection and concern for someone, but by making them food they
dislike, it turns the act from one of care to one of thoughtlessness.
The performance of care is nuanced. Because care is a practice, care is measured
by how we respond to others. Laugier (2015) argues that much of care is a physical
performance—feeding, healing, touching, etc. However, there are many forms of
care that are unarticulated. By focusing strictly on the body, Laugier misses the
importance of communicating across a divide to understand needs. Even in provid-
ing physical healthcare, a practitioner stills asks, “How are you feeling?” to gauge
pain. The physical presence here, while important, is not enough. The failure to
remember the importance of others’ ordinary needs is a quiet reinforcement of a
message that we do not care. Care requires an alertness to needs that may not be
voiced, or a person may not understand how to voice. Ethical caring requires alert-
ness to the needs that people express. Joan Tronto’s (1993) examination of respon-
siveness is through direct communication of a person’s needs. However, if care is
often unarticulated, then a call for care may also be unarticulated.
Responsiveness requires attentiveness. Responsiveness is necessary for provid-
ing good care because “it suggests that we consider the other’s position as that other
Ordinary Care in Extraordinary Worlds: Murakami and Decentered Care … 167

expresses it” (Tronto, 1993, p. 136). Responding to another person asks that we take
their perspective. By looking at care as ordinary, effective care necessitates being
able to step outside of oneself. Murakami (1997) becomes helpful here. In the book,
Toru is unemployed and frequently complaining about his boredom. Toru was inef-
fective in the giving of care because he was centering himself. During the dinner in
which Toru has made food that Kumiko finds disgusting she snaps at him, “You’ve
been living with me all this time…but you’ve hardly paid any attention to me. The
only one you think about is yourself” (Murakami, 1997, p. 27). Kumiko’s honest
expression makes Toru angry and defensive because he does not want to acknowl-
edge that he does not think about other people. Effective care decenters the self. By
decentering the self, the everyday experiences of other people become concrete to
us. COVID-19 has asked that we consider the needs of other beyond our own. We
must accept discomfort, so that others can live. If we center ourselves by ignoring
public health requirements, others may die. Toru centers himself in a way that
actively hurts Kumiko. We, as an audience, rarely hear from Kumiko. Kumiko
leaves because Toru’s self-centeredness ignores her needs and ignores what makes
life meaningful and significant—care.
Toru’s relationship to Kumiko is characterized not by a lack of love, but by a lack
of attentiveness. After dinner, Toru reflects on how this lack of attention could mean
that he has spent his entire marriage with someone he does not know. Nevertheless,
despite this reflection, he does not change this lack of attentiveness (Murakami,
1997, p. 31). This ease of passively accepting that we can never know another per-
son releases us from the responsibility of thinking of their needs from their own
perspective. Laugier (2015) argues that, “Authentic caring—a response to need—
has the potential to respect and honor differences while finding continuity and con-
nection” (p.  85). Authentic care, used also as ethical care, is a term used to
demonstrate that the care being provided is good care. It meets the other person’s
needs and is attentive to them. It grapples with interpersonal distinctions that are
bodily and socially created. Refusing to engage with people’s needs in a way that
decenters oneself interrupts the ability to connect with other people.
Authentic caring raises the question of whether or not Toru needs to be with
Kumiko to demonstrate this. Laugier’s argument primarily focuses on the notion
that care is devalued because it exists in quiet normalness. When we care, it is not
necessarily a large public motion. Instead, care is often demonstrated through small
interactions that show we notice each other. Care, importantly, draws our attention
to these small actions. Toru’s failure is not merely a lack of cooking the right dinner;
it is not remembering Kumiko’s preferences. The lack of engaging with another’s
needs is a mental absence. Being physically present with someone is not enough to
qualify as effective care. Instead, it requires that we be mentally and emotionally
present as well. What Laugier highlights here is important in understanding why
care does not need to be fully embodied. It is my belief that this part of her argument
contributes to understanding the closeness that can be developed in distanced forms
of care. For example, small acts of care are represented in Toru’s phone calls to
Kumiko’s workplace, checking in on her. These moments of intimacy are verbal,
unremarkable, but deeply kind.
168 R. C. Valentine

The ordinary private interactions we have with others matters. Murakami uses
the short conversation over dinner between Toru and Kumiko to establish the fact
that their relationship is unraveling. Kumiko, sighing, and listing the things that
Toru hates “telephone covers, bell-bottom jeans with rivets,” and concluding that he
has never noticed the small things that she despises (Murakami, 1997, p. 26). When
we care for others, we perform actions that we know they will like, or that will ben-
efit them. We avoid things that would make the other person uncomfortable or upset.
Care ethics draws on this notion that the private and casual ways that we show that
we notice the other person is a way to connect. The minor small interactions we
have with one another are ways that we sustain and nurture relationships. The ordi-
nary and casual practices of care are deeply essential to connecting with others.
Feeding another person is an essential practice of showing care that contributes to
fulfilling a person’s direct physical needs. Moreover, providing someone a meal
takes time and thought. By ignoring the details of another’s preferences and needs,
we accept being ignorant of another person. There is something concretely painful
here, when we are passive in our relationships, we no longer help to fulfill their
needs. Scholar Raja Halwani (2003) points that care is distinguished from other
altruistic actions because it demonstrates an intimate knowledge of others and uti-
lizes it to tailor an action to fulfill the other person’s needs (p. 166). This, when we
pair it with the argument that care is ordinary, shows that care is deeply thoughtful,
likewise a lack of care is thoughtless. The minor moments of care in day-to-day
interactions with those close to us reflect whether or not we are acting upon a knowl-
edge that we have of another person or solely thinking of our own preferences.
Deliberating on another’s preferences, even if not noticed before acting, is part of a
caring practice.
Toru and Kumiko’s dinner with one another is important because it explores
ordinary forms of care. Recognition of the ordinary, in my analysis, is essential to
practicing good care; when we recognize the everyday, we begin the process of
decentering the self. Care implies a reaching out, when we give care we are looking
to another person. It should not refer to the self, because if we are giving care it is
not about the caregiver. By performing ordinary forms of care, such as cooking din-
ner, and remembering that a loved one hates a particular combination of food—we
ignore our opinions over the food, focusing on the other person’s preferences. The
most ordinary act of caring can quickly become one that is harmful and thoughtless
if it does not take into consideration unvoiced needs. Tronto (1993) argues that in
providing care we are “engaged from the standpoint of the other, but not simply by
presuming that the other is exactly like the self” (p. 136). The day-to-day moments
in which we preform care assume that the person to whom we are giving care to is
not the same as us. For example, in wearing a mask, as a non-immunocompromised
person, I am recognizing that others are more at risk of contracting COVID-19. The
caring actions that we perform move us outside of ourselves.
We meet others needs and provide care understanding that we are interdepen-
dent. All of us have emotional, mental, and physical needs that must be met. The
ordinary is a quiet place that expresses this interdependence. The lack of a spotlight
on these actions makes them meaningful for the giver and the person or persons for
Ordinary Care in Extraordinary Worlds: Murakami and Decentered Care … 169

whom they are performed. Throughout our lives we will either need care or will be
a position to provide care. The dinner table is a moment in which we can demon-
strate a quiet form of care. By cooking a depressed person’s favorite meal, we show
attentiveness to that person. We notice their pain and respond to it through providing
them a simple action of care. Care, as a practice, reflects sensitivity to details.
Appreciating the common space and common actions we share is a way to acknowl-
edge our interdependence. Yet, there is a danger there in focusing on those who are
close to us that we demonstrate a hierarchy of care.

The Shift

Care ethics advocates for impartiality, in that when we provide care for others we do
not see individuals as more worthy of care. We may prioritize care based upon
needs; however, we should not make a hierarchy of care according to our emotional
connections to others. Yet, there are disagreements with this claim. Halwani (2003)
argues that despite this claim, prioritizing those we are close to emotionally, but not
to the point of rejecting others’ needs, is ethically acceptable (p. 175). Some degree
of parochialism is admissible, but it cannot be a firm rule that we always prioritize
those closest to us. However, we do have more obligations to those we are close to
because of our increased knowledge of their needs. The balance between impartial-
ity, of equalized care, and partiality, prioritized care, draws attention to potential
power differences. Nicki Ward (2015) argues that people in privileged positions
have more access to care than those who are more marginalized. Kumiko, in con-
trast to Toru, comes across as cold. She is angry and uninterested in Toru. Kumiko
prioritizes herself, something that comes across as callous, but this hard shell that
she presents confronts gendered expectations of caregivers.
Care is often gendered, when looked at through partiality, women are expected
to care for their families. Gilligan’s (1982) work is centered in a very concrete
binary idea of gender. Women shoulder expectations to provide emotional, mental,
and physical care for their families often in conjunction with working. Women are
socialized into thinking of themselves as caregivers, and of morality as located in
personal interactions, while men are not. Women, she argues, slip into the role of
caregivers. Men, learning care later in life, associate women as caregivers. Partiality
does not include the self as care is an action for another. Thus, women refusing to
provide care, or prioritizing themselves, is startling. The important aspect of it is
that expectations of who should care are often gendered. Kumiko’s inability to pro-
vide care, and not receiving any from Toru, is emblematic of a woman not receiving
care simply because it is unthinkable that she would need care. This unhealthy gen-
dered expectation is thrown back at Toru in Kumiko’s ranting that he never knew
her. She has been in the background, assumed. Kumiko’s disinterest in soothing
Toru’s hurt feelings at cooking the wrong meal upends gendered expectations that
women displace their frustrations to care for men.
170 R. C. Valentine

The relationship between caregivers and care receivers according to intersec-

tional analyses of care is not static. Instead, care is accompanied by a person’s
subjective experience and looking to understand it in the larger societal relation-
ships context. Because a person’s needs are in constant flux, and marginalization
may change depending on where someone is, it calls for a notion of care that is
intentionally universalistic. Intersectional care ethics combines Tronto’s more polit-
ical ethics with identity politics. This combination highlights that lived experiences
all differ. I contend that the practice of care actively pushes the caregiver to under-
stand the care recipient’s experience through thinking about how their identities
impact their lives. Marginalized people’s needs are often sidelined or are collapsed
into simplistic narratives. Morris (2001), in a piece on disability and care, lays out
an analysis of impairment in which individuals are arrested and are not recognized
in difference. In seeing a person in need of care as a passive recipient, or a person
who is active until a given point—the care recipient is simply soaking up care, while
the caregiver provides care endlessly. The caregiver receives nothing and has no
impetus to look to the person they care for to be a participant. Morris (2001) states,
“‘Bad’ care fails to take personhood seriously, and allows the individual to fall
apart, a prey to the dire combination of cognitive impairment and emotional dis-
tress” (p. 14). This notion of bad care is helpful in thinking about intersectional care
that decenters the giver. Bad care disempowers the recipient and develops a toxic
relationship because it ignores the recipient as a person who has autonomy. Good
care does not prioritize the individual; it is an approach in which all people involved
in the relationship have some capacity for self-advocacy. This ability may be
impacted based upon a person’s impairment. Nonetheless, everyone is a participant
in the practice of care in good care. This is the care that Kumiko needs.
Kumiko who is in the dream world is represented by a nameless faceless woman.
She begs to remain hidden, yet she also needs to be named. If she is not named, she
mentions, she will be trapped there forever (Murakami, 1997, p. 246). The dream
Kumiko that Toru confronts wants to be recognized but is also deeply afraid of that
recognition. If Kumiko is not noticed, she will be trapped in her depression for-
ever—locked inside her own mind. Caring for those in our immediate circle is ethi-
cally important, and Toru has forgotten this. The woman’s namelessness in a room
in which she urgently insists that Toru keep the lights off, signals Toru understand-
ing that while the woman in front of him is Kumiko, she represents all of Kumiko
that he had moved aside. The moment Toru realizes the nameless woman is Kumiko,
he notices that he has refused to engage in partial care. He has not cared for the
person close to him. He has not cared for anyone besides himself. He has quietly
assumed that their relationship would continue. Kumiko, unable to provide care,
receives little to no empathy from her spouse.
Intersectional care ethics forces the caregiver to think of the other person’s full
life experience and respond in an attentive way to that experience. We give good
care when within this framework because we have to be fully mentally and emotion-
ally present with people to do this well. The impartiality principle of care that
Halwani notes requires a willingness to change how one gives care according to the
other person’s needs. Needs fluctuate. The impartiality principle asks that we pay
Ordinary Care in Extraordinary Worlds: Murakami and Decentered Care … 171

attention to these fluctuations. COVID-19 has illuminated our fluctuating needs.

Individuals who were able-bodied are now experiencing the development of poten-
tial chronic illnesses after contracting COVID-19. The current phenomenon of
“long-haulers,” individuals who became ill and never recuperated, exposes the
frailty of bodies. Because of impartiality, we are asked to take measures to help oth-
ers and to consider what we will need to do in the future to assist the recently dis-
abled. Good care keeps in mind the changes in needs, responding to needs in a way
that examines the myriad of privileges and marginalizations a person experiences.
Care ethics, considered through intersectionality, acknowledges that Kumiko is
socially burdened with the need to provide care and may be less likely to receive
care. Halwani’s (2003) point contributes to my understanding of good care in that if
a person is socially placed in the caregiver position, their access to care can be lim-
ited. The intersectional approach highlights this inequity as socially constructed,
and by adjusting our practice of care helps provide good care.
Good care is responsive and effective. As mentioned previously, it is also
pluralistic. It recognizes the differences of needs, and that care needs to be
rethought accordingly. The balance between impartial and partial care is some-
thing that needs to be critically examined. Intersectional analyses of care do not
refute a prioritization of care but encourage that care’s ordinariness also keeps
in mind inequities. Toru, addressing the woman who is and is not Kumiko, tells
her when she balks at helping him, “But still, Kumiko was trying to communi-
cate something to me. Whether or not it was the truth, she was looking to me for
something and that was the truth for me” (Murakami, 1997, p. 578). When we
argued care as something that is embodied and potentially unarticulated, and as
something that evolves, we acknowledge that people’s needs might not be appar-
ent to us. However, we still should understand them. We do this through active
inquiry into the other person’s needs and setting aside our assumptions of what
those needs are.
Despite the frequent gendering of care, the responsibility to care for others is
not gendered. Care ethics is not tied to the binary gendered assumptions of who
is a caretaker and who is a care recipient. Murakami (1997) illustrates this aspect
of care in an important moment of real world caring in which we see Toru caring
for Kumiko is after she has an abortion. Kumiko and Toru decided together, long
before the first dinner where we see their relationship beginning to dissolve, that
she would have an abortion. Kumiko, distressed, does not want to discuss why she
is upset. Toru affirms her pain and her decision to not talk about her feelings,
“Take all the time you need. Until you’re ready. Time is the one thing we’ve got
plenty of. I’ll be right here with you” (Murakami, 1997, p. 252). Toru provides a
care that is unobtrusive and selfless. He is not a part of Kumiko’s grief except as
a support figure. This moment demonstrates that Toru can care for Kumiko in the
real world, yet as we meet Toru, he cannot do this anymore. Now, he can only care
for Kumiko in a dream world. He can only care for his wife when she is not that.
Murakami uses the old Toru, actively loving Kumiko and helping her, in compari-
son to the new Toru, condemning Toru’s real-world behavior. Toru in the first
instance recognized that Kumiko had an experience he could not understand.
172 R. C. Valentine

However, he did understand that Kumiko needed support. Toru recognized the
different experiences they held as a cisgender man and woman and recognized
Kumiko’s needs as she expressed them. Toru has a responsibility to continue to
care for Kumiko because she is a person in need, just as he did after her abortion.
As a protagonist, Toru is not the typical care provider, which highlights the criti-
cisms of gendered expectations. Beyond the gendered aspect, in the novel’s cli-
max, he wants Kumiko to be active in his attentiveness. He wants her to be
empowered to act and not to be passive.
The context of care involves understanding the other person’s identity. Tronto
(1993) contends that awareness of this is integral to not treating someone pater-
nalistically (p. 142). Identity is not monolithic, and likewise needs, and margin-
alization is not monolithic (Ward 2015). Because of this, the ways we give care
and receive care will be different. The impartiality and partiality of care ethics
provide societal expectations in that we prioritize those we know but still pro-
vide care for those we do not. Toru’s marriage demonstrates that when people’s
identities seem to be at odds with their ability to care, their access to care might
be limited. The active dimension of identity shapes how a person interacts with
others and with the world. Due to gendered norms, a person who does not have
the same expectations for care can passively interact with the world. Whereas a
person who is expected to provide care will have more demands placed upon
them. Tronto (1993) is deeply concerned that these relationships and expecta-
tions can lead to resentment, and the relationship’s dissolution (p. 143). Avoiding
this involves embracing the fact that the boundary between caregiver and care
receiver is not static. Ward’s pointed argument that needs can shift according to
who a person is and contributes to good care. I think that these two perspectives
demonstrate that in understanding the nuance of identity and needs, people can
avoid potential paternalism and resentment. The synthesis of their approaches is
important because it highlights that good care has multiple faces. There is no
solid singular aspect that can be defined as the example of good care. Instead, it
shifts. By focusing solely on the body, we miss the importance of mental and
emotional presence.
Embodiment is important. We are given specific societal expectations because of
our bodies. Our bodies instruct us in the limits of what we should predict that others
will provide for us, and what they will not. Nonetheless, these physical constraints
change. Depending upon the space, these expectations may change. For example, a
cisgender woman entering a space that excludes cisgender men may feel freer than
a masculine-presenting nonbinary person coming into that same space. Bodies
shape our experiences within the world. Because of this, there is a tendency to focus
on care as a practice that happens in person and in that space. Nevertheless, physical
presence can be limited, and as shown previously, a person can be physically pres-
ent but mentally and emotionally absent. Embodied care argues that because much
of what people need might be nonverbally communicated, being with people is
essential. However, if a person is mentally absent, their presence will not be caring.
Instead, I propose that we take from embodiment that people’s needs are deeply
Ordinary Care in Extraordinary Worlds: Murakami and Decentered Care … 173

impacted and shaped by their bodies. People may not directly ask for assistance—
but that we focus on mental and emotional presence, rather than physical. Our men-
tal and emotional presence is much more adaptable than our physical presence. If
someone cannot be around others, they still require love and affection and have
needs. By focusing on mental and emotional presence, we can focus on ways of
fulfilling needs that can apply to myriads of circumstances beyond needing to be
physically there.

Bodies in Space

Decentering does not require physical presence but an active emotional and men-
tal engagement. Toru’s connectivity through the dream world and technology to
Kumiko highlights my theory of decentering as necessary for care. The embod-
ied aspect of care is explored through the dinner in which we encounter their
relationship and Toru attending to Kumiko after her abortion. It demonstrates the
divide between the active engagement that Toru holds space for after Kumiko’s
abortion and the ignoring her depression shortly before she leaves. The disem-
bodied aspect takes place once Kumiko leaves, both digitally and in the dream
world. Disembodied care being care that is non-physical. Showing care, when
not in the same space, is difficult. Hamington draws on phenomenology to dis-
cuss the importance of why physical displays of care are critical. Experiencing
care directly from others creates the potential to cross socially constructed divi-
sions and holds the potential for empathy. The usage of the dream world and
digital chats raises the question: Is it possible to maintain these care elements
when not in person?
Toru, near the end of the novel, gains access to a computer program and chats
with Kumiko. This communication is the last time he can speak to her. Kumiko and
Toru argue in the conversation. Kumiko tells him that she is no longer the same
person; she has been transformed. He may know her, but it is not her. This chat is
deeply intimate and upsetting. Kumiko is aware of the dream world, and also sees
herself as unreal. She has transformed. Toru seems to be the only person aware of
the duality. Toru responds to Kumiko’s insistence that she is a bad person, drawing
on his dream world interactions with Kumiko, “I can accept the fact that one Kumiko
is trying hard to get away from me, and she probably has her reasons for doing so.
But there is another Kumiko, who is trying just as hard to get close to me”
(Murakami, 1997, p. 490). During this chat, they discuss trauma, mental illness, and
their love for each other even though they cannot see one another. Hamington (2015)
argues that embodied care is a “whole-body skill” that encourages “empathetic
imagination” (p. 92). Relationships often utilize other forms of communication out-
side of in-person whole-body experiences. Instead, relationships and care are dem-
onstrated through a variety of digital communications. Fulfilling emotional and
mental needs is possible without being able to be physically present with someone.
As the beginning of the novel showed, a person can be physically present but
174 R. C. Valentine

mentally absent. Likewise, a person’s mental presence requires that they utilize their
intimate knowledge of the other person and respond to the other person’s emotional
and mental needs. The relational aspect of being with someone does not depend
upon physical presence.
Disembodied care is framed by Murakami as a way to decenter oneself. Toru and
Kumiko are largely separate throughout the novel. Kumiko in the dream world
shrouded in darkness tells Toru, “People don’t always send messages in order to
communicate the truth, Mr. Okada…just as people don’t always meet others in
order to reveal their true selves” (Murakami, 1997, p. 578). The conversations that
they had are important. They convey Kumiko grappling with mental illness and
trauma that makes her feel that she is no longer herself, and Toru’s coming to terms
with the fact that he has not been concerned about Kumiko. Meeting Kumiko in the
real world, she suggests, would not reveal her true self. She reveals herself in this
dream world or mediated through a software program. Toru persists, “But still,
Kumiko was trying to communicate something to me. Whether or not it was the
truth, she was looking to me for something, and that was the truth for me” (Murakami,
1997, p. 578). The distance between them gives each of them the space to process
their feelings, and to understand what needs to be done to heal their relationship.
Toru symbolically kills a murderous man who lurks in the room that Kumiko lives
in. The man is a blockage to Toru reaching Kumiko. The man is the wall of depres-
sion and trauma that has built up between them. Toru has to tear it down for them to
reconnect. Embodiment is not necessary for Toru and Kumiko’s relationship to heal,
because it was when they were close to one another that the relationship began to
fall apart. The separation between them pushes Toru to step outside of his own self-­
centeredness and reflect on Kumiko’s needs. She was looking to him for something,
and he ignored that search.
Relating to another person is an attentive and responsive manner that relies upon
decentering. Decentering is an active process. When we engage in decentering, we
place ourselves in the position of the other. It is a mindful practice. Toru can only
relate to Kumiko by being mindful by understanding why she feels that she must
stay away from him—why Kumiko feels that she is a bad person. Relating to some-
one requires communication. Decentering and understanding our own positionality
means that we must engage in a dialogue about their needs when we want to provide
for another person. Indeed, we learn about the social impositions placed upon them.
The mindfulness and emotional presence of decentering can be uncomfortable.
Relying on our knowledge of the other person and noticing how they differ from
ours is an active pursuit. We are emotionally and mentally active in decentering.
When we place ourselves as secondary, we highlight the importance of the care
recipient.
A central argument for embodied care is that it demonstrates possible ways
to care and encourages moral imagination. However, imagination can be
stirred without seeing someone. In engaging in a text-based conversation with
someone, it is common to imagine what their affect is to determine if there is
something left unsaid. The nuance of the unarticulated emotions, which can be
easier to judge when in person with someone, must be imagined. Even in
Ordinary Care in Extraordinary Worlds: Murakami and Decentered Care … 175

asking the person to clarify how they feel, when they respond, there is still a
need to imagine this to impose on the messages you receive. Thinking of lan-
guage to use to connect with them and encourage them to feel cared for still
requires imagination. Care resists alienation, requiring individuals to imagine
how best to formulate texts to meet another person’s needs. Caring is described
as an active practice. Like any practice, it necessitates adaptation to changing
situations.
This challenge to embodiment shows itself in crises such as the COVID-19 pan-
demic, in which people are forcibly separated. People, unable to see each other, find
different ways of maintaining their relationships. Physical interactions are signifi-
cantly limited to social distance regulations. Toru’s emotional distress conveys the
difficulty of not seeing a person you love physically, and his ability to continue to
hold onto that relationship is reflected in times of forced separation. Utilizing an
intersectional analysis of care, being able to adapt communication is necessary.
Individuals’ access to certain forms of being with people may change, and Toru’s
eagerness to adopt any communication method regardless of how difficult it is
reflects a desire to meet someone’s emotional needs. Halwani (2003) encourages
habituation of care ethics, arguing that as it is practiced, it becomes a part of the way
one lives regardless. Practicing care as something that does not have to happen in
person encourages care to be an action that is deeply emotional and mental.
Technology is an essential part of effective disembodied care.
Embodiment limits us. By placing the physicality of care as the utmost impor-
tance, we lose sight of intersectionality. If a person cannot physically be around
others for any given reason—emotional preference when distressed or quarantin-
ing during COVID-19, for example—their need for care does not diminish. When
separated from others, a person may need more affection than they would other-
wise—embodiment restraints our understanding of providing care as something
that depends upon our physical presence. However, as discussed previously—it is
possible to be with others physically and absent mentally and emotionally. It is
the combination of the three that makes embodiment meaningful. However, in
relying on physical presence as the penultimate form of care, we denigrate other
performances of care that might be the only ways that someone can give care, and
someone can receive care. Focusing on the importance of emotional and mental
presence is a process that actively requires re-imagining ways of performing car-
ing practices. In re-imagining, we can conceive of dependence as something
beyond the body.

