gal (1995) language and the arts of resistance

8/12/2019 GAL (1995) Language and the Arts of Resistance

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Review: Language and the "Arts of Resistance"

Author(s): Susan GalSource: Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Aug., 1995), pp. 407-424Published by: Blackwell Publishingon behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656344Accessed: 06/10/2010 16:07

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ReviewEssay

Language and the Arts of ResistanceSusan Gal

Universityof Chicago

James Scott's latest book, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: HiddenTranscripts(1990), is certainly instructive for anthropologistsand is studdedwith stimulating insights aboutpower. Nevertheless, it is a deeply flawed work.The book was published several years ago and has been widely reviewed injournalsof political science andsociology where themajor ssues of contentionhave been Scott's argumentsabout the nature of hegemony, the rationalityofpolitical action, and the logic of explaining revolutions (see, for example,Mitchell 1990 and Tilly 1991).However, the book is at least as much about the political significance ofspeech. It analyzes the situated nature of political expression, the relationshipamong speech, belief, andideology in everyday powerrelations,and the politi-cal efficacy of talk. And it is exactly the language-relatedconcepts introducedin thebook-such as transcriptandinfrapolitics-that arehaving the widest in-fluence, appearingwith increasing frequencyinwritingsabout local politics andthepoliticalmeaningof linguistic and culturalpractices.For thisreason,my aimis to discuss Scott's work for what it says and assumes about language andpower. Ironically,it is just this aspect of the book that has not yet been seriouslyandcritically reviewed.Domination and the Arts ofResistance ambitiously attempts to theorize thenatureof communication across lines of economic power. Scott's broaderaimis to suggest how we might more successfully read, interpret,and understandthe often fugitive political conduct of subordinategroups (1990:xii). He ex-plicitly rejects the currentlycommon assumptionin neo-Marxist literature,aswell as in mainstreampolitical science, that subordinategroups acquiesce toeconomic systems that aremanifestly against theirinterests because they cometo believe in a dominant ideology that legitimates or naturalizes the power ofruling elites. Whetherin the simplistic form of false consciousness and cul-tural consensus, or in more subtle stories about cultural hegemony orhegemonic incorporation, hese theories look to ideological mechanisms for

CulturalAnthropology10(3):407-424. Copyright? 1995, AmericanAnthropologicalAssociation.

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408 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

theexplanationof political quiescence in situations of exploitation andinequal-ity. Rejecting such theories and the image of passive subordination that theysuggest, Scott's earlierresearchamong Malay peasantsdocumentedthe politi-cal effects of apparently rivial everyday actions, such as poaching, foot-drag-ging, andpilfering. Inan influentialtheoreticalmove, he described these activi-ties as peasants' disguised attemptsto resist and thwart the appropriationoftheir labor,property,or production(Scott 1985).Scott's current book differs from his earlier work as well as the work ofmany other critics of dominantideology theories (see Abercrombie et al.1980) in that he focuses on language andideology. His majorrecommendationfor betterunderstanding he apparentpolitical consent of subordinategroupsisto examine how power relationsaffect whatpeople say to different social audi-ences. The appearanceof consent, he argues, is produced by the practicalandmaterial pressure on subordinates to refrain from speaking truth to power(Scott 1990:i). There is vastly moreresistance to dominantideologies thanre-searchers have reportedbecause they have failed to notice the hidden tran-scripts thatexpress resistance and the hidden social sites at which such tran-scriptsare createdand acted out. Whenresistance occurs inpublic, in front ofthepowerful, scholars havefailed to note it becauseof thesubtle,evasive speechgenres in which it is routinely expressed. These genres of ideological resis-tance, along with thedisguisedforms of economic resistance such aspoaching,deserve special attention,he argues.Together theyform what Scott calls the in-frapoliticsof thepowerless, which is the indispensableandrevealingprecursorof those elaborate nstitutionalpolitical actions, such as revolutions andthe for-mation of social movements, thatare the more usual object of social science.Scott's work is potentiallyof great interestto readers of Cultural Anthro-pology for a number of reasons. First, he is attemptingto understand amiliarsubjectmatter:communication,everyday talk,and ritualin contexts of unequalpower. Second, Scott relies heavily on anthropological research, particularlystudies of social interaction,sociolinguistics, folklore, and a rangeof perform-ance genres, to provide supportiveevidence for his conceptualedifice. What heidentifies as novel insights and observationsaboutthese phenomenawill oftensoundfamiliar to those who have been readingthe anthropological iteratureofthe last decade. This is in part because his endeavor resembles the attemptswithinanthropologyto reinterpretinguistic practicesnot only as patternedcul-tural differencebut as expressionsof speakers' involvement in large-scalerela-tions of unequalpower,often as signs of resistance to dominant inguistic formsand the values they encode (summarized n Gal 1989). Third, while tacitly in-spired by conceptionsof dominationand resistance borrowedfromGramsci,hisfollowers, andcritics, Scott's specific conceptual proposals rely on a muchmorefamiliarset of metaphorsdrawndirectlyfrom everyday languageuse: ideologyis figuredas transcript,on-stageoroff-stage talk, libretto,performance,and dia-lect.

