A core mission of this blog is to dismantle subjection, so my first post will be about subjection. This concept is from Dean Spade’s Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law. I’ll also summarize his coverage of the complexity of power and the Four Pillars of Social Justice Infrastructure (originally from Miami Workers Center).
Subjection
Subjection is the “power relations [that] impact how we know ourselves as subjects through [systems] of meaning and control–the ways we understand our own bodies, the things we believe about ourselves and our relationships with other people and with institutions, and the ways we imagine change and transformation” (Spade 2015, 6). This goes hand-in-hand with the material conditions and introduces how power is complex.
Complexity of Power
Spade breaks down the complexity of power with a framework based on the work of Michel Foucault (Spade 2015, 51). Within this framework is three modes of “power perpetrator/victim power”: (1) exclusion and subtraction power; (2) disciplinary power; and (3) population management power (Spade 2015, 51).
(1) Exclusion and subtraction power is based in the idea that issues stem from “intentional, individualized negative action, discrimination, exclusion, and violence”, and is popularized by liberal politics’ focus on legal rights (Spade 2015, 51). In this perspective, a violation is partnered with remediation, usually in the form of individual punishment (Spade 2015, 51). Thus, power manifests as subtraction through repression: “opportunities, property, health, life taken away from individual victims because of the bad ideas put into action by perpetrators” (Spade 2015, 51). Hate crime and anti-discrimination laws attempt to address this form of power, but are ultimately reformist because individualizing issues does not actually lower violence (see 2021 report on hate crimes) or address institutionalized inequality (Spade 2015, 51). Rather, by remaining within the asymmetrical distribution of life chances, these strategies validate and strengthen the forces of inequality it claims to confront (Spade 2015, 52).
(2) Disciplinary power is how social hierarchies are normalized through conceptions of “proper ways to be”, which fuels the othering of people with mechanisms such as “racism, transphobia, sexism, ableism, and homophobia” (Spade 2015, 52). These norms are policed internally and externally and are perpetuated by institutions such as those of “medicine, social sciences, and education–where standards of healthfulness, proper behavior, and socialization are established and taught”, thus modifying individual people’s bodies and actions to fit societal norms (Spade 2015, 52-53). Current institutions “diagnose, evaluate, engage in surveillance, take formal or informal disciplinary action, or require trainings” which incubates “social or internal approval or shaming” (Spade 2015, 55). These enforced norms “permeate every area of life down to the smallest details of how we chew our food or walk or talk, to the broadest systemic standards of how we keep time, measure productivity, and come to identify and understand human life” (Spade 2015, 55). They are not static but change with context, which includes different institutions, subcultures, and times (Spade 2015, 53). In this way, social hierarchies are formed through a morphing categorization of people that penetrates “our bodies, thoughts, and behaviors” (Spade 2015, 55). Resistance comes in the form of questioning standards and exposing the normalization of this disciplinary control, which inherently validates other ways of being (Spade 2015, 55). Law reform fails to structurally address disciplinary power as it mostly operates in the individualizing exclusion and subtraction mode of power, which leaves the enforced norms of disciplinary power in place (Spade 2015, 56-57).
(3) Population management power is decentralized in its “arrangement and distribution of security and insecurity”, or the distribution of life chances (Spade 2015, 57). The mechanisms of this mode of power affect the population as a whole through programs that “operate through purportedly neutral criteria aimed at distributing health and security and ensuring order” for the sake of the national population. This requires the creation of meaning around who is deservedly part of the nation-state and who is considered “drains” or “threats” (Spade 2015, 57). This is how the nation-state creates meaning and identity for itself (Spade 2015, 58).
Since its foundation, the U.S. has distinguished the national population through concepts of gender and race that get mobilized to justify a policy or program “that may not explicitly target a group on its face, but that still accomplishes its racist/sexist purpose” (Spade 2015, 59). Examples of this in the U.S. include the characterization of Black single mothers as “welfare queens”, which was weaponized to dissolve public assistance programs, and the “demonization of Latin American immigrants”, which justifies immigration enforcement as part of the War on Terror (Spade 2015, 59). Another example is the myth of Black criminality, which is manufactured to support War on Drugs policies that violently target Black men, increase sentences, and create higher barriers to institutions, among other serious consequences (Spade 2015, 59). Additionally, the racial wealth disparity is rooted in the genocidal theft of Indigenous land and the slavery of Black people, and is continued in different programs and policies that maintain “poverty, land theft, and economic exploitation of people of color” (Spade 2015, 61). More examples of these programs and policies are “Jim Crow laws, Asian exclusion laws, redlining, taxation laws, allotment schemes, various treaties denying land rights, and many other” interventions. Historically as a population, white people have received unbalanced support through “home and business loan programs, land grants, education grants and loans, and government benefits programs” (Spade 2015, 62).