Conclusion

At the beginning of this chapter, I discussed care as requiring one to step outside
of oneself to examine a person’s life from their perspective, and this is one step
in understanding one’s limitations. Care is a complex practice that involves rec-
ognizing one’s own position and identity in the world, how other people
176 R. C. Valentine

encounter the world, and a commitment to providing care that affirms person-
hood. Kumiko, in the first few pages of the novel, over the dinner she despises,
says, “I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not real…what things really happened
and what things didn’t really happen…” (Murakami, 1997, p.  236). After she
leaves the dream world, the reader discovers that Kumiko’s brother was abusing
her and she murdered him. Kumiko finds her freedom in this murder, and the
novel concludes with an affectionate email she sends to Toru, stating that they
will never see each other again (Murakami, 1997, p.  603). The Wind-Up Bird
Chronicle challenges the argument that embodied care is integral to demonstrat-
ing care by examining how individuals care from a distance. For a world experi-
encing a pandemic, embodiment is becoming challenged in how we express care
for one another. Murakami’s (1997) challenge poses to physical presence draws
attention to the need for mental and emotional presence, which is central to the
argument for embodied care. Why do we focus on physical proximity if someone
can be in the same space as another and never notice another persons’ needs?
The novel demonstrates that good care does not necessitate physical presence.
Providing good care does not mean that there will be a predictable outcome.
After being unconcerned for years, suddenly becoming a caring partner does not
necessarily guarantee that your marriage will be healed. Providing good care to
someone encourages them to live a life that they find valuable, regardless of the
potential outcomes.
Because care undergirds most of life, care ethicists often discuss it as an inher-
ently pleasant practice. However, like Kumiko’s permanent separation from Toru
shows, it can also be hurtful even if an outcome is beneficial. Intersectional care
ethicists point to this discomfort as good. The uncomfortable aspect of accepting the
fact that helping another person may require decentering yourself and experiencing
discomfort leads to growth. The vulnerability of opening oneself up to caring for
another and receiving care is an opportunity to further one’s knowledge and aware-
ness of one’s limitations. The end of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle points to the fact
that while care is a moral practice, helping others is always unknown. Because our
actions have moral relevance, then the obligation to care for people is more impor-
tant than being comfortable. Care ethics requires comfort with the potential of dis-
comfort. Care that encourages individuals to express preferences for their lives
recognizes the potential that some preferences will push a person into space, which
is not comfortable. Because of societal assumptions that certain people provide
care, and certain people have specific needs, marginalized persons’ experiences are
not seen completely. Morris (2001) places care in the context of disability activism.
Disabled persons’ needs are pre-decided through bad care. A lens of care that is not
intersectional falls into this trap of ignoring care as pluralistic—there are many dif-
ferent types of care and many needs.
Tronto (1993) calls care a “power of the weak.” We care for those who are vul-
nerable and in need of aid. If infants are not cared for, they die. The actual work of
care encourages mental, emotional, and physical wellness. Prioritizing care in one’s
life demands that we become attentive. By paying attention to the ordinary aspects
of life, one is pushed to understand the myriad of factors that impact how we care
Ordinary Care in Extraordinary Worlds: Murakami and Decentered Care … 177

for others and how they care for us. Embracing the ordinariness of care provides
opportunities for the unexpected. Toru and Kumiko’s relationship shows an evolu-
tion of perception. Centering care in one’s life leads to a recognition of positionality.
Care is a process of decentering. Care ethics note social and cultural values and how
they impact us, prompting a recognition that good care is intersectional. Good care
challenges us to transcend embodiment and develop forms of care that can over-
come spatial divides in order to adapt to our emergent world post-COVID-19.

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You are interested in other chapters where the pop cultural object is positioned
as a philosophy in their own right.
• Turn to p. 147 to read Holland’s usage of Rick and Morty’s postmodern
science fiction.
You are interested in other theorists or theories who could be used within
environmental disasters, like the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Turn to p. 59 to read Barnes’ explanation of Beck’s risk society.
You are interested in exploring the relationship between bodies and
communication.
• Turn to p. 47 to read Grant’s explanation of the language games puzzle of
Wittgenstein.
You are interested in exploring the relationship between bodies and politics
• Turn to p. 71 to read Bedford and Chalmer’s discussion of de Beauvoir’s
The Second Sex.

References

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Ellis, K. (2004). Dependency, justice and the ethic of care. In H. Dean (Ed.), The ethics of welfare:
Human rights, dependency, and responsibility. University Press.
Engster, D. (2009). The heart of justice: Care ethics and political theory. University Press. https://
doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-­0378.2010.00429.x
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Harvard University Press.
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org/10.1111/j.1527-­2001.2003.tb00826.x
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Morris, J. (2001). Impairment and disability: Constructing an ethics of care that promotes human
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Murakami, H. (1997). The wind-up bird chronicles. Vintage International.
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advances in international perspective. Bristol University Press.
Distribution of the Sensible in Besźel
and Ul Qoma: Reading Rancière Alongside
Miéville’s The City and the City

Jakub Záhora

Editorial Interlude by Barnes and Bedford

In this chapter, Jakub Záhora introduces the reader to the aesthetically controlled
worlds of both theorist Jacques Rancière and author China Miéville. Arguing that
both texts consider notions of power differently to the rationalism of Marxism,
Záhora builds knowledge of how our senses are socially shaped from birth to make
unconscious decisions about those around us.
Záhora politically contextualizes Rancière in opposition to Marxist thinkers who
came before him, including Rancière’s PhD supervisor Althusser. He explains that
these Marxist thinkers were making assumptions about the ability of the working
class to participate in political decision-making because they saw the world through
the lens of the intellectual elite. In placing Rancière in opposition to key critical
theorists of the day, but still categorized as a theorist interested in emancipatory
work, Záhora gives Rancière status as a philosopher worth considering for building
social knowledge.
Záhora builds knowledge of the role of the senses in distribution of power by
converging Rancière and Miéville and four intersections. Firstly, that political power
relies on people making unconscious assumptions about other’s ability to partici-
pate in political decision-making. Secondly, that power structures are established
not just through political structures but also through people’s aesthetic, like the way
they dress and the art they prefer. Thirdly, that aesthetics help power structures seem
commonsensical. Fourthly, the way society is policed, through a literal police force
but also through how humans act in ways that police each other is also associated
with aesthetics.

J. Záhora (*)
Max-Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 179

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_15
180 J. Záhora

Unlike some of the other theorists in this volume, from the same French conti-
nental philosophy context as Rancière, Záhora personally believes that Rancière
would enjoy the process of having his work unpacked against Miéville’s novel.

Introduction

What is the relationship between sensory experience and power? In the twin cities
of Besźel and Ul Qoma, the setting of China Miéville’s (2010) highly acclaimed
novel The City and the City, these two concepts are inextricably linked. In the begin-
ning, the book seems to be just a usual instance of a detective genre in which the
main character, detective Tyador Borlú of Besźel police, investigates murder of
Mahalia Geary, an American PhD student. However, it quickly turns out that Besźel
and Ul Qoma are anything but ordinary cities: the two share the same physical space
but their particular citizens are prohibited from seeing, hearing and perceiving each
other. Borlú quickly becomes embroiled in the politics of the two cities and their
divisions as it is revealed that although Geary’s body was found in Besźel, she was
murdered in Ul Qoma. In his search for the murderer, Borlú has to face not only the
hostility of the respective cities’ elites but also nefarious force known as Breach
which ensures the two cities remain separated. He reveals a vast conspiracy revolv-
ing around Ul Qoma and Besźel and their liminal spaces.
Although usually labelled as a science-fiction novel, The City and the City (hence-
forth, CC) deals with issues which go way beyond the confines of the novel’s plot. In
this chapter, I want to mobilize the novel’s setting to illuminate the work of the French
thinker Jacques Rancière with focus on his notion of “division of the sensible”. Much
of Rancière’s work deals with sensual experience, its political salience and how it is
crucial in maintaining the current social order. “The local politics of boundaries”
(Miéville, 2010, p. 76) dividing Besźel and Ul Qoma, the foundational basis underly-
ing all aspects of life in the two cities, is tightly linked to the governance of senses as
well. The novel can thus serve to explicate Rancière’s thought.
The fact that Rancière’s work often remains somewhat inaccessible arguably
relates to his particular understanding of aesthetics and the “sensible”. For him,
these terms do not pertain to the matters of taste, appreciation of art and beauty,
information we obtain through our senses and so on, as they are usually understood.
Rather, they stand for the much more general way in which we approach, evaluate
and classify different people, things and processes, and their relationship to matters
of public interest. Concerned with social and political inequality, Rancière proposes
that power hierarchies are maintained by taken-for-granted and commonsensical
understanding of certain categories—for example, some people being worthy to
participate in public debates, while others are not, and of certain topics warranting
debate, with others are not. Aesthetics and the sensible, for Rancière, thus pertain to
questions like “whether or not things such as wages, space, infrastructure, and trans-
portation are not matters of public concern” (Tanke, 2011, p. 62). As such, the ways
in which we perceive phenomena (the sensible) and classify them (the aesthetical)
Distribution of the Sensible in Besźel and Ul Qoma: Reading Rancière… 181

are unavoidably power-laden as they determine what is considered and recognized

as worthy public attention, as opposed to a merely private matter.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide an accessible explanation of Rancière’s
thought with focus on the notion of the distribution of the sensible. I do so via a
close reading of Miéville’s novel, showing how the imagined reality of the twin cit-
ies of Besźel and Ul Qoma can be used to flesh out Rancière’s ideas regarding the
role of the senses and aesthetics in social and political spheres. While Rancière’s
analytical toolbox goes way beyond this concept, I propose that much of his work
can be made more legible via engagement with this concept which connects several
of his key concerns with (in)equality and processes which maintain it.
In the rest of this chapter, I will first discuss how the notion of the division of the
sensible relates to larger trajectory of Rancière’s thought, showing that his under-
standing of aesthetics is a natural extension of his take on politics and philosophy. I
will then briefly introduce Miéville’s book and the basic parameters of the twin cit-
ies of Besźel and Ul Qoma. The third section juxtaposes Rancière’s work and
Miéville’s novel to fully explicate the concept of the division of the sensible and its
political salience.