However, despite these apparentpoints of convergence and superficialsimilarity, Scott's book actually moves in quite a different direction than the


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LANGUAGE AND THE ARTS OF RESISTANCE 409

theoretical development of recent anthropologicalapproachesto language. Acritique of Scott, therefore, provides the occasion to discuss new analyses oflanguageandpower, showing by comparisonhow they diverge from whatis, infact, the more traditionalapproachfound in Scott's book.Most generally, Scott relies on unexaminedand simplified images of sup-posedly unmediatedface-to-face communicationas guiding metaphors in un-derstanding he production,dissemination,and effects of ideology. I will argueherethat this basic conceptualmove is misguided, leadinghim to misunderstandtheethnographicmaterials he uses andto omit some of the most intriguingques-tions aboutthe natureof language in the moder world.A characteristic eatureof the works I will cite in opposition to Scott's approach s thatthey understandlinguistic forms, practices, and their effects-whether dominating,resistant,orhegemonic-to be importantlyconstructedand mediated by linguistic ideolo-gies thatvary across space andhistory (see, for example, Kroskrityet al. 1992;Woolardand Schieffelin 1994).In whatfollows, I will first explicate Scott's morespecific proposalsaboutthe relationship among ideology, transcripts, nd domination, and then out-line four basic criticisms of this work.First,inproposingthe idea of hiddentran-scripts,Scott develops a notion of the natural precultural,presemiotic) interact-ing self that is at odds with recent understandingsabout the role of linguisticideologies and culturalconceptions in the productionof self and emotion. Sec-ond, the major analytical categories he uses-dominant and subordinate-areso broadly generalized over space and time that importantcultural differencesbetweenforms of powercannotbe captured nhis scheme. Third,Scott's centralterm,public, is of considerable interest for students of language, social interac-tion andideology, yet it is drasticallyundertheorized n this book, and its prob-lematic ideological aspects arethus made invisible. Fourth,althoughhis princi-pal aim is to explicate the political significance of talk-its significance asconstitutive performative acts-Scott's analyses of linguistic phenomenaex-plore only the referential or representational aspects of language, and evenwithin this narrowedperspective, fail utterly to grapple with grammaticalandpragmatic complexity. The possibility thatgrammaticalcategories could con-tributeto tacit hegemony is ignored; pragmatic strategies such as ambiguityorirony are assumed to have intrinsic functions such as subversion or resistance,regardlessof the linguistic ideologies and culturalcontexts in which such prac-tices are embedded.

The Book's ArgumentScott starts with the observation,taken from his own experience, thatpeo-ple are careful in their speech to those who have power over them. Complaints,opinions, and responses that would be imprudent f made to the powerful areoften chokedback,and such repressed peech is redirectedto others.On thoserare occasions when anger and indignationovercome such sensible discretion,a feeling of elation is likely to follow. In the effort to systematize and theorizethis insight, he draws his examples very broadly:from studies of slavery, serf-


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dom, and caste subordination,patriarchalgenderrelations, colonialism, racism,state socialism, and total institutions such as jails andprisoner-of-warcamps.On the basis of this wide arrayof evidence, he argues thatEvery subordinate roupcreates,out of its ordeal,a hidden ranscript hatrepresentsa critiqueof power spokenbehind the back of the dominant.Thepowerful,or theirpart,alsodevelopa hidden ranscriptepresentinghepracticesandclaimsof theirrulethatcannotbe openlyavowed.[Scott 1990:xii]

Scott's initial scheme thus posits four separate transcripts,with powerful andsubordinategroupseach having both a hidden and a public form.The hidden transcriptof the subordinate s largely an emotionally fueledresponse to domination; hepracticeof dominationcreates the hiddentranscript(p. 27). Characteristically, his creation occurs in a rangeof autonomous socialsites that are cloistered from the surveillance and interferenceof the powerful:in slave quarters,untouchablevillages, and the taverns of the working class.Such sites arenotautomaticallyavailable;they must be won andcontinuallyde-fended by various kinds of social struggle. It follows thatthe ordinarilyobserv-able relations between subordinateand dominantgroups represent he encoun-ter of the public transcriptof the dominantand that of the subordinate p. 13).

The subordinate, n these public encounters,arecoerced by materialconstraintsto defer to the dominant,or to flatterandcajole them. Alternatively,the subor-dinatemay enact the imageof themselves profferedby the dominant n ordertodemandthe goods, rights, andprivileges thatthe dominantgroup's own public(legitimating) ideology implies are due to those who are the propersubjects oftheir rule. It is thus often in the interest of the subordinate o maintaintheir def-erentialpublic transcript,even though they do not believe it, especially if openrebellion is seen as a practicalimpossibility. The weak are most likely to resistin devious ways, without any open confrontation(p. 86).What can be partof any public transcript s also a matterof struggle. Scottpoints out that thecapacity of dominantgroups to prevail ... in defining andconstitutingwhat counts as the public transcriptand what as offstage is ... nosmall partof theirpower (p. 14). As this quote makes clear, the intriguingno-tion of fourseparate ranscripts,offeredearly in thebook, collapses lateron intoa more familiar configuration: although contestations often occur, dominantgroups largelycontrol what canbe said and done in the single public transcript,a single publicly acknowledged reality.It is of central importanceto Scott that while the assertionof this realitymayfool thedominant,workingas a kindof self-hypnosis withinruling groupsto buckup theircourage,improvetheir cohesion (p.67), the weakare not takenin. For the weak, the public transcript s, at most, a dramatizationof power re-lations that s not to be confused with ideological hegemony (p. 66-67; empha-sis is original). In chapters2 and 3, Scott marshalsa wide arrayof often subtleethnographic, literary, and historical examples-rituals, conversations, pro-tests, paradesand other gatherings, petitioning of monarchs,everyday visualand audible displays of rank and deference-which in each case can be under-


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stood as evidence of such a public transcript, ointly created, for theirdifferentreasons, by the dominant and the weak.Thus, ironically, the process of dominationitself generates the social evi-dence thatapparentlyconfirms notions of hegemony. The dilemma of scholarsis to discern what the subordinate really think,when they are not performingfor the public transcript,by finding evidence of their hidden transcript.Suchevidence is available even frompublic events becausethe subordinateengage inaveiled discourse of dignity and self-assertion within thepublic transcript p.137). If one knows how to decode the public acts and speech of the weak, onecan discern in them an ideological resistance [that] is disguised, muted andveiled for safety's sake (p. 137). What we confront then, in the public tran-script,is a strangekind of ideological debate aboutjustice anddignity in whichone partyhas a severe speech impediment nducedby powerrelations (p. 138).Ultimately, the importanceof these forms of resistance- arts of political dis-guise -is that they are the infrapolitics of the oppressed, the elementaryforms of their political life, on which the possibility of more open action de-pends.Each form of disguisedresistance... is the silent partnerof a loud formof public resistance (p. 199) which may eventually emerge, given favorableconditions.For Scott, it is not true that subordinatesexperience ideological contradic-tions,a doubled ordivided consciousness. Noris it the case that,given the domi-nant culturalmaterials,they find it hardto articulatea counterreality,as hegem-ony theorists might say. Rather, their hidden ideas about a different world,which Scott is sure they have, have just not been realizable in practice.In some ways this seems an attractiveconceptual scheme. Scott joins thenew culturalhistoriansin pointing out the nontransparent, ocially constructednatureof historicaland archivalevidence. The book's strengthis in the engag-ingly described andkaleidoscopic examples of performances-of-resistanceandrituals-of-the-weak.Furthermore,his emphasis on struggle and conflict in thecreationof such performances s a welcome antidoteto an olderethnographyofspeaking that too easily assumed cultural consensus in the interpretationofspeech. Finally,anthropologistscanonly applaudhis attention o linguistic prac-tices as politically importantphenomena.However,as I arguebelow, it is exactlyScott's handlingof linguistic materials thatfinally undermines his argument.

Selves and Interacting SubjectsScott thinksof thepublic transcriptas a matterof performance,acting, andeven posing. This may sound at first like the familiar Goffmanianinsight thatsocial life can be viewed as drama.However, Scott's understandingof perform-ance is muchnarrower hanthis andis linkedto a notion of anauthentic self thatis necessarily betrayedby performance.Scott's position is thus antitheticaltoGoffman's (1959) view that every social act is unavoidably a presentationofself. Goffman's dramaturgicalmetaphorssuggest that all social beings in the in-teractionorderarenecessarily, in some sense, actors. Incontrast,Scott thinks ofacting as an onerous imposition, suffered mostly by the weak: the script and


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stagedirections forsubordinategroupsaregenerallyfarmoreconfining thanforthe dominant (p. 28), for it is the weak who must suppressandcontrol feel-ings and simulate emotions (p. 29). It is for the subordinate hatthepublic tran-scriptis a realmof masks n which less of theunguarded elf is ventured p.29). In contrast,for the dominant, powermeans not having to act orperform;it is the capacity to be more negligent and casual about any single perform-ance (p. 29; emphasis in original). In a chapterentitled Domination,ActingandFantasy, sociolinguistic and social psychological studies fromseveral dec-ades ago areinvoked to arguethat for the subordinate,public life is madeup ofcommandperformances p. 29) thatinvolve, most centrally, maskingone'sfeelings in response to the indignities of exploitation (p. 37), and controllingwhat would be a natural mpulseto rage, insult, angerand theviolence that suchfeelings prompt (p. 37).Indeed,Scott asserts that the content of the hiddentranscript merges sys-tematicallyfrom theredirectionof this suppressedrage, from the frustration freciprocalaction (p. 37). In its propersocial site, thehiddentranscriptprovidesthemeansto express these emotions and make them collective. It is in this sensethat, accordingto Scott, dominationcreates the hiddentranscript.For this ex-planationto hold in the broadrangeof cases to which Scott applies it, the natureof personhood or the self must be assumed to be known and unproblematicacross vast cultural and historicaldifferences, and anaturalized, ndeedhydrau-lic, view of the emotions must be accepted.Yet these assumptionsare untenable. The culturallyconstructed and vari-able nature of the person is by now a truism in anthropology (see Geertz1983), supported by much evidence across a range of theoretical approaches.Carefulnew empiricalwork (reported n Lutz andAbu-Lughod1990) suggeststhat emotions are best seen as constituted in social discourses and situatedspeech practices which are likely to vary across time and space, not as primor-dial internalstatesthatare fixed responses to environmentalstimuli.In this con-structionistview, rageitself would have to be understoodas discursively consti-tuted,not as a natural esponse.Scholars investigating linguistic practices within situations of unequalpower have noted that subordinategroups often produce several distinct dis-courses about emotion. For instance, Abu-Lughod(1986) discusses the dissi-dent or subversive expression of love, performed n orallyric poetry amongtheBedouin of Egypt's Western Desert. The genre is most closely associated withwomen andyouths who are this society's disadvantageddependents.But Abu-Lughod repeatedly stresses that this poetry is anythingbut a spontaneousout-pouringof feeling. Rather, t is artful,planned anguage,richin irony.It is a caseof counterdiscourse, rather than some explosion of raw experience into therealmof official opinion. More generally, the expressionof contradictoryopin-ions by a single speaker, n differentcontexts, is notnecessarilyevidence of dis-semblingorinauthenticity.In a bilingualcommunity nHungary,any single vil-lager expresses many and often conflicting opinions aboutthe value of the twolanguages he or she speaks, including opinions that show evidence of a resis-


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tance to official languages and ideologies. But these contrastingstances cannotbe classified as posed versus genuine; they are evidence of the coexistence ofdeeply felt yet contested discourses (Gal 1993).More important,Scott's equation of power with lack of expressive con-straintflies in the face of cross-culturalevidence. Extensive ethnographiccasestudies have demonstrated that in some societies it is the holders of greatestpower who must restrainthemselves physically, linguistically, andoften in theexpression of emotion exactly because it is superiorrestraint hatculturallyandideologically defines andjustifies theirpower, enablingthem to properlyexer-cise it. Inthis sense, the link between linguistic forms and their functions is con-structed and mediatedby local ideologies of self, language, andpower. The in-directness and allusive quality of Malagasy men's speech (Ochs 1974), thelinguistic inarticulateness, even ungrammaticality,of Wolof nobles (Irvine1990), the strenuousrestraint n performancerequiredof monarchs n the Bali-nese theaterstate(Geertz 1980), and themutingof interactionalgestures amongeducated,high-statusJavanese(Errington1988) areonly thebest knownof suchexamples. In short,there is no simple, universal relationbetween social powerand the form in which emotion is expressed, exactly because the constructionand expression of affective states is mediatedby linguistic ideology.Whatis odd about this partof Scott's argument s that he himself providescounterevidence to his major claims in the course of making other points. In-deed, it is a generalandirritatingcharacteristicof the book that Scott often de-nies in one place a point he has demonstrablyasserted in another.So, for in-stance, he argues elsewhere that the dominant do indeed need to provide aperformanceof mastery that is sometimes hard to construct,andtheir com-portment .. must embody the ideas by which ... domination s publicly justi-fied (p. 49). Inafootnote (p. 52 n.16;see also p. 105), he makes thefamiliar ob-servation that different types of legitimation of power will require differenttypes of public performancefrom the powerful. For instance, only those whoclaim to rulebecausethey aremore honest andbetterqualifiedneed to hide theirmorallapses andtechnical mistakes.But this morediscursive orconstructionistapproach o emotion, power, and the self disappears n most of the text, in favorof the view thatdirectlyderives the form andcontent of hiddentranscripts romthe universal emotional plumbing of the weak, who are coerced to hide theirpent-up rage.Scott's inconsistencies aroundquestions of selfhood and emotion derivefrom his apparentambivalenceabouttwo currentlycontroversialepistemologi-cal issues in social science. The first is the vexed question of the researcher'sown positionality.It is typical that,while rightlyalertinghis readers o the subtlerole of differentperspectives andconflicting goals in the creationof thepublictranscript,Scott's definition of transcript-a term whose metaphoricaluse isfundamental to this book-reveals his own reluctance to follow the argumentthroughandadopta similarly perspectivalist approachto hidden transcripts nhis analyses. Scott says he uses the notion of transcript n its juridicalsense(proces verbal)of a complete record of what was said ... also includ[ing] non-


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speech acts such as gesturesandexpressions (p. 2). But this definition ignoresthe fact, often notedby students of social interaction,thatany transcript s itselfa socially constructedartifact,createdfor definable purposesthatdependon thegoals of the transcriber,and can be neither complete northe objective viewfrom nowhere thatScott's definition suggests (see Ochs 1979).The second issue is revealed in his attemptpartiallyto reform but at thesame time to retain a widespread metaphorof power and resistancethat domi-nates currentsocial science discourse. Timothy Mitchell (1990) has drawn at-tention to the way in which this master metaphordepends on our everyday(Western) conception of the person as an internally autonomous, self-formedconsciousness living inside a physically manufacturedbody.This familiar dualnotion of theperson eads to the idea thatpower itself is dual:coercion is usuallyunderstood as an external force exercised on the body but not necessarily pene-tratingandcontrollingthe mind, while persuasionis the mental mode by whichpower operates, one that captures the mind. In a parallel argument,RosalindO'Hanlon (1988) notes that when Marxist critics want to bring oppressedor ne-glected groups to the attentionof Western audiences, they do so by trying toshow that the oppressedare also recognizably like the Western ideal of the po-litical subject,that s, they are dual selves. The critic thuspresentstheoppressedas self-formed, internally autonomous actors mentally resisting an externaldomination.In contrast,Mitchell (1990:546) follows Foucault in arguingthat this dual,autonomous subject is itself the effect of distinctively modern forms ofpower. Mitchell arguesthat such forms of power ought to be explored in theirown right in orderto discover how they create a world that, like the modernsubject ... seems to be constituted as something divided from the beginninginto two neatly opposedrealms,a materialorder on the one hand anda separatesphere of meaningor culture on the other (1990:546). Clearly, for Scott, sub-ordinategroupsseem more self-formed and autonomousif they can be seen asproducing resistance not through some range of alternatediscourses (whichmight seem like mere tricksof mentalpersuasionas nefarious as thatof a domi-nant discourse) but directly from their supposedly unmediatedexperience ofrage in the face of domination.Although the emphasis is on resistance, there isno room in this scheme for culturalor ideological mediation of emotion, forcounterdiscourse,or for the contradictionsof mixed beliefs.In sum, theuse of thedramaturgicalmetaphor n this bookis shallow, con-tradictingthe traditionof Goffman andthe ethnographyof speaking.The analy-sis of power-ladeninteractionrelies on assumptionsabout thenatureof humansubjects andtheir emotions thatdiverge from recentcomparativeandconstruc-tionist work in anthropology.There are similarly problematicassumptions inthe book's largercomparativescheme.

The Trouble with Dominant and SubordinateScott flattens the greatrangeof power relations evident in the diverse so-cial formationsof the historicalandethnographicrecord nto a single opposition


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between dominant and subordinate.Effacing the historical and culturaldiffer-ences between the situations of groups such as 18th-centuryAmerican slaves,19th-centuryRussian peasants, and late-20th-centuryworkers in formerCom-munist states, he concentrates instead on the similarities between them. In histerms,they areall groups thatarerelatively weakpolitically andeconomically,and that constructpublic and hidden transcripts.A transcript s either a meta-phorfor ideology, based on the image of face-to-face courtroom nteraction,or,in the case of the hiddentranscript hatexpresses resistance,it is theactualprod-uct of face-to-face interaction that occurs in protectedsites. It follows that, forScott's purposes, the political use of language is assumed to be similar acrosscultures,and across systems of domination and historicalperiods.Thereareimportantsociological reasons for not conflatingso manydiffer-ent formsof political andeconomic domination. But I will concentratehereonlyon some of the language-relateddisadvantagesof such a strategy.One unfortu-nate result is theslighting orignoringof the ideological impactof those commu-nicative media-print, television, video, radio,andfilm-whose existence andfunctioning vary significantly across the historically different cases thatScottequates, and whose creation and dissemination of ideology are not at all ade-quatelydescribedby the face-to-face metaphor.Thus, Scott's book describes abarely recognizablelandscapein which it often appears hat19th-centurywork-ers did not read broadsheets, and 20th-century peasants, workers, and post-Communists arenot profoundlyinfluenced by listening to radio, watching tele-vision, or playing cassette recorders. Yet some of the greatest political andideological changes of the last 200 years-changes importantly related toScott's concernwith domination,including the rise of nationalism,the creationof the citizen-subject, the spread of consumerism, and the recent collapse ofcommunism-have been shaped by theexistence of these mass media.Becausethese changes are subsumed under the dominant-subordinate ichotomy, Scottprovides very little separatecommentaryon them and no theoreticalapparatusto understand heirrelation to linguistic processes.A brief sketch of one well-known example should suffice to illustrate theproblem.BenedictAnderson's (1983) analysis of nationalismdrawsattentiontothe creationof communities in which memberswill never know or interact withmost of theirfellow members, in partbecause the size of the groupmakes face-to-face contactamongall members an impossibility. Scott neverexplicitly con-siders such groups organized by national ideology. In his terminology, wewould sometimes have to call such groups economically andpolitically subor-dinate, as in the case of nations formed against a colonial power, and at othertimes they would be dominant. But, in either case, as Anderson shows, theimaginationof suchcommunities is centralto theirexistence. And this construc-tion or imaginationhas been madepossible, historically, because of mediationby certainartifacts of print capitalism: the regional newspaperand the novel.The readingof newspapers is an


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extraordinarymassceremony.. performedn silentprivacy, n the lair of theskull.Yet eachcommunicantswellaware hat heceremony eperformssbeingreplicated imultaneously ythousandsor millions)of othersof whoseexistencehe is confident,yet of whoseidentityhe has not theslightestnotion.[Anderson1983:35]

Whatever the shortcomings of Anderson's larger argument,it is obvious thatpopulations of the kind Scott defines by his labels subordinate and domi-nant must also be created and unitedby such complex linguistic processes (callthem imagination,mobilization, or consciousness-raising) that are usually notexamples of face-to-face interaction.Yet Scott provides no analysis at all ofsuch mediated communication.

By drawingattention to printand other mass media, I am also suggestingthat,contrary o Scott's analysis, the sites at which hiddentranscriptsare cre-ated need not be restricted o places where furtive face-to-face encountersoccur.Resistance to domination is just as likely to be produced by illegal radio sta-tions, samizdatmagazines,piratedmusic cassettes, orpatched-incable TV. An-thropology itself has certainly not solved the problem of how to analyze suchmediated inguistic practices,but it is clear that the tools of face-to-face analysisalone are inadequateto the task. Instead, we need to understandthe semioticprocesses and ideologies with which people imagine their identities, their sub-ordination,and their communities, hroughsuch media, and vis-a-vis othersocial identities.Scott's single schematicdichotomyof dominantand subordinatealso hidesthe fact that different forms of dominationproduce different configurationsoflanguage use in politics, or what Scott would perhapscall different kinds or or-ders of transcripts.One example will suffice. In describing Mongolian politics,Caroline Humphreynotes that in societies encapsulated within a Soviet-typesystem, domination did not consist of an elite group surroundedby a subordi-nated mass (as Scott's implied model suggests), but rather dominationresidesin a series of equivalent positions in nesting hierarchies, such that a similardominationmay be exercised at each level (1994:46). Humphrey(1994) sug-gests thatin such cases, there was typically an official transcript, a versionofMarxism-Leninism, hat was mostly written,perceivedto behighly ideological,sanctimoniousandstilted, andimposedon Mongolians by Soviet force andom-nipresentSoviet advisers. Ratherthanany unified opposition to this officialideology, expressed in some hiddentranscript, herewas arangeof quitewidelyknown, ambiguous,but not at all hidden, transcripts,used by everyone in Mon-golia. Hiddensites frequentedby people of a single subordinatesocial categorynot only were rarebut also were subvertedby theknowledge thatanyonecouldbe an informer. This was because lines of division between subordinateanddominantwere impossible to draw:everyone experienced bothdominationandsubordinationwithin the tightly nested hierarchiesof everydayMongolianlife,andeveryone engaged in riddle-like, deliberately cryptic analyses of everydayevents (Humphrey1994:44-48).


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Thus, if the conflation of different kinds of social systems into a singleschematic dichotomy is problematic, so is the relatedassumptionthat the sub-ordinateand the dominantare always clearly definable, unified, and separablegroups,unambiguouslyopposed to eachother. Statesocialism is a strikingprob-lem for Scott's dualism,but nested hierarchies and nondualisticforms of domi-nation occur in other social formations as well. My largerpoint is that, in con-trastto Scott's implicit assumptionof dualistic fixity, the place of language inpolitical life varies significantly across systems of domination.Definitions of Public

Another fundamentalconceptual tool in Scott's workis the distinction be-tween public and hidden. Public is defined as actionthat is openly avowed totheotherparty n thepower relationship anda shorthandwayof describingtheopen interaction between subordinates and those who dominate (p. 2). Onceagain,face-to-face interactionprovides themodel for ideological discourse,andno furtherdiscussion of the concept is provided.Public thus becomes a matterof audience: who is supposed to be witnessing certain speech, gestures, prac-tices. But if public means merely an audience, then hiddentranscripts,by defi-nition, must also have theirpublics. Even the caveat thathiddentranscriptsareproducedin opposition to power will not help to define them. As Scott acknow-ledges, power relations, after all, occur inside subordinategroups too, whenleaders exert power over followers or group pressurecoerces members.Thus,we can easily imagine a hidden transcript hat voices resistance,from within anenslaved group, to the ideology of a particularslave leader. What then distin-guishes public and hiddentranscripts?Or,one might ask, from whose perspec-tive do we call a transcript hidden or offstage ?Scott mentions that the splitin the Civil Rightsmovement and the emergenceof a Black Powermovementinthe United Statesin the 1960s was preceded by offstagediscourseamongblackstudents,clergymenand theirparishioners p. 199). But since much of the dis-sension over strategies among black elites in the 1960s was reported n regionaland local newspapers,potentially available to all, in what sense was this dis-course hidden ?Scott acknowledges some of these problemsandattempts o solve thembybriefly arguingthat therearemanyhiddentranscriptsdeveloped in a continuumof sites, with some sites being more intimate thanothers and so relativelyfreerof intimidationfrom above (pp. 25-27). But if therecan be manyhiddentranscriptsand also many public ones-some of these occurring even withinsubordinategroups-we have gained little in analytic precision or insight.In theend,theproblemis not one of countinganddistinguishing transcriptsor the views they express, rather t is that the definition of public used by Scottis unexaminedandinadequate.The idea of public, farfrombeing a simple ques-tion of audience,based on the model of witnessed face-to-face interaction, s it-self a deeply ideological construct in Western thought,often linked exactly tothe separationof language from a face-to-face situation andthus to the decon-textualization of language by print.Based on its role in Europeanhistory, one


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might call the notion of public a logic for the legitimationof political power. Ithas been identified in a number of forms in recent analyses of postabsolutistEuropeand North America. Warner(1990), building on the influential discus-sion by Habermas(1989), arguesthat the legitimacy of 18th-centuryAmericanrepublicanism was based on the negative notion of disinterested individualswho, because the anonymityof print allowed them to be no-one-in-particular,could claim to represent everyone (the public, the people). As I have hintedabove, Anderson's (1983) notion of the imagined community plays on thesame logic of a non-face-to-face social group defined through simultaneousreadingas everyone-in-the-nation, because no-one-in-particular.Feminist critics have noted that the idea of a public actuallyhelps to con-stitute the powerful, ruling groupin society by silently excludingmanycatego-ries of people and activities (Fraser1992 andLandes1988). Fictions of disinter-estedness andanonymity producedthroughideas about disembodied languageaccomplish this exclusion while also masking it. In 18th-centuryFrance,Eng-land,and the UnitedStates, for instance, it was women, blacks, andmen withoutpropertywho were categorized as necessarily particularistic,partisan,and self-interested; heirpolitical actions could never have beenseen as disinterestedandso legitimately directed at the general, the common weal, the public good.Thus, it is not only thatdominantgroupsoften control what counts as the publictranscript.More fundamentally, groups can become politically dominant, atleast in some kinds of societies and in particularhistorical periods, exactly byconstituting themselves as the natural, unquestionedmembers of a disinter-ested, anonymous public. A form of opposition to this ideological mechanism isthe creationof alternatepublics, which have indeed been much discussed in re-cent politics of race and gender.Thus, public is not an innocent or transparent erm linked only to audi-ences, as Scott would have it. Rather,within theWesterntradition, he broadno-tion of a public is a form of political legitimationin which the decontextualiza-tion and depersonalizationof language produces the image of a social groupuniquelyfitted to govern because it is no-one-in-particular nd thus cansuppos-edly stand for everyone. On the model of the historical research that hasemergedaroundthe analysis of the concept of public in Europeandthe UnitedStates, global comparativeendeavors such as Scott's book would have to ex-plore the key terms that produce and mask such exclusionary legitimation inother social formations,and also the way thatlanguage ideology andmass me-dia areimplicated in the creationof such categories.

Language and HegemonyDespite these gaps in his analysis of publics, the strongest sections ofScott's book are those in which he discusses thecomplicitly createdpublic tran-

script,focusing on the linguistic practices in which subordinategroupsexpresstheirdissatisfaction and resistance to dominant deology. However, Scott's as-sumptionsaboutthe unmediated(precultural,presemiotic) relationship among


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linguistic form, ideology, and social function underminethe generality of hisformulationsand severely limit their usefulness for anthropology.As I have noted, Scott argues against what he calls thick heories of he-gemony. These are theories which posit that subordinategroups accept thedominantideology and thereforeconsent to their own subordination,believingit to be just. Scott distinguishes between such theories of ideological incorpora-tion and thin heories of hegemony, which assertonly thatsubordinategroupsperceive theirown powerlessness to be naturalor inevitable. Thin theories, ac-cording to Scott, allow thatsubordinatescan and do imaginealternativeworlds.But such alternateviews are seldom expressed openly. To avoid reprisals,andin order to manipulatethe powerful and therebyachieve social change, the ex-pression of hidden transcripts,of resistant ideologies, is muted, veiled, muf-fled, disguised, andanonymous,accordingto Scott, and often appears o upholdthe reigning ideology in the very act of questioning or subvertingit. In a rich,central chapterentitled Voice under Domination: The Arts of Political Dis-guise, Scott's goal is to detail the linguistic mechanisms of resistance. Usingmuch evidence culled from sociolinguistic studies, he suggests thatanonymityin speaking, the use of euphemisms, indistinct and indirectgrumbling, polyva-lent symbolism, and cryptic metaphorare all forms of resistancebecause theyhide the identityand intent of the speaker.Oralculture,trickster ales, symbolicinversions, and ritualsof reversal aresimilarlyforms of resistance.Indeed,theirpervasiveness among the weak is used as evidence by Scott for the widespreadabsence of culturalhegemony.But Scott's analysis of these arts of disguise is seriously flawed, for thefunction of resistancecannot be directly equated with a list of linguistic formsor strategies.Any linguistic form-such as euphemism, metaphor, ndirection,trickster ale, oranonymousspeaking-gains differentmeaningsand has differ-ent social andpolitical effects within specific institutionalandideological con-texts. As Scott himself mentions in passing elsewhere in thebook, euphemismsare also used by the strong, with quite different effects. The cryptic metaphorsand indirectionScott links to weakness and resistance were very much in evi-dence in the discourse of ruling elites in state socialism (see, for example, Gal1991); and, as I have suggested above, the practice of speaking anonymouslycan work as a legitimating strategyfor powerful groups.Culturesvary widely inthe kinds of speech styles they identify as powerfulorweak.Even silence can beas muchastrategyof power as of weakness, dependingon theideological under-standings andcontexts within which it is used.Scott's insistence on linking speech forms directly to political functions,without the mediation of culture or linguistic ideology, parallels the way inwhich he attemptsto link emotions directly to selves, without the mediation ofculture. Both attemptsderive, ultimately,from a referentialistview of languagein which texts and transcriptsare read for their supposedly fixed, unproblem-atic, denotational meaning. Tropes are seen not as culturalconstructions butmerely as transformedor deformedversions of the literal. In this view there isno need to consider the culturalcontext in correlating inguistic forms to social