In this way, “security and vulnerability” (life chances) are distributed along hidden lines of race and gender in supposedly neutral policies that have existed since the inception of the nation-state (Spade 2015, 62). This system-view debunks the reasoning of individual intent and political neutrality that “courts, the media, and policy makers” are so adamant about (Spade 2015, 60). The idea of social, economic, or political neutrality is reasoned with examples such as the downward financial mobility of certain white people and the upward financial mobility of certain people of color, but this only focuses on individuals and does not engage with the systemic othering of population management power (Spade 2015, 62). This framework illustrates how gendered racialization determines the distribution of life chances and why this cannot be fully addressed with law reform that centers “rights” (Spade 2015, 65). This type of law reform seeks group equality and inclusion or individual victimization, which ultimately perpetuates the legal, political, and social institutions’ manufactured meanings of who is deserving of care and protection and who is not (Spade 2015, 67). Furthermore, as certain methods become “less politically viable, other methods have replaced them, preserving and producing race and gender disparities” (Spade 2015, 74).
So disciplinary power establishes individual-level “norms for being a proper productive citizen” while population management power “mobilizes these standards and meanings to create policies and programs that apply generally” (Spade 2015, 58). This means that these “[population]-level interventions create conditions of control and distribution that impact people regardless of their individual acts” (Spade 2015, 66). Spade’s power complexity framework illuminates how power manifests on the individual-level as well as the population-level, and how “the overlapping but distinct operation of these two vectors of power is essential for forming an accurate analysis…and for conceptualizing methods of resistance” (Spade 2015, 67). This calls for tactics that “[provide] immediate relief to harmful conditions, [help] mobilize and build political momentum for more transformative change, [provide] an incremental step in dismantling a harmful system, and [make] sense when weighed against dangers of legitimization and reification of violent systems” (Spade 2015, 86).
The Four Pillars of Social Justice Infrastructure
The Four Pillars of Social Justice Infrastructure was developed by the Miami Workers Center to “[analyze] the roles of various tactics in the project of mobilization” (Spade 2015, 101). It models how “multiple strategies can fit together to build participatory, mass-based movements” for social justice (Spade 2015, 101-102). Additionally, the Four Pillars framework is an important evaluation tool for those building movements as it can “[identify] areas of needed collaboration, and [formulate] a theory of change” (Spade 2015, 102).
The Pillar of Policy “includes work that changes policies and institutions using legislative and institutional strategies, with concrete gains and benchmarks for progress” (Spade 2015, 102).
The Pillar of Consciousness “includes work that aims to shift political paradigms and alter public opinion and consciousness, including media advocacy work, the creation of independent media, and public education work” (Spade 2015, 102).
The Pillar of Service “encompasses work that directly serves vulnerable people and helps stabilize their lives and promote their survival, including work that provides critical services like food, legal help, medical care, and mental health support” (Spade 2015, 102).
The Pillar of Power “is about achieving autonomous community power by building a base and developing leadership: building membership organizations of a large scale and influence (quantity) and developing the depth and capacity of grassroots leadership (quality)” (Spade 2015, 102). This can be accomplished with relationship-building, leadership skill building, and development of shared political analysis (Spade 2015, 105). The Pillar of Power is the crux of transformative change, and in order to be erected the other pillars must engage to support it (Spade 2015, 102).
In this way, the unity of the Four Pillars is crucial in the transformative power of mass mobilization (Spade 2015, 103). To be effective, the pillars must work together. Ultimately, “[all] strategies must work to build up the leadership of the most vulnerable people in the struggle” through interconnected and collaborative strategies rather than separation and competition (Spade 2015, 104). It is the “[re-centering of] participatory movement building” (Spade 2015, 107-108).
Works Cited
Spade, Dean. 2015. Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law. 2nd ed. Durham: Duke University Press.