Rancière’s Particular Philosophy

Quite paradoxically, given that he is usually labelled as a philosopher, Rancière is

fairly vocal in rejecting philosophy’s authority. This attitude relates to his core inter-
est and political goals: Rancière’s work can be understood as a project of alleviating
inequality in today’s societies and, according to him, philosophers have not only
failed in this task but have actually contributed to entrenching political and social
hierarchies. What Rancière proposes is that we—as society, individuals and stu-
dents of the social world—need to completely re-evaluate how we approach matters
of power, subordination and emancipation.
Rancière’s political thought can, to some extent, be considered a rebuke to
Althusser, his influential teacher (see especially Rancière, 1973). Essentially, the
differences concern the presence and distribution of intellectual and cognitive facul-
ties needed for initiating a political change. According to Althusser and other
Marxist thinkers, the working class cannot lead the socialist revolution on its own as
its members lack the capacities to see through their immediate conditions and real-
ize they find themselves in the subordinate position. This constellation then privi-
leges the intellectual avant-garde to reveal the oppressive structures and pose as
leaders of the working class.
Although Rancière broadly shares the same emancipatory agenda, his under-
standing of the workers’ autonomy and their capacities to analyse the existing
inequalities and overcome them is vastly different. In the Nights of Labor, based on
his doctoral thesis, Rancière (1989) drew on archival research to show that workers,
deemed by Marxist scholars as incapable of artistic activities, were indeed manifest-
ing such tendencies, talents and tastes. The notion of workers writing poetry,
182 J. Záhora

composing music and drawing landscapes thus goes against much of Althusser and
other Marxist authors’ assumptions about workers’ “natural” inclinations. This led
Rancière to doubt the emancipatory importance of the intellectual class based on its
superior intellectual achievements. Similarly, in The Ignorant Schoolmaster,
Rancière (1991) discusses the case of Joseph Jacotot, a French teacher who taught
Flemish-speaking students in Belgium without the knowledge of their language.
Drawing on this history, Rancière shows that education process should be conceived
as a self-emancipatory movement, rather than as a one-direction relationship in
which the teacher imposes their knowledge on the student. He argues that the role
of the educator is not to convey knowledge and a prescribed way of thinking, but
rather to enable the others to reveal their potential—potential that has been supressed
by societal expectations and socially assigned roles.
Based on these insights, Rancière proposes that despite common assumptions,
there are in fact no distinctions in terms of talent, intelligence and dispositions
between the philosophers, thinkers and scholars, on the one hand, and workers,
peasants and other “lower” classes on the other. What, then, positions the latter as
inferior in terms of (alleged) political agency, and the former as superior? The
answer according to Rancière lies in the operations of the distribution of the sensible.
In Rancière’s own words, the sensible stands for:
the system of a priori forms determining what presents itself to sense experience. It is a
delimitation of spaces and times, of the visible and the invisible, of speech and noise, that
simultaneously determines the place and the stakes of politics as a form of experience.
(Rancière, 2004, p. 13)

What Rancière’s larger body of work makes clear is that his understanding of the
sensible does not mark only sensory experiences. His analysis goes deeper and
reveals how we categorize different activities and people before we are even aware
we are making such classifications. Although seemingly instinctive and non-­
reflected, this ingrained sorting of what we see and hear is deeply political as it
establishes what we perceive as a matter of public concern and who is allowed to
participate in political life.
Although the concept of the distribution of the sensible has been often applied to
make better sense of aesthetics and art, Rancière’s thinking on these issues goes way
beyond this sphere of human activity and shows how it relates to political and soci-
etal inequality more generally. He argues that the roots of power hierarchies are
located in the distinctions made between people perceived as capable of conceiving
political ideas and expressing them, and those people who are not: Rancière talks
about the separation of “those regarded as qualified to think from those regarded as
unqualified “(Baronian et al., 2008, p. 3). Going as far back as Plato’s thought on
polity and democracy, Rancière (1998, pp.  22–23) argues that inequality lies in
marking some utterances as “a speech”—considered as manifestation of reason and
endowing the speaker with the right to participate in democratic deliberations—and
others as “a noise”, animal-like sounds which are not deemed legitimate in the pub-
lic domain. For example, one can point at the historical assumptions about women’s
alleged inability to reflect on and articulate political agenda, attitudes which had
(and in less institutionalized way continues to have) highly tangible repercussions
Distribution of the Sensible in Besźel and Ul Qoma: Reading Rancière… 183

for representation in political life. Similarly, violence within a marriage was histori-
cally classified as a merely a private affair that should not attract the attention of
state authorities and public bodies.
In adopting this understanding of how we come to consider what is political,
Rancière effectively refuses the Habermasian conception of democracy as a system
in which all people freely participate and seek, with the help of discursive argu-
ments, to convince others of their goals via rational communication and pointing at
their aims’ shared social benefits. Rancière argues it is because of the distribution of
the sensible that only some are deemed capable of participating in public debates in
the first place. Thus, Habermas’s proposition can never be really democratic and
inclusive as it leaves this foundational inequality untouched. The system of slavery
illustrates this rather well: based on the arbitrary status of one’s race, people were
divided into those whose opinions are taken into account in the public debates, and
those who are considered less than human and hence not permitted to take part in
political life.
More broadly, Rancière proposes that power relationships are formed through
the setting of “the space-time of the ‘occupation’ […] according to which workers
would work during the day and sleep during the night” (Rancière, 2005, p.  14).
Temporal and spatial divisions are crucial because they determine who can be seen
and heard in a way that is recognizable as political:
Time and space are political because their distributions define forms of subjectivity and
political participation. The major obstacle to political participation is the tacit system of
distributions that define who can be seen and heard (Tanke, 2011, pp. 25–26).

In society, some people are delegated to jobs and social roles which leave them with
little or no opportunities to engage in public deliberations. As such these features
are part and parcel of the division of the sensible. Correspondingly, only certain
activities are considered political—or artistic or philosophical, for that matter—
while others are merely private hobbies and peculiarities. However, this does not
relate to the nature of the activity itself but to who and at what venue it is under-
taken: for example, academic work is only recognized as such if it is conducted by
professors and published in scholarly journals and books.
The division of the sensible is thus “the most basic system of categorization
through which we perceive and intuitively classify the data provided to our senses”
(Citton, 2009, p. 120), and it covers essentially all aspects of our lives. Deeply inter-
nalized, it keeps social and political hierarchies in place by making them (seem-
ingly) obvious and commonsensical. I will elaborate on these arguments via close
reading of The City and the City, but I first briefly introduce the novel’s setting.

Besźel and Ul Qoma

For the first few pages, Miéville’s novel appears to be a classic police novel: the
hardened detective Borlú is called to investigate a murder in a shady neighbourhood
of the city of Besźel, vaguely located somewhere at the eastern edge of the European
184 J. Záhora

continent. Although the novel does stick to the genre of the police procedural, what
distinguishes it from other novels of this sort is the setting: it is soon revealed to the
reader that Besźel is a twin city with Ul Qoma which it shares physical location with
but is politically and cognitively disjointed from. The first hint suggesting that
Miéville does not deal with an ordinary East European city comes when Borlú
encounters an elderly woman at the crime scene:
An elderly woman was walking slowly away from me in a shambling sway. She turned her
head and looked at me. I was struck by her motion, and I met her eyes. I wondered if she
wanted to tell me something. In my glance I took in her clothes, her way of walking, of
holding herself, and looking. With a hard start, I realized that she was not on GunterStrász
at all, and that I should not have seen her. (Miéville, 2010, p. 12)

Over the next pages, the reader finds out that Besźel and Ul Qoma are in the same
space but since the mysterious Cleavage—“a shadow in history” (Miéville, 2010,
p. 50)—the citizens of the two cities live in separate political and cognitive entities
although they corporeally share the same space. Since birth, both Besźs and Ul
Qomans are taught not to acknowledge the presence of the other group of citizens, and
they learn to “unsee” and “unhear” the other city, its traffic, noises and inhabitants:
In Besźel the area was pretty unpeopled, but not elsewhere across the border, and I had to
unseeing dodge many smart young businessmen and -women. Their voices were muted to me,
random noise. That aural fade comes from years of Besz care. When I reached the tar-­painted
front where Corwi waited with an unhappy-looking man, we stood together in a near-deserted
part of Besźel city, surrounded by a busy unheard throng. (Miéville, 2010, p. 45)

The two cities have distinct languages, architecture and even colours (only certain
colours and shades are legal in each city), which all enables the citizens to enact the
division in the everyday life. While some spaces are located purely in one of the
cities (making these spaces “total” in Besźel and “alter” in Ul Qoma and vice versa),
some parts, known as “crosshatched”, are shared physically by both. But even in
these areas, a citizen of one city does not enter the other city, and ignores—or rather
un-perceives—its inhabitants, locales and even objects:
When an Ul Qoman stumbles into a Besź, each in their own city; if an Ul Qoman’s dog runs
up and sniffs a Besź passerby; a window broken in Ul Qoma that leaves glass in the path of
Besź pedestrians—in all cases the Besź (or Ul Qomans, in the converse circumstances)
avoid the foreign difficulty as best they can without acknowledging it. Touch if they must,
though not is better. (Miéville, 2010, p. 65)

To cross the boundary between the two cities and to demonstrate “the existential
disrespect of Ul Qoma’s and Besźel’s boundaries” (Miéville, 2010, p. 111) is a grave
crime—known as “breach”, it is considered worse than a murder and punished
severely. The divisions between the two cities are monitored and maintained by a
nefarious force also called Breach. While the exact extent of their powers is shrouded
in mystery and subject to legends, their actions are very much real. In the case of a
purposeful disruption of the boundary between the two cities, Breach intervenes and
removes those guilty of the transgression from the respective city and takes them to
an unknown destination. Its status and capacities are unclear but the citizens of both
Ul Qoma and Besźel live in a constant shadow of the Breach’s presence.
Distribution of the Sensible in Besźel and Ul Qoma: Reading Rancière… 185

Entering the other city is possible only through an official border located at a
building called Copula Hall. The book describes its working as follows:
Then the vehicles with their stamped permissions-to-cross emerged at the opposite end
from where they entered, and drove into a foreign city. Often they doubled back, on the
crosshatched streets in the Old Town or the Old Town, to the same space they had minutes
earlier occupied, though in a new juridic realm. If someone needed to go to a house physi-
cally next door to their own but in the neighbouring city, it was in a different road in an
unfriendly power. That is what foreigners rarely understand. A Besź dweller cannot walk a
few paces next door into an alter house without breach. (Miéville, 2010, p. 69)

The Division of the Sensible in Besźel and Ul Qoma

To reiterate, distribution of the sensible concerns the political hierarchies but it

operates through the very senses and our categorization of—inter alia—what counts
as a voice (a political act) and as a noise (a mere private action). As such, it is deeply
connected to aesthetics, but in a particular way introduced by Rancière as follows:
My basic concern, throughout my ‘historical’ and ‘political’ research was to point out the
aesthetic dimension of the political experience. I mean here ‘aesthetic’ in a sense close to
the Kantian idea of ‘a priori forms of sensibility’: it is not a matter of art and taste; it is, first
of all, a matter of time and space. But my research does not deal with time and space as
forms of presentation of the objects of knowledge. It deals with time and space as forms of
configuration of our ‘place’ in society, forms of distribution of the common and the private,
and of assignation to everybody of his or her own part. (Rancière, 2005, p. 13)

How, then, does this understanding of aesthetics and its political salience relate to
the plot of Miéville’s novel?
Perhaps most crucially and pertinently, The City and the City highlights the
importance of senses for politics. Arguably, the notion of “unseeing” has become
rather popular among the novel’s readers but distinctions between Besźel and Ul
Qoma is enacted through the full sensual spectrum: the citizens of each city need to
ignore not only sight of the neighbouring city and its inhabitants but also smells of
its restaurants and sewage and the noises of its factories and avoid touching any
objects that came from the alter area. In this sense, it is the level of overall percep-
tion where political divisions are established: it is the way we walk, what we eat and
how we dress, just as much whom we vote for.
In the same vein, Rancière argues that roots of inequality lie at the very way we
perceive the world. There is one crucial difference in terms of power hierarchies
between Rancière’s work and Miéville’s novel. Whereas the latter deals with the
boundaries between the two cities whose inhabitants are equal in their profound
difference, the former is, as discussed above, concerned with “the lines dividing
those with the right to think from those deemed incapable of it” (Tanke, 2011, p. 8).
Still, The City and the City does capture well the operations of the distribution of the
sensible. In other words, although the distinctions discussed in respective works are
different, the mechanisms that maintain them are strikingly parallel: the distribution
186 J. Záhora

of the sensible, as I discussed above, concerns overall hierarchization and evalua-

tion of practices and activities pertaining to political life. However, it works so
effectively exactly because it is embedded in the very classification of different
information we receive through our senses. The instinctive and non-reflected cate-
gorization of what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch is what grants these embed-
ded practices their power as they seem natural and obvious for us.
The City and the City thus enables to better comprehend Rancière’s work on the
role and importance of sensual experience and its classification vis-à-vis political
power since the distinctions between the two cities constitute the foundational con-
stellation of power. There is political bickering in both cities, electoral cycles, gov-
ernmental coalitions being formed as well as cases of corruption, nepotism and
ineffective governance; stuff familiar to all of us. Geopolitics is in the picture as
well: whereas Besźel maintains friendly relationship with the USA, its adjacent city
is under a blockade by the world’s superpower. Amnesty International is “on the
side” of unificationists, groups seeking to dismantle the borders between Besźel and
Ul Qoma, who are closely monitored and often persecuted by the respective cities’
authorities (Miéville, 2010, p. 48). Furthermore, the UNESCO blasts Ul Qoma for
ruining its architectural heritage (Miéville, 2010, p. 135).
However, for Besźel and Ul Qoma, these are simply minor squabbles which do
not imprint themselves on the profound divisions between the two cities. Breaching,
or rather its prohibition, prescribes what counts as acceptable behaviour and is what
determines the most basic political rules. With a rare exception of some fringe
groups, citizens and political elites in both Besźel and Ul Qoma do not in any way
dispute the boundary between the two cities which, as we have seen, underlie the
forms of political participation and action in the two cities; “the two cities depend
on” (Miéville, 2010, p. 76) avoidance of breaching. In the same vein, the distribution
of the sensible demarcates the basic conditions and possibilities of politics: it
ensures “that particular activity is visible and another is not, that this speech is
understood as discourse and another as noise” (Rancière, 1998, p. 29).
Relatedly, both the distinctions between Besźel and Ul Qoma on the one hand,
and between those deemed to be able to talk and those who are not on the other,
pertain to all spheres of human activity. While Rancière is especially concerned
with aesthetics, he makes clear that distinctions run deep in the society: the distribu-
tion of the sensible consists of not only classifying sensual information but also of
“a distribution of spaces, times and forms of activity that determines the very man-
ner in which something in common lends itself to participation and in what way
various individuals have a part in this distribution” (Rancière, 2004, p. 12). In other
words, it is the very structuring of our free time, our capacities and our inclinations
that ensure that the existing inequalities remain untouched. In Besźel and Ul Qoma,
just as in our world that Rancière criticizes, power hierarchies are sustained domi-
nantly not through ordinances published by governments but through style of cloth-
ing, way of speaking, architectural styles and other everyday practices.
This brings us to another crucial point in which Rancière’s and Miéville’s respec-
tive works align: the foundational political hierarchies, embedded in sensual per-
ceptions, are embodied and habitual. In Besźel and Ul Qoma, the citizens possess
Distribution of the Sensible in Besźel and Ul Qoma: Reading Rancière… 187

“the deep prediscursive instinct for [the cities’] borders” (Miéville, 2010, p. 76) which
have become ingrained through years of schooling, practice and instructions. As a
result, unseeing, and other practices which maintain the two cities are usually not
reflected upon, is simply performed without pausing. As such, these political distinc-
tions are “an embodied part of who we are: it is a tension in our muscles, in the angle
of our back, in the colours and design of our clothes, in the training of our eyesight—it
is ingrained in our entire sensory apparatus” (Otto et al., 2019, p. 98). This also helps
to understand why the distribution of the sensible is such a potent mechanism—it is
performed in and through “key signifiers of architecture, clothing, alphabet and man-
ner, outlaw colours and gestures, obligatory details” (Miéville, 2010, p. 76).
Relatedly, The City and the City illustrates well how these divides and hierar-
chies are commonsensical and taken for granted for most of us. Although there are
some who seek to dismantle the boundaries between Besźel and Ul Qoma, for most
of their citizens, it is unimaginable that the existing conditions would change in any
way. Exactly because everyday perceptions and conduct are deeply embodied, they
are taken away from the sphere of the disputable into the realm of the “obvious”
which informs our identities and common conduct. Just as Rancière argues withre-
gards to “the general laws distributing lines of sight, forms of speech, and estima-
tions of a body’s capacity” (Tanke, 2011, p.  45), the inequalities persist because
their status is built in our conceptual and cognitive worlds.
But at the same time, none of these distinctions are natural. In the twin cities, as
recounted by Borlú, “the early years of a Besź (and presumably an Ul Qoman) child
are intense learning of cues. We pick up styles of clothing, permissible colours,
ways of walking and holding oneself, very fast. Before we are eight or so most of us
could be trusted not to breach embarrassingly and illegally” (Miéville, 2010, p. 66).
In this regard, it is important to emphasize that in purely physical terms, the two
cities are actually intertwined and overlapping; the only thing that distinguishes the
Besź buildings from their Ul Qoman counterparts are different architectural styles.
In the same vein, there is nothing that, according to Rancière, really distinguishes a
worker from a professor—it is only the result of educational and societal norms that
the two are perceived as possessing diametrically different capacities for terms of
weighing in on matters of public concern.
The City and the City also helps to better understand another crucial concept
which is indispensable for Rancière’s thought on (in)equality: police. By this term,
Rancière does not denote the particular state agency which is in charge of making
sure that the system of legal prescriptions and rules is followed, as it is usually
understood. For Rancière, police operates as “the set of procedures whereby the
aggregation and consent of collectivities is achieved, the organization of powers, the
distribution of places and roles, and the systems for legitimizing this distribution”
(Rancière, 1998, p. 28). As such, while it can involve some state agents (including
police officers), it goes way beyond this institutional framework. It is the whole set
of practices, knowledges and assumptions which work to maintain the existing
inequalities via the affirmation of the distribution of the sensible: it is the police that
determines who is able to “speak” and participate fully in the polity and that “for
example, that tells us that salary disputes are private matters between workers and
188 J. Záhora

employers” (Tanke, 2011, p. 46), stipulating what is of public concern, and what
remains external to political debates, and thus playing the key role in maintaining
the status quo. For Rancière, police is the foundation of the current order, and, relat-
edly to his understanding of the sensible, it operates not only on the institutional but
also instinctive and internalized level.
With regard to The City and the City, the obvious instance of police is Breach
which monitors and punishes any acts of transgression of divide between Ul Qoma
and Besźel. In this straightforward reading, Breach is an embodiment of police as
understood by Rancière—it does not perform tasks seeking to propel the legal sys-
tem in either city, but its operations rather work to maintain the very foundational
constellations which determine the basic contours of political participation and
everyday life. The Breach’s role is thus indispensable for the continuing presence of
Besźel and Ul Qoma— just as the distribution of the sensible cannot be divorced
from police and its effects. Breach is paradoxically at the centre of both places’
identity which it helps to maintain as it poses as a “force central to the identity of
Besźel and Ul Qoma and their citizens, signals the complex role it plays in the main-
tenance of order” (Marks, 2013, p. 234).
However, the police and its operations (in Rancière’s rendering) go beyond
Breach. Agents intervene in cases of breaching and restore the boundaries underly-
ing political conditions in Besźel and Ul Qoma. Since police is
an order of bodies that defines the allocation of ways of doing, ways of being, and ways of
saying, and sees that those bodies are assigned by name to a particular place and task; it is
an order of the visible and of the sayable, (Rancière, 1998, p. 29)

its equivalent in the Miéville novel is not only Breach but the whole complex of
dispositions, practices and attitudes that make sure that Besźel and Ul Qoma do not
intersect. It is also in the arrangements and modes of conduct that the ordinary citi-
zens adopt that make sure the existing order is not disturbed.
In this regard, The City and the City helps to further illuminate that unperceiv-
ing/distribution of the sensible is deeply ingrained through learning and indoctri-
nation. Breach/police operates not only through interventions of particular
agents, be they avatars of Breach who disappear those who breached or law
enforcement officials, but also through teachers who assert their authority and
superiority over pupils, or clerks who off-hand dismiss reports of domestic abuse
as a private matter between two spouses. The existing order is maintained by
avoiding seeing the other city; teaching kids to unperceive Besźel/Ul Qoma and
telling them to respect their teachers; not believing survivors of sexual abuse; or
insisting that we should judge poems by their authors’ credentials and not their
quality. This makes clear that although police order emanates from certain sites,
it is not something imposed completely from the outside but is enacted by our-
selves as well. Although Breach/police is the supreme power in this regard, indi-
viduals maintain the underlying political hierarchies through their own conduct,
efforts and internalization of dominant norms.
Distribution of the Sensible in Besźel and Ul Qoma: Reading Rancière… 189

The Redistribution of the Sensible Through the Novel

In interviews, Miéville has been vocal about his novel being inspired by real-life
dynamics. That is not to say that he argues that the story of Besźel and Ul Qoma
should be read literally, as one-to-one recounting of cities divided by religious, eth-
nic and nationalistic affiliations. Indeed, in the novel itself, the parallels between the
twin cities of Ul Qoma and Besźel and cities like Berlin or Jerusalem are considered
and discarded by Borlú as “missing the point” (Miéville, 2010, p. 74). Rather,
Miéville proposed in an interview that the novel constitutes “an extrapolation of the
social logic of the world around us, exaggerated to a slightly grotesque degree”
(Naimon, 2011, p. 58), focusing specifically on “the logic of borders”, thus high-
lighting certain processes occurring in our world where Breach does not exist.
But although Miéville himself notes that he has taken things to “a ridiculous
extreme” (Manaugh, 2011), the book has proven powerful in informing analyses
which go beyond its imaginary setting and which critically investigate existing pro-
cesses. These readings thus align with progressive ideas that both Miéville and
Rancière promote, mobilizing the imaginaries provided by the novel to interrogate
our current political conundrums. By contrast, in this chapter I wanted to highlight
how can The City and the City be used to illuminate and, indeed, see better some
aspects of social science theory. I specifically sought to better explicate the process
through which “politics becomes a particular sort of aesthetics which determines
what is presented to senses” (Rancière, 2004, p.  13). Given Rancière’s disdain
towards formal division of genres and disciplines, I dare to hope that he would
approve of this move.

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

You are interested in the “rules” which govern interaction and social order and
another theorist who considered the role of the aesthetic.
• Turn to p. 101 to explore Johnson’s exploration of Bourdieu while playing
Mario Kart.
You are interested in Marxist ideas of power and resistance that Rancière
would be critiquing.
• Turn to p. 9 to read Thomas and McCandless’ explanation of Marxism
through Westworld.
• Turn to p. 21 to read Prosser’s explanation of hegemony.
You are interested in concepts of control and order.
• Turn to p. 135 to read Sidebottom’s description of Deleuzean thought.
190 J. Záhora

Further Reading

Rancière discusses the notion of the distribution of sensible in The Politics of

Aesthetics. Disagreement (Rancière 1998) and Dissensus (Rancière 2010) then fur-
ther discuss his particular take on politics and resistance. Joseph Tanke (Tanke 2011)
provides a good introduction to Rancière’s thought and deals extensively with the
distribution of the sensible. Jacques Rancière: History, politics, aesthetics, an edited
volume by Gabriel Rockhill and Philip Watts (Rockhill and Watts 2009) then engages
various aspects of Rancière’s work and interplay between art, aesthetics and politics.
Nicholas Mirzoeff (Mirzoeff 2011) has famously employed Rancière’s analytical
framework to make sense of visual practices and their power-laden effects.
With regards to The City & the City, several authors have shown that Miéville’s
book resonates with various concerns of social theory like surveillance (Marks
2013), secrecy (Otto, Pors, and Johnsen 2019), ideology (Freedman 2013) and
resistance (Kuehmichel 2014). Dominic Davies (Davies 2019), Deborah Cowen
(Cowen 2017) and Nadya Ali (Ali 2020) provide good examples of how the novel
can be used to analyse the current political conditions.

References

Ali, N. (2020). Seeing and unseeing prevent’s racialized borders. Security Dialogue, 51(6),
579–596.
Baronian, M. A., Rosello, M., & Rancière, J. (2008). Jacques Rancière and Indisciplinarity. Art &
Research: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Method, 2(1), 1–10.
Citton, Y. (2009). Political agency and the ambivalence of the sensible. In G. Rockhill & P. Watts
(Eds.), Jacques Rancière: History, politics, aesthetics (pp. 120–139). Duke University Press.
Cowen, D. (2017). The city and the city (and the city): Infrastructure in the
Breach. Society & Space Blog. http://societyandspace.org/2017/10/10/
the-­city-­and-­the-­city-­and-­the-­city-­infrastructure-­in-­the-­breach/
Davies, D. (2019). Speculative borders: China Miéville’s the city & the city. Refugee Hosts. https://
refugeehosts.org/2019/04/05/speculative-­borders-­china-­Miévilles-­the-­city-­the-­city/
Freedman, C. (2013). From genre to political economy: Miéville’s the city & the city and uneven
development. CR: The New Centennial Review, 13(2), 13–30.
Kuehmichel, S. (2014). Thriving in the gap: Visual and linguistic meaning unmaking in The City
& The City. Extrapolation, 55(3), 349–367.
Manaugh, G. (2011). Unsolving the city: An interview with china Miéville. “Building blog”.
http://www.bldgblog.com/2011/03/unsolving-­the-­city-­an-­interview-­with-­china-­Miéville/
Marks, P. (2013). Monitoring the unvisible: Seeing and unseeing in China Mieville’s The City &
The City. Surveillance & Society, 11(3), 222–236.
Miéville, C. (2010). The city & the city. Del Rey.
Mirzoeff, N. (2011). The right to look: A counterhistory of visuality. Duke University Press.
Naimon, D. (2011). A conversation with China Miéville. The Missouri Review, 34(4), 52–66.
Otto, B., Pors, J. G., & Johnsen, R. (2019). Hidden in full view: The organization of public secrecy
in Miéville’s The City and the City. Culture and Organization, 25(2), 91–103.
Rancière, J. (1973). La leçon d’Althusser. Gallimard.
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Rancière, J. (1989). The nights of labor: The workers’ dream in nineteenth-century France. Temple
University Press.
Rancière, J. (1991). The ignorant schoolmaster: Five lessons in intellectual emancipation (1st ed.).
Stanford University Press.
Rancière, J. (1998). Disagreement: Politics and philosophy. University of Minnesota Press.
Rancière, J. (2004). The politics of aesthetics. Continuum.
Rancière, J. (2005). From politics to aesthetics? Paragraph, 28(1), 13–25.
Rancière, J. (2010). Dissensus: On politics and aesthetics. Bloomsbury.
Rockhill, G., & Watts, P. (Eds.). (2009). Jacques Rancière: History, politics, aesthetics. Duke
University Press.
Tanke, J. J. (2011). Jacques Rancière: An introduction (1st ed.). Continuum.
Coming of Age: Towards a Theory
of Critical Editorship

Naomi Barnes

This is a book about reading, and how writers think about decoding, comprehend-
ing, and interpreting difficult texts. The role of the last chapter of a book is usually
to conclude and draw some comparisons between the chapters—to make a sort of
grand statement that ties the book together. The overarching observations from the
book have been drawn from our role as editors, or readers, administrators, and crit-
ics of writers who read. We have both enjoyed this process very much. But, you see,
both of us are first-time editors, and despite the tremendous guidance and support of
Professor Shirley Steinberg, this book has been a difficult process. What we dreamt
for the book is not what it became. That does not mean we are any less proud of it
or the authors who stuck with the project over many years. In fact, it took on a new
life as we reflexively worked through the issues that emerged as the project evolved.
Consequently, we thought it would be more fitting to couch our observations in the
narrative of coming of age as editors.
“Coming of age” is a well-worn literary and screen genre. From Emma to
Clueless, The Bell Jar to The Queen’s Gambit, The Outsiders to The Breakfast Club,
the coming-of-age story has always had resonance with the reader. These stories of
youth and navigating growing up tap into the issues people face. By drawing in the
audiences who search for answers, the coming-of-age story also has a powerful role
in shaping the actions and dreams of adulthood. They represent, romanticize, and
spotlight youth from the margins. However, like Steinberg and Kincheloe (1998)
pointed out, attempts by directors, like John Hughes, to define movement into matu-
rity developed a hyperreal pedagogy of youth subjectivity that have tropes of patri-
archy, white supremacy, and elitism. Critical cultural studies have dedicated decades

N. Barnes (*)
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 193

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_16
194 N. Barnes

of work to challenging portrayals of youth, and representations have, over time,

changed. The coming-of-age accounts will surely change again as critical literary
theorists continue to stand in judgement of the media people consume. Or do they
have that much power? Should they?
When we imagined this project, we both simply wanted to be grown-up academ-
ics. A book was on our bucket list. What we were less aware of was that in becoming
editors, we were putting ourselves in a position of judgement on other people’s
work. Our call for chapters, our requests for revisions, and our copy editing all drew
the authors into our field and what we wanted to say about it. It is a position of poli-
tics and power we were academically aware of but had not yet experienced. In
compiling this book, we had many discussions about what it is to be critical in our
editorial actions. Not just critiquing the content but considering our own actions.

What Does It Mean to Be Critical in Editorship?

To be a critical editor is to be aware of the complex power relations within the cul-
tural field one might be pivotal in producing or critiquing. Critical editorship directly
challenges the notion that the act of being published is the best an author can do and
issues of power and social struggle outside of the book’s purview were unnecessary
additions to the pages. As Kincheloe writes in his introduction to Macedo and Freire
(2018) book Literacies of Power, “democracy depends on its citizens’ ability to
understand [how social processes shape the way we see the world], to appreciate the
ways power works to undermine the common good” (p. xii). In other words, ignor-
ing the struggle that occurred when bringing a book about literature, pop culture,
and social theory together, without acknowledging the issues of power that mani-
fested, is to limit the potential for democracy in the pedagogical processes of cul-
tural production. Therefore, as critical editors we offer a reflexive explanation for
the gaps in the volume.
The beginning of the twenty-first century has seen a questioning of the authority
of traditional academic roles. The role of the expert has diversified with social media
(Brooks, 2012). Fake news and post truth have led not just to contestation of truth
but also debate about what is good media and bad media, good science and bad sci-
ence. Questions of expertise and the authority to judge and critique have developed
in directions those like Beck and Barad might not have foreseen when challenging
the expertise of science or other forms of research. They may not have foreseen a
complete disregard for it, or the definition of democracy being, as Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on 31 January 2021, “Imagine thinking that ‘healthcare is a
human right’ vs. white supremacist conspiracy theories are two views ‘just as
extreme’ as the other” (https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1355719260715311106).
These public reinterpretations and misinterpretations of academic theorizing means
the rhetorical relationship between the author and reader experiencing another para-
digm shift. Politicians, academics, scientists, and teachers can no longer simply
claim expertise as a reason for authority. Considering questions about the
Coming of Age: Towards a Theory of Critical Editorship 195

responsibility of the creators of texts have real-world consequences. Of course, lit-

erary scholars have been teaching people for decades the necessary skills to criti-
cally consume texts and engage with them in a measured and responsible manner.
However, as this final chapter is composed, Twitter and Facebook have suspended
President Donald Trump’s account for incitement, indicating that it is vital that
authors consider the critical creation of texts, not just deliberative consumption.
Editors have a key role in this.
Bourdieu (1993) refers to the interplay between the reader, author, editor, and
production house as the field of cultural production. In his book of the same name,
Bourdieu explains how authors create characters that produce culture. Ahmed
(2004) refers to this production as cultural pedagogy, and Steinberg and Kincheloe
(1998) refer to it as hyperreal cultural curricula. In this business of cultural produc-
tion, editors select and shape the image of the author and, through production com-
panies, present the author and their text to the world in a marketable way.
Accordingly, the market works to both reflect and shape the zeitgeist. While
Bourdieu (1993) might suggest the production companies fade into the background,
leaving the characters and the authors to take the credit for cultural production, what
he asks is whether “the [cultural] power that the writer appropriates for himself
through writing were only the imaginary version of powerlessness”? (p. 174). In
other words, even when an author is “thinking like a demigod” (p. 175), believing
themselves to be free from cultural constraints to shape the future of literature, their
work is still produced within a system of common references. Bourdieu critiqued
Foucault’s (1969) system of discourse that shaped the first chapter of this book,
arguing he failed to look outside the world of the author and at the system of cultural
production that allowed the author to exist in the first place.
Literary criticism also places the responsibility of cultural production on the
authors (rather than the editors or publishers) even when the critic observes the
systems of production an author works within. For example, a quick trawl through
online comments about the coming-of-age book Boy Swallows Universe by Trent
Dalton will not take you long to find people refusing to read the book because the
author is employed as a journalist by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which
has come to be associated with the promotion of right-wing ideology and Trumpism.
Similarly, television programmes produced by Amazon Prime are boycotted for ter-
rible working conditions and destroying independent bookstores, while, ironically,
Netflix continues to grow, even though both are powerful tech companies embedded
in the gig economy and monopolizing artistic production. What Netflix does well to
avoid this “cancel culture” attention is select and produce stories which appeal to
diverse cultural politics and taste. The media selection algorithm subsequently orga-
nizes the consumers’ preferences to continuously pitch texts within the realm of
individual taste and politics.
The role of the editor is to select what will be most relevant and appealing to the
widest audience, and so the act of choosing is also an act, to some degree, of affirm-
ing what has value in the dominant culture. “Cancel culture” is an act of social
editorship, where the collective determines which voices no longer speak to the
dominant reading/listening/viewing market. McHoul and Grace (2015) describe
196 N. Barnes

Foucault’s construction of discourse as a set of rules about “what can and cannot
be said”. If “cancel culture” is how we determine what cannot be said, to fill gaps
“artificially” would be an editorial decision about what must be said, and so becomes
another form of asserting cultural dominance.
Academia also has a role in cultural production and by compiling this book we
entered into that position of power. Making visible that role is the focus of our the-
ory of critical editorship that emerged while reflexively considering that power.