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functions. In contrast,recent work on linguistic ideology arguesthatlinguisticpractices-tropes andfigurative uses of language, such as euphemisms and in-direction,as well as the supposedly literal -are interpretableonly withinpar-ticular social and institutionalcontexts, and are linked to social functions suchas resistance or domination only through specific linguistic ideologies. How-ever aptly chosen his particularexamples of resistance, Scott's more generaltheoreticalproposals ignore this mediatingrole of linguistic ideology, thus vi-tiatinghis larger argumentabout language and resistance.A similar lack of attentionto the relationshipbetween language ideologyand linguistic form mars Scott's argumentabout the limits of culturalhegem-ony. It would hardly be worthwhile here to enter into the forest of argumentsaboutculturalhegemony that social theoristshaveproduced.But it bearsrepeat-ing that, within the Gramsciantradition,the notion of resistance-of opposi-tional, residual,emergent, or alternative culturalforms-has long been centralto discussions of hegemony (see, for example, Williams 1973). Scholars havealso describedhegemony as the use of social constraints o create anappearanceof consensus in an atmosphereof intimidation.Thus, Scott's argumentsabouttheubiquityof resistancearehardlynew; on thecontrary, hey arequite congru-ent with much existing literatureon the subject.What is new is Scott's insis-tence that this infrapolitics s theprecedentforopen conflict (p. 196), that thehidden transcript s the silent partnerof laterpublic revolt or mobilization (p.199). In this romantic characterizationof resistance,Scott ignores the extent towhich hegemony may be tacit and resistance often partialandself-defeating. Itcan lead as easily to the reproductionof dominationas to revolution. The omis-sion is surprisingbecause the very ethnographicstudies he cites to supporthispoint about the strengthof resistance also describe its frequentlycontradictorynatureand effects.For instance, Willis's (1977) influential study of working-class Britishschool lads shows that theircounterculture,createdin resistance to the hegem-ony of the school, made them neitherpolitically radical (or revolutionary)norconventionally successful. Instead, it produced cynicism and the reproductionof theirpowerlessness. Importantly,while resisting some aspects of dominantideology in theschool, the lads actively reproducedand elaboratedotheraspectsof dominant deology, suchas the devaluationof womenandgirls (Willis 1977).Similarly, in his discussion of Sennett and Cobb's (1972) work on the hiddeninjuriesof class among working-classAmericanmen, Scott notes the workers'complaintsabout bosses' routine assaults on theirdignity, which he rightly in-terpretsas ideological resistance (p. 112). But he fails to report Sennett andCobb's (1972) furtherargument hatthese samemenblamedthemselves, not theclass system, for their lack of economic success. They tacitly incorporated hereigning ideology of meritocracy.Thus, while resistance is indeed widespread,ideological incorporationmay partiallycoexist with it, as different aspects ofdominant deology cross-cut each other.No doubtScott would moreeasily detect thecomplexities of resistanceandthepartialorcontradictory orms of hegemony if his understandingof language


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includedmore attention to linguistic form and the way that its political functionis conditioned by language ideology. Two quite different examples will illus-tratethis point.Although Scott often mentionsminoritylanguages anddialects,he is interestedmostly in the way these can shield the hiddentranscriptby mak-ing oppositional talk impenetrableto powerful observers. But in societies thathave undergone inguistic standardization,domination s not directly a result ofeconomic weakness butis establishedexactly by the ideological constructionofa monoglotstandard, nculcated in schools and in mass media and viewed asthepropertyof the bourgeoisie. Once the belief in thecommunicative,aesthetic,or other superiority of such a standardhas been established, other varieties,whatevertheirprovenance,areusually seen (andnotonly by standard-speakers)as degenerateor inferior versions of the standard tself. Regardless of the exactpolitical and economic aspects of their weakness, speakersof such varieties areideologically constituted as a subordinategroup on the basis of the supposedcultural, cognitive, or aesthetic inadequacy of their speech. As many studieshave shown, such speakers may resist by continuingto use their own varieties,but within regimes of standardization hey often also devalue themselves andthe varieties they use (see Silverstein 1987; Woolard 1985).A second, quitedifferent kind of example similarlyprovidesacomplex andsubtlecase of resistance and tacithegemony mediatedby linguistic structure.Asis well known, English has a system of obligatory pronominal gender catego-ries. Criticshave complained for at least 200 years that,by virtue of their struc-turalproperties, hese distinctions naturalizeandreproducecertaincategories ofthought, including the ideological assumptionthatmen aretheprototypicalhu-manactors.However, the articulationof grammaticalgenderwith categories ofhumannesss and social agency creates an impressive stability in the gender sys-tem, making it difficult to change. Building on Silverstein's (1985) originalanalysis of gender markingin English, Hill and Mannheim summarize the di-lemma:

Although t is an arenaof conflict, the [gender]categorysystemcontinues ofunction neveryday ontextseven forspeakerswho areexamining ndpurpose-fully remodeling heirbehavior, or,even as one partof thecategorysystemisbroughtnto consciouscontention, therpartsremainnplace unchallenged. hecategory ystemcreatesa particularulturalhegemony, heunquestioned ccep-tance,by bothmen andwomen,of men as a normative, nmarkedategoryofperson.Thehegemonic tructures reproduced elow thespeaker's hreshold fawareness,unconsciously,but is challenged romabove the threshold f aware-ness,consciously.[1992:389]There is no room for such complex interactions of resistance, domination, andhegemony in Scott's analytical scheme.

ConclusionDespite its flaws, JamesScott's book offers achallenge to anthropology.Itattemptsto integratea wide range of ethnographicmaterialsin the interests of


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understandingpolitical processes andpower dynamics. He takes seriously thecentralityof linguistic practicesin theproductionanddissemination of ideologyand their importance in understandingresistance to cultural hegemony. Thebook deserves attention for its breadthof vision, its often astutediscussions ofthe logic of resistance,and its rangeof evidence. But ultimately,Scott's attemptto theorizethe links between languageandpower fails, because his approach olanguage lacks some of the basic principles aboutlinguistic form and ideologycurrentlybeing developed withinthe anthropologicalstudyof language and so-cial life.

NotesAcknowledgments.Many thanks to KitWoolard,Ben Lee, and Michael Silversteinfor their suggestions, criticisms, andcareful readings.

References CitedAbercrombie,Nicholas, StephenHill, andBryanS. Turner1980 The Dominant Ideology Thesis. London:George Allen and Unwin.Abu-Lughod,Lila1986 Veiled Sentiments: Honor andPoetryin a Bedouin Society. Berkeley:Univer-sity of CaliforniaPress.Anderson,Benedict1983 ImaginedCommunities:Reflections on the OriginandSpreadof Nationalism.London: Verso.Errington, .Joseph1988 Structure and Style in Javanese: A Semiotic View of Linguistic Etiquette.Philadelphia: University of PennsylvaniaPress.Fraser,Nancy

1992 Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of ActuallyExisting Democracy. In Habermasand the Public Sphere. Craig Calhoun, ed. Pp.109-142. Cambridge,MA: MITPress.Gal, Susan1989 Language and Political Economy. Annual Review of Anthropology 18:345-367.1991 Bart6k's Funeral:Representationsof Europein HungarianPolitical Rhetoric.AmericanEthnologist 18(3):440-458.1993 Diversity and Contestation in Linguistic Ideologies. Language in Society22(3):337-360.

Geertz,Clifford1983 Fromthe Native's Point of View :On the Nature of AnthropologicalUnder-standing. In Local Knowledge: FurtherEssays in Interpretive Anthropology. Pp.55-72. New York: Basic Books.1980 Negara:The Theatre State in Nineteenth-CenturyBall. Princeton: Princeton

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Habermas,Jirgen1989 The StructuralTransformationof the Public Sphere:An Inquiryinto a Cate-gory of Bourgeois Society. T. Bergen, trans.Cambridge,MA: MIT Press.

Hill, Jane,and BruceMannheim1992 Languageand World View. Annual Review of Anthropology 21:381-406.Humphrey,Caroline1994 Rememberingan 'Enemy': The Bogd Khann n Twentieth-CenturyMongolia.In Memory, History, and Opposition under State Socialism. Rubie S. Watson, ed.

Pp. 21, 44. Santa Fe: School of AmericanResearch Press.Irvine,JudithT.1990 RegisteringAffect: Heteroglossia in the Linguistic Expressionof Emotion. InLanguage and the Politics of Emotion. CatherineA. Lutz and Lila Abu-Lughod,eds. Pp. 126-161. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press.

Kroskrity,Paul,Bambi B. Schieffelin,andKathrynWoolard,eds.1992 Special Issue on Language Ideologies. Pragmatics2(3).Landes,JoanB.1988 Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the FrenchRevolution. Ithaca:CornellUniversity Press.Lutz,CatherineA., and LilaAbu-Lughod,eds.1990 Language and the Politics of Emotion. Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress.Mitchell,Timothy1990 EverydayMetaphorsof Power. Theory and Society 19:545-577.Ochs,Elinor(Keenan)1974 Norm-Makers and Norm-Breakers:Uses of Speech by Men and Women in aMalagasy Community. In Explorations in the Ethnographyof Speaking. RichardBauman and Joel Sherzer, eds. Pp. 125-143. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress.

1979 Transcription as Theory. In Developmental Pragmatics. Elinor Ochs andBambi B. Schieffelin, eds. Pp. 43-72. New York: Academic Press.O'Hanlon,Rosalind1988 Recovering the Subject: Subaltern Studies and Histories of Resistance inColonial South Asia. Modem Asian Studies 22(1):189-224.Scott,JamesC.1985 Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of PeasantResistance. New Haven:Yale University Press.1990 Domination and the Arts of Resistance:HiddenTranscripts.New Haven:YaleUniversity Press.Sennett,Richard,andJonathanCobb1972 The Hidden Injuriesof Class. New York: Knopf.Silverstein,Michael1985 Languageand the Culture of Gender:At the Intersection of Structure,Usageand Ideology. In Semiotic Mediation: Sociocultural and Psychological Perspec-tives. Elizabeth Mertz and Richard J. Parmentier,eds. Pp. 219-259. New York:Academic Press.

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Tilly, Charles1991 Dominance, Resistance, Compliance ... Discourse. Sociological Forum6(3):593-602.Warner,Michael1990 The Lettersof the Republic: Publication andthe Public Spherein Eighteenth-CenturyAmerica.Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversity Press.Williams,Raymond1973 Base and Superstructure n Marxist CulturalTheory. New Left Review 82(November-December): 3-16.Willis, Paul E.1977 Learningto Labor:How WorkingClass Kids Get WorkingClass Jobs. West-mead: Saxon House.

Woolard,Kathryn1985 Language Variation and CulturalHegemony: Toward an Integrationof So-ciolinguistic and Social Theory. AmericanEthnologist 12(4):738-748.Woolard,Kathryn,and BambiB. Schieffelin1994 LanguageIdeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 23:55-82.

gal (1995) language and the arts of resistance

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