Repressive State Apparatus Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2 ed.)
... State Apparatus ( RSA ) The French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser ’s concept for what is known in contemporary political discourse as ‘hard power’, i.e. a form of power that operates by means of violence. It is usually accompanied by what Althusser termed the Ideological State Apparatus , which is a ‘soft power’ concept. The Repressive State Apparatus consists of the army, the police, the judiciary, and the prison system. It operates primarily by means of mental and physical coercion and violence (latent and actual). Further Reading: L....
Repressive State Apparatus
Law Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...constitution accompanied by an independent Supreme Court, and to establish a Bill of Rights. In other words, they created a fundamental charter of natural rights and set up a supreme common law court which developed powers of legislative review to prevent a recurrence of repressive parliamentary government. Alexander Hamilton ( 1757–1804 ), George Washington 's private secretary during the *American Revolution , justified these developments on the grounds that ‘though individual oppression may now and then proceed from the courts of justice, the...
Althusser, Louis (1918–90) Quick reference
The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature (2 ed.)
...Ideological State Apparatuses” (1970) in which he introduces the concept of interpellation and offers a critique of instrumental readings of Marx that hold that culture and ideology are merely the superstructural expression of the economic base of production. For Althusser, the state ensures the maintenance of capitalist modes of production through what he calls repressive state apparatuses (domination through violence) and ideological state apparatuses (domination through politics, education, religion, and the arts). In his account, the state should not be...
Censorship in France Reference library
The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French
...that it defended religion, monarchy, and les bonnes mœurs to official satisfaction. Censorship was a meeting‐place where the royal administration worked out a compromise with the Enlightenment intellectuals. There were ways of evading or subverting the apparatus of ideological coercion, but the repressive capacity of the ancien régime should not be underestimated. In 1753 the Rouen printer Machuel lost his maîtrise , and his printing‐shop was closed. The censor demanded 23 alterations to La Nouvelle Héloïse , some of them substantial. Marmontel and ...
Literary Culture and the Novel in the New Millennium Reference library
Hermione Lee
The Oxford Companion to English Literature (7 ed.)
...novels, futuristