Ive been dressed as a snob for so long, and at first I was really uncomfortable about it (for the reasons I previously explained), but now that I am about finished and about to return to my old ways, I realise that I am actually comfortable now dressed like this. I have lost inhibition and moved on in a constructive way. I have crossed over to the dark side and now I am comfortable with it. So ya mission accomplished, I hope youre happy Franci…

Ive been reading through the reader and I can’t find anything that is relevent to my snobbery. Its all about differences between the sexes and fashion and androgeny. Nothing about the classes. Yes there is a bit about the different fashions with regard to the class system, but that’s all…

So then, back to Bourdieu…

Bourdieu made up this thing called Habitus which he said was  the means by which the ‘social game’ is inscribed in biological individuals. “The modes of behaviour, or dispositions, produced by the habitus, are passed on through the generations, inculcated from an early age and socially reinforced through education and culture.”

This habitus he talks about he says creates certain behavioural patterns that are embedded in individuals and they may take various forms, “manifesting themselves in every aspect of human interaction with the world, not just in terms of ideas or patterns of speech or dress, but also with regard to the body and its demeanour.” Bourdieu sought to show how ‘the body is in the social world but the social world is also in the body.

He was also very interested in Algeria and how the power relations worked while their political system was in upheaval. What he wanted to know was how do societies construct and maintain their structures of class, culture and domination? He looked at how power relations within society are maintained by means other than repression.

He said that central to this process is the way economic relations are legitimised by dressing them up as something else. This operation is based on the ‘conversion’ of economic capital into symbolic capital: ‘Wealth, the ultimate basis of power, can exert power, and exert it durably, only in the form of symbolic capital’. In this way the real, economic basis of domination may be disguised as something else and relations of dependence presented as the consequence of inequalities of talent or taste or educational ability. The reproduction of structures of domination in society therefore depends on the imposition of cultural values which are presented as universal but whose content and context are politically and historically determined–and therefore arbitrary. This process, which enables direct violence to be dispensed with, Bourdieu termed ‘symbolic violence’.

So basically, you have a society and the rich maintain their power by disguising their richness(power) as something else – like education for example. So the poor say to themselves “oh its alright if he is driving a mercedes and I cant afford to eat, because he is better educated”…

Then he goes on to say that people, once having been convinced that power lies in the things that it has been disguised as, will almost start playing games that revolve around accumulating as much symbolic capital in each one of the fields that the power has been disguised as. So for example if education is the thing that power is disguised as then people will try accumulate as much education as possible and so on. And in this way the power relations are distanced from those actually in power and people do not have to inforce domination directly through violence. It becomes more and more indirect. He calls it symbolic violence.

Yes well Im not sure if Im making any sense here.

And the thing is about me telling all you plebs this, is: maybe once you realise that Im actually just the same as you, but maybe with a far superior style, and vast chasm between my level of education and yours, I might need to resort to physical violence in order to control you. My lifestyle would be seriously compromised with all you commoners feeling that you have legitimate claim to my property. Maybe the military would be willing to intervene, I’d have to check…

So ya basically shhh dont tell anyone, especially not any plebs. Middle-class is fine, theyre happy being above some and below others, they still want ‘order’.

Yes, Im rambling on here arent I?

Commoners…

He discusses how aesthetic concepts such as taste are defined by those in power. He shows how social class tends to determine what our likes and interests will be, and how distinctions based on social class are reinforced in daily life(the conditioning I talked about before).

He talks about ‘distinction’ which is the social force which gives different individuals different value. The things that these judgements are based upon have always been contemplated or criticised, and are always changing.(These are the discourses that Foucault was talking about.)

He talks about how tastes are justified and expressed not positively but purely negatively, by the refusal of other tastes. People express disgust, and horror at the tastes of others and set out to make them look bad basically. Aversion to different life-styles is perhaps one of the strongest barriers between the classes… (Bourdieu 1984: 56)

He says the most intolerable thing for those who regard themselves as the possessors of legitimate culture is the sacrilegious reuniting of tastes which taste dictates shall be separated.

So in Bourdieu’s universe there are only snobs – everybody is all the time looking over his shoulder. The bastards…

(Does that mean if Im a snob anyway, Franci, I can stop dressing up now?

…

Only joking, will be stepping it up a bit, dont you worry my dear…)

In fact to be honest I’m starting to find this project a bit boring in general. (Let me explain Franci…) The first few days, especially the first, I found were the most exciting, or interesting, because you dont know how everybody is going to react. And then after about day two or three you kind of know what to expect and you hear the same sort of thing from people you meet. And besides, youve already defied the knowledge/power regime and nothing has happened so far and you tend to become complacent and actually quite comfortable in the new garb. This is what I have found so far anyway.