Editor’s Reflexive Framework

There are many reflexive frameworks within critical theory-based research that we
could apply to our theory of critical editorship. The point of using a reflexive frame-
work is, firstly, to try and push knowledge on a subject outside of the realms of
comfort and secondly, to think about the “ethical, civic and socio-moral responsi-
bilities” (Coghlan & Brydon-Miller, 2014, p. 479) of engaging in editorial work.
Taking a reflexive approach to editorial work or making visible the processes that
led to the production of a book is not new, but it is increasingly how people are
choosing to discuss work situated in the humanities and social sciences.
Throughout his writing, Foucault was very conscious of ensuring his writing was
contextualized in European contexts. This is a good practice which humanities and
social science scholars are routinely encouraged to do as part of their research train-
ing. What this does, however, is essentializing Western thinking. Even though it
actively contextualizes, young scholars still draw on Foucault making him one of
the highest cited social theorists on Google Scholar. Ahmed encourages young
scholars to avoid citing these canonical theorists, urging writers to cite women of
colour and engage with social theory written outside of the Western bubble to work
against this homogenization of scholarship.
D’Ignazio and Klein (2020) draw on intersectional feminism to interrogate their
own work as editors by analysing how their book Data Feminism engaged with data
science. They took conventional data practices and applied an intersectional femi-
nist lens to those practices to examine and challenge power dynamics, elevate affec-
tive experiences, rethink constructed hierarchies and binaries, advocate and engage
with pluralism, and reflect on the context. The final third of their book was dedi-
cated to an audit of their citation practices and the examples they drew on to ensure
there were examples from data scholars and theorists who were black, Indigenous,
and people of colour (BIPOC).
Our approach to critical editorship is more closely resembled to that outlined
by Mohanty (2003). When we noticed final chapters were missing dedicated to
three social theories (intersectional feminism, critical race theory, and postcolo-
nial theory) that dominated social movements in recent years, but especially 2020,
we wondered how to deal with that gap. We were reluctant to write from an
Coming of Age: Towards a Theory of Critical Editorship 197

intersectional, critical race theory, or postcolonial perspective because the cultural

effects of telling others’ stories can be violent, even when there are good inten-
tions. This is a partly ethical position to take but to avoid it completely, and ignore
that we did not receive the chapters, would mean being silent about structural
oppression. So, it is important to listen, learn, read, and turn intersectional, critical
race, and postcolonial frameworks on ourselves and our own assumptions.
Mohanty offers Minnie Bruce Pratt’s 1994 essay “Identity: Skin Blood Heart” as
an example of a white, middle class, Christian-raised, southern, lesbian writing
intersectionally, honestly, and uncomfortably about her assumptions as she reads
against the grain of three places she called home in her life. She named her fears
of people and places because of the way they looked and who inhabited those
places on paper and critiqued them. She was both author and reader, examining
her place in the world and how she got there, working to unmask hegemonic
assumptions. It is this approach we wish to take in considering why there were
gaps in our collection.

The Call for Chapters

Our initial call for chapters encouraged the contribution of intersectional, critical
race, and postcolonial work. We wrote in our call for chapters that we will ensure
that the book contains both theoretical canon and contestation of that canon. But we
only wrote we were interested in chapters which provide “a diverse understanding
of popular culture and/or unlock key ideas in feminist, critical race, LGBITQA+,
and critical disability studies”. When we wrote that call for chapters, we were sim-
ply trying to elicit a variety of theoretical perspectives. What we did not realize with
gravity at the time, because we had not yet come of age as editors, was that we had
engaged in our first act of controlling the means of cultural production. We were
firm on the nature of the theory we wanted in the book, we were only interested in
anything that deviated from it.
While we might have been naïve about the power relationship we had with the
perspective authors in the words we chose, we did manage to elicit chapter propos-
als from all the named categories of popular culture we were interested in. What
transpired, however, was the production of a book which some ended up missing.
We have a feminist work with queer theory engagement, a critical disability work
with intersectional framing, but this book lacks direct engagement with critical race
and postcolonial theory, something which astonished us in 2020, the year of Black
Lives Matter and efforts to ban critical race theory in universities. It is this stark gap
in our coming of age as editors that caused sleeplessness. It is also at this point I
sought to “try and push knowledge on a subject outside of the realms of comfort”
(Coghlan & Brydon-Miller, 2014, p. 479).
198 N. Barnes

Fixing the Gap

My initial solution to the problem was to shore up the gap in the book by writing
the chapter myself. I deliberately left writing my chapter to the last minute in order
to fill any obvious gaps, and here was the big one. While critical race theory was not
my area of theoretical expertise, I was aware of the important work it was doing in
my field, studiously citing work on the #BlackLivesMatter when discussing hashtags
in my own work. I also purposefully watched all the shows on Netflix, like Dear
White People and Top End Wedding that might be deployed as examples of hyper-
real pop cultural pedagogy for explaining critical race or postcolonial theory.
Knowing that in a global world connected by social media, I made sure I followed
accounts by Indigenous Australian and Balinese scholars who critiqued the general-
izations made by North American definitions of racial oppression. Surely with a bit
of effort and time a chapter explaining critical race theory would not be that hard?
This decision was a second major entrance into the field of cultural production
as an editor. While the decision made sense in terms of the agreement with the pub-
lishing company and our heavy sense of moral responsibility to ethical and repre-
sentative cultural production as editors, it was a decision dripping in power embodied
in our role as editors. Luckily it was in trying to push knowledge beyond the realms
of comfort, by extensively reading critical race, postcolonial, and intersectional
studies, that this was realized before the chapter reached its final draft.

Why “Filling a Gap” Is an Act of Power

Once Spivak (2006) was invited to present at an Explanation and Culture Symposium
and her description of events seems familiar to many who have been invited to speak
as token others—she was repeatedly summarized out of the group, her point of view
twisted, and her theorization dismissed as worthless. Each presenter was to speak to
the concept of “explanation” which Spivak thought “the desire to explain might be
the desire to have a self that can control knowledge and a world that can be known”
(p. 141). In making this statement and questioning the proceedings, Spivak “solidly
put [her]self in the margin” (p. 142) which her fellow presenters found difficult to
understand. “You are as good as we are”, they said. “Why do you insist on empha-
sizing your difference?” Spivak’s explanation was that the “center welcomes selec-
tive inhabitants from the margin in order [to] better exclude the margin” (p. 145).
The first point to make from Spivak’s vignette is that the need to explain is argu-
ably a need to control knowledge. In deciding to write the chapter herself, I was
exerting that need to control the cultural studies acceptability of this book in a post-
COVID world. Almond (2007) refers to this tendency of theorists as new oriental-
ism. New orientalism, as an extension of Said’s (2014) orientalism, is the tendency
of Western writers to see the good in the “Other” and yearn for an understanding of
Coming of Age: Towards a Theory of Critical Editorship 199

it in order to create a better Western society. Almond explains how many post-
modern theorists had this view of Islam, including Foucault.
Foucault believed that the future of Western society rested outside of it, and he
was most struck by Islam, spending time in Iran during the revolutionary period and
2 years as an academic at the University of Tunisia. According to Almond (2007),
Foucault felt he needed to leave Europe to help Europe, but he never mentally
arrived in Tunisia and Iran. Instead, he used the narrative of events in those two
countries to theorize for Western thought. Essentially, he did what this book does
with pop culture, but with a society instead. This is the essence of his orientalism—
he treated the diverse peoples of Tunisia and Iran as a collective, used their stories
as metaphor for what he saw happening in European thought and politics, and put
his name on it. All the theorists in Almond’s book together produced a “swirling
plethora of different faces and aspects of Islam” (p.  195), but those voyeuristic
explanations said more about the theorists than they did about the people they
yearned to be like.
Having read these accounts, I set aside the chapter I was writing to fill a gap. Not
because I was not capable of writing a simple explainer of the theories, but because
the purpose of this book was to overlay how a piece of popular culture helped
explain it. This is an act of theory creation that needed a contextualization of my
personal knowledge. However, as am an observer of the theories and a studious
consumer of associated popular culture, rather than one deeply affected and respon-
sive to both, I determined it was better to write this chapter to account for the gap,
rather than try and personally fill it.

Why Not Approach Someone to Fill It?

Spivak’s (2006) vignette is also illustrative of the power dynamics at play when
authors are invited to participate in scholarly collaborations like edited books. The
parameters of the book were set and when we realized that we were missing inter-
sectional, critical race, and postcolonial studies, our initial thoughts were to directly
invite people to be a part of our construction of knowledge. While we may have
thought the project would be open to interpretation and negotiation, and we knew
we were rookies, we were still in positions of power as editors. Hypothetically, that
power was the first thing our targeted invitees might have seen, and not our inexperi-
ence. However, even playing the naivety card is a manipulation of editorial power.
Additionally, in “forcing” or demanding that these ideas be represented, we would
have been enacting another form of editorship, by making decisions about what is
“essential”, rather than accepting and working with those that had felt inclined to
lend their voices to the project without being requested to do so. Our choice to leave
these gaps also draws attention to the ways in which all texts are acts of editorship:
there is never a complete history, philosophy, or pop cultural treatise, as there are
always ideas given less priority or value. We also hope this reflection prompts our
readers to actively consider what we have not been able to present in this volume,
200 N. Barnes

and to seek out an understanding of theory that goes well beyond the few we explore
here, and delve into non-Western and non-canonical thinkers, carrying the reading
practices developed throughout this text with you.

Becoming Critical Editors

This is an academic text. It is written, edited, and produced by the academic cultural
infrastructure. The role of an academic is to be a custodian of culture. As Spivak
(2006) says, academics “produce official explanations, …produce official ideology,
the structure of possibility of a knowledge whose effect is that structure…[academ-
ics’] productivity cannot be dismissed as a mere keeping of records” (p. 146).
As we have come of age as editors, the burden of that responsibility to society
has become heavier. As we curated the collection, we thought carefully about the
type of knowledge publishing this book would produce, what would be centralized,
and what would be marginalized. Critical editorship then sits somewhere in between:
helping the authors shape their message for maximum reach and impact, while
actively acknowledging and exploring the things that have not been said, and why
this may the case. Rather than the censorship of “cancel culture” or the risky act of
trying to represent another’s views by speaking for them, critical editors curate
ideas and reflect upon their collection. Like museum curators, editors must make
choices about which pieces are put on display, while acknowledging the gaps in
their collection, and the right of various peoples to have ownership over their own
cultural productions, without trying to create “replicas”.
We did not plan to become critical of our editorship from the start. It simply
started as a fun project. Our unfinished critical editorship developed throughout the
process as we realized through each step that there was a politics of power in the
cultural production of academic knowledge.

Choose Your Own Theoretical Adventure

Now, it is up to you. What has sparked your interest? What do you want to
learn more about? What are you still unsure about? What pop culture items
have sparked your interest? Are you going to revisit an old ‘fave with a new
appreciation or try something you haven’t read/viewed before?’
When we view the world through the lens of theory, an array of new mean-
ings emerges. Put on your theory-glasses, sit back, and enjoy the ride.
Coming of Age: Towards a Theory of Critical Editorship 201

References

Ahmed, S. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion: Tenth anniversary edition. Routledge.
Almond, I. (2007). The new orientalists: Postmodern representations of Islam from Foucault to
Baudrillard. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Bourdieu, P. (1993). The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature. Columbia
University Press.
Brooks, S. (2012). Speaking truth to power: The paradox of the intellectual in the visual informa-
tion age. In S. Brooks, D. Stasiak, & T. Zyro (Eds.), Policy expertise in contemporary democra-
cies (pp. 69–85). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315601120
Coghlan, D., & Brydon-Miller, M. (2014). The SAGE encyclopedia of action research. SAGE.
D’Ignazio, C., & Klein, L. F. (2020). Data feminism. MIT Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/
lib/qut/detail.action?docID=6120950
Foucault, M. (1969). What is an author? Société Française de Philosophie. https://heinonline.org/
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Zn4iZUdlK&collection=journals
Macedo, D., & Freire, P. (2018). Literacies of power: What Americans are not allowed to know.
Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429499173
McHoul, A., & Grace, W. (2015). A foucault primer: Discourse, power and the subject. Routledge.
Mohanty, C.  T. (2003). Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity
(35275th ed). Duke University Press Books.
Said, E. W. (2014). Orientalism. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Spivak, G.  C. (2006). Explanation and culture: Marginalia. In G.  C. Spivak (Ed.), In other
worlds (pp.  139–160). Taylor and Francis. http://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/
explanation-­culture-­marginalia-­gayatri-­chakravorty-­spivak/10.4324/9780203441114-­15
Steinberg, S. R., & Kincheloe, J. L. (1998). Privileged and getting away with it: The cultural stud-
ies of white, middle-class youth. Studies in the Literary Imagination, 31(1), 103–126.
Index

A structures, 105
Abduction, 35, 37, 40 Western society, 109
Aesthetics, 180–182, 185, 186, 189 Bronfenbrenner’s theory, 84
An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (book),
102, 103
Assemblage, 144 C
Capitalism, 11, 12, 14–16, 18
Childhood, 84–86, 94
B Chronosystem, 94
Beck, 67, 68 The Circle, 23, 24, 26–30
Besźel, 184–188 The City & the City, 187, 188
Biological factors, 94 Class, 11, 12, 14, 19, 24, 26
Black, Indigenous, and people of colour Collectives, 60
(BIPOC), 196 Cosmopolitanism, 65, 66
Bourdieu, 195 Critical editorship, 6, 8
Bourdieusian sociology academia, 196
characters, 102 academic cultural infrastructure, 200
class-based economic categories, 103 Act of Power, 198, 199
comics and graphic novels, 103 cancel culture, 200
external force, 103 “coming of age”, 193
field’s rules/regularities, 104, 105 complex power relations, 194
formative history, 103 construction of knowledge, 199
mechanisms, 103 critical cultural studies, 193
performance chart, 108, 109 critical disability, 197
playing fields, 104 critical race theory, 198
racing rules, 105, 106 cultural production, 194, 197, 198
resources, 105 democracy, 194
secret weapons for winning, 107, 108 field of cultural production, 195
self and group identity, 103 literary criticism, 195
social groups, 102 media selection algorithm, 195
social reality, 104 politics of power, 200
social sciences, 103 power dynamics, 199

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 203

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Barnes, A. Bedford (eds.), Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture,
Critical Studies of Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2
204 Index

Critical editorship (cont.) psychologists, 84

power relationship, 197 resource, 93
reflection, 199 social and environmental systems, 86
reflexive frameworks, 196, 197 sociologists, 84
social editorship, 195 time, 94, 95
theoretical perspectives, 197 Economic, 11, 13–15
traditional academic roles, 194 Economic capital, 107
Critical race theory, 196–198 Editor, 6, 7
Critical theory, 1 Exosystem, 89
Cultural capital, 107, 108 External influence, 106
Cultural production, 194–198, 200

F
D Facticity, 73, 76, 79
The Deathly Hallows, 120–121 Family resemblance, 52, 53, 56, 57
Deleuze, 136, 138–141, 143, 144 Fascist machine, 141, 142
Democratisation of science, 66, 67 Fetish, 11, 17, 18
Digital capitalism, 26, 29, 30 Film noir, 34–36
Discipline, 113, 115, 116, 119–123 First modernity, 61, 63, 64, 67
Discourse, 126, 128–130, 132, 133 The Fixation of Belief, 37
The Force Awakens, 49
Forms of life, 50, 51, 54, 56
E Foucault, 126–128, 130, 132
Ecological systems academics, 114
biological factors, 94 analysis of power, 127
Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model, 91 analytics of power, 126
Bronfenbrenner’s theory, 84 archaeological phase, 127
child and personal challenges, 86 boundaries, 122
child development, 84 categories, 126
children, 96, 97 constructions, 126
classic diagram, 87 criminality/sexuality, 128
complex processes, 95 culture, 133
complex systems, 86 digital platform, 114
complex theory, 87 disciplines, 126
demand, 92, 93 discourses, 126, 127, 133
dynamic process, 95 ‘Docile Bodies’, 115, 116
environments, 88 enclosure
exosystem, 89 boarding school, 116
force, 93 functional sites, 120, 121
four-part theory, 91 heterotopias, 117
The Goonies, 84, 85 House Points, 121, 122
human development, 91 partitioning, 117, 118
influences, 87 rank functions, 121
Internet search, 86 school, 116
interpretation, 87 security, 117
limitations, 95 timetables, 118, 119
macrosystem, 90, 96 ethics, 127
mesosystem, 88 foundation level, 114
microsystems, 87, 88, 96 genealogical phase, 127
Mikey’s experience, 89 historian of ideas, 127
Mikey’s systems, 88 homosexuality, 128
pedagogues, 84 house tables, 122
person, 92 human society, 127
processes, 88, 92 institutional structures, 115
Index 205

institutions, 126 cultural dynamics, 28

intellectual galaxy, 126 development, 28
knowledge, 127 digital capital, 30
multiplicity of force relations, 132 digital capitalism’s, 29
performativity, 129–132 digital dominance, 27
physical and social structures, 123 digital technology, 26
policy environment, 114 dominance, 22
power, 114, 127, 128, 132 ideological purity, 28
regimes of truth, 127 ideological system, 27
resistance, 122 interpretive transformations, 23
revolution, 122 liberal geopolitics, 27
school rules, 115 self-correction, 28
social structures, 114 social analysis, 22
social theory functions, 126 social media, 26, 30
Star Wars, 126 social relations, 22
student, 126 social theory, 22, 28
technologies of domination, 114 transparent technologies, 30
traditional school, 115, 123 Historical materialism, see Marx
transmedia network, 114 The History of Sexuality, 128, 129
Hogwarts, 113–117, 119, 120, 122, 123

G
Gender, 72, 79–82 I
Genealogy of knowledge, 128 The Ignorant Schoolmaster, 182
Globalisation, 65 Individualisation, 64, 65
The Goonies, 84, 85 Influencers, 1
Governmentality, 127, 129–133 academic influencers, 6
Gramsci, A., 24–28, 30 adventure, 6
The Great British Bake Off attribution, 7
assemblage, 144 author-function, 7
cake as body, 140 career researchers, 5
capitalism and schizophrenia, 138, 139 critical editorship, 6
fascist machine, 141, 142 critical race theory, 5
folding, 142 cultural texts, 1, 4
intellectual inferiority, 137 cultural theorists, 2
interactive/reality television, 137 fictional references, 2
interregnum, 136 field of literary criticism, 3
neoliberal capitalism, 136 humanities, 2
popular culture, 138 hyperreal cultural curricula, 4
radical and transformative thinking, 137 interpretation, 7
rhizome, 142–144 intersectional feminism, 5
spin-off programmes, 137 literary, 7
Guattari, 136–138, 141, 142, 144 literary criticism, 3
music and movie industry, 3
pop culture, 2, 4
H popular culture, 5
Habitus, 103, 105–109 postcolonialism, 5
Hall, S., 26–28, 30 reading, 3, 4
Hegemony school skill, 2
capitalism, 23 social media, 2
The Circle, 23 social research, 5
circularity, 23–26 social researcher, 1, 6
communication, 30 social sciences, 2
cultural artefact, 30 social theorists, 4
206 Index

Influencers (cont.) O
social theory, 7 Orange Is the New Black (OITNB)
sociology of knowledge, 7 ambiguity, 74, 75
theoretical knowledge, 5 Beauvoir, 73, 74
valuation, 7 Butler, 79, 80
Inquiry, 36–38, 42, 44, 45 freedom, 73, 74
Institutions, 126 hooks, 81
Internalised organisation, 106 Kristeva, 81
phenomenology, 73
role(s) of women
L The Girl, 77
Laclau, E., 26, 27 The Lesbian, 79
Language games The Wife, 78, 79
BB8’s language, 49, 50 The Second Sex, 76, 77
Lee-Lampshire, 56 The Order of the Phoenix, 120
metaphors/descriptive heuristics, 55 Orientalism, 198
Philosophical Investigations, 48, 54
shared experience/environment, 54
Star Wars, 48, 54 P
Wittgensteinian analysis, 50–53 Paris Climate Change Agreement, 67
X-Wing, 54 Peirce
Late modernity, 60, 61, 63, 64, 67, 68 film noir, 36
Literacies of Power (book), 194 German expressionism, 35
The Logic of Sense (1969), 141 human agency, 34
inference making, 34
labyrinth, 37
M philosophical tradition, 33
Machine, 120, 121 Pragmatism, 34
Macrosystem, 90 The Third Man, 37–41, 43, 44
Macro-time, 94 visual-linguistic technologies, 44
Magical realism, 165 Performativity, 129–132
Mario Kart, 102, 103, 105, 107–109 Personal, 1, 2, 4–7
Media Phenomenology, 73
black box, 156–158 Philosophical, 1–3, 5–7
connective tissue of society, 148 Political, 1, 2, 4–6
episodic McLuhanisms, 153–155 Pop culture, 2–5, 7
humanity, 150 Popular culture, 26, 28, 30
hybrids, 149 Postcolonial theory, 196–198
Rick and Morty, 151–153 Postmodern, 152, 160
science and philosophy, 150 Power, 23–26, 28
technology, 148 Prescribes movement, 117
Mesosystem, 88, 93, 94 Private language argument, 50, 51, 53, 56
Microsystems, 87, 93 Psychology, 84, 86
Micro-time, 94
Miéville, 181, 183, 186, 188, 189
Mouffe, C., 26, 27 R
Murakami, H., 164, 165, 167, 168, 171, Rancière’s, 181–183
174, 176 Reading, 2–4, 6, 7
Remix, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8
Rhizome, 142–144
N Rick and Morty, 149–153, 159
Nights of Labor, 181 Risk society
Nihilism, 150, 154 Beck, 67, 68
Nintendo, 102, 105, 107 class, 60
Index 207

cosmopolitanism, 65, 66 U
democratisation of science, 66, 67 Ul Qoma, 184–188
humanity, 60 Understanding Media (book), 149, 151
individualisation, 64, 65
Scientific Revolution, 60
second modernity, 62–64 W
social condition, 60 War and Peace in the Global Village, 149, 159
social sciences, 60 Westworld
social theory, 60 capitalism, 12, 17
Years and Years, 61, 62 commodity, 17, 18
Robots, 10, 11, 13–16 development, 12
economics, 15, 16
“an escape into reality”, 10
S exchange value, 17
Science fiction, 149, 152, 159, 160 growing awareness, 11
Second Life, 103 historical materialism, 12
Second modernity, 61–64 human desires, 17
The Second Sex, 76, 77 human guests, 10
The sensible human society, 11
aesthetics, 180 ideology, 14, 15
Besźel, 180, 184–188 integration, 13
division of the sensible, 180 labour, 15, 16
power, 180 Marxist transformation, 19
public interest, 180 morality, 12, 15, 16
Rancière’s, 181–183 production process, 13
redistribution, 189 revolution and exploitation, 19
science-fiction, 180 social nature, 12
sensory experience, 180 social phenomena, 10
social and political inequality, 180 social relationships, 19
Ul Qoma, 180, 184–188 social revolution, 11, 15, 16
Silicon Valley (2014–2019), 22 society, 12, 13, 18
Simone de Beauvoir, 72, 73, 82 television series, 11
Social analysis, 22 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Social capital, 107 active emotional, 173
Social domination, 109 active process, 174
Social facts, 63 care ethics, 164, 165, 169, 171, 172, 177
Social media, 22, 25, 26, 29, 30 caregivers, 170
Social movements, 196 careless dinner, 166–169
The Social Network, 22, 29 care receivers, 170
Social revolution, 11 disembodied care, 173–175
Social theory, 22–24, 28, 30 embodied care, 174
Star Wars, 126 embodiment, 172, 175
Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), 35 emotional and mental presence, 175
Subversion, 113 emotional connections, 169
Super Mario Kart, 102 empathetic imagination, 173
Super Nintendo Entertainment System good care, 171
(SNES), 102 identity, 165, 172
Surveillance, 114, 117, 118 interactions, 164
intersectional care ethics, 170
intersectionality, 165, 170, 175, 177
T Kumiko, 164
Theory, role of, 3 learning care, 169
The Third Man, 37–41, 43, 44 literature, 164
Trover Saves the Universe, 152 magical realism, 165
208 Index

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (cont.) thinking of language, 175

mental engagement, 173 women, 169
mindfulness and emotional Writing, 3, 5, 6
presence, 174
physical interactions, 175
power differences, 169 Y
societal assumptions, 176 Years and Years, 61, 62