Ive been wondering about something… What I want to know is if a person’s own personal views and opinions and ‘truths’ can be called a discourse or does it have to apply to something that is shared?

She was telling all the others that they should start dressing like me. And she also gave me a few tips on how to look a bit more like a snob – blue jacket and khaki chinos etc… and I plan on getting a red polka dot bowtie soon as well..

But ya anyway Cornell gave me a good idea yesterday which I will be following through with as soon as possible, and that is infiltrating the snobbery… Daniel Craig-style baby. So I will keep all you sorry little commoners posted on my progress.

Been reading about Foucault today. And last semester we came into contact with things called discourses, and I knew basically what they meant but now I fully understand:

According to Foucault knowledge and power are inseperable. And a discourse is a knowlegde regime and it lays down the possibilities for thinking and speaking: at certain times only some things are considered to be ‘true’.

A discourse will be an argument supporting a particular ideology, and an ideology will be something that justifies an (political?) agenda.

Foulcault believed that the thing that the modern knowledge/power thing seizes upon is the body because “nothing is more material, physical, corporeal than the exercise of power”.

And applying a knowledge regime (power) to  the body means that only certain things with regard to the body will be true at one time (eg. fat women used to be commonly attractive and now thin women are, in popular media that is).

Interpellation is the situation when someone or something (in this case the body) is automatically made part of the hegemonic (dominant) ideology. It cant escape it and either conforms to it or rebels against it but is not outside of it. (Maybe if you go outside of it that means you’re mad hey…)

So basically for all the plebs out there, what Im trying to say is that my body has been interpellated (hijacked by the dominant ideology of the time) and hence made subject to a certain discourse (where only some things are true – like the fact that snobs dress their bodies with bow ties among other things)  because that is the way that knowledge and power do things (together). And because of this system of power that the knowledge is tied to – I feel a sense of discomfort with opposing the argument that the knowledge regime puts forward – because I am essentially opposing the power itself. And this is all according to Foucault (except for the interpellation which is Althusser). In a nutshell my body is being used as a medium to express power.

Oh and sorry, no picture today, double tomorrow…

Okay, Ive been doing a bit of reading today. I’ve been reading a chapter called “Addressing the Body” by Joanne Estwistle. And I know I was supposed to have read this a long time ago (yes Franci, I know…) but my plan is to catch it all up as quickly as possible from now.

So… I read through and took out the things that were relevent to being a big pompous snob. And what Ive gathered is that the body is an entity that is socially constructed. Now she doesnt really go into detail here but I believe what she means is that  its not just some biological thing that is dressed afterwards, but we are able to physically alter our bodies in certain ways (anorexia, penis enlargements, etc) and therefore their shapes and sizes are not only genetically determined but also socially determined.

But not only are bodies socially constructed in terms of changes we make to the actual bodies but also by the clothes that we wear.  Dress is a basic fact of social life. In almost all social situations we are required to appear dressed – although this varies from culture to culture and differs from situation to situation. These are conventions in other words…

She goes on to say that “conventions of dress attempt to transform flesh into something recognizable and meaningful to a culture – one that doesnt conform and transgresses such cultural codes is likely to cause offence and be met with scorn and increduality (like when I went to the gym yesterday). And this is one of the reasons why dress is a matter of morality: dressed inappropriately we are uncomfortable and we feel ourselves open to social condemnation.

According to Bell (1976) wearing the right clothes is so very important that even people not interested in their appearance will dress well enough to avoid social censure.

Dress maintains social order basically.

Now how does all this relate to me dressing like a snob? (not slob)

Firstly, I, through the conditioning processes of growing up in society know to a certain degree where I stand in the social order of things. I also know now explicitly that dressing in certain ways maintains social order. So putting these two together I instinctively know how it is that I should be dressing – being located at my specific social station. And me dressing like a snob means that I am ultimately defying or disrupting the social order to some degree.

Secondly, the fact that I know that I am not a snob and that I am disrupting the social order to some extent causes some degree of uncomfort.

Okay, serious stuff aside I went to Wembley Square today and looked down on a few things. Looked down on some plebs at a coffee shop. Looked down on some cheap wine shop clerk. Looked down on some fellow customers who were plebs. Looked down on a dirty painting studio and the artist therein. I was better than quite a few people there if not everybody. They all were rather unwashed I felt. Yes.

Went to the gym after that and got a few nasty stares while combing my hair in the mirror and putting on my bow tie. Cant blame these plebs though – I mean you either have culture or you dont…

Another example of changing appearances and attending the gym. It may look as if I was actually in my comfort zone but I assure you I wasn’t – I was just liquored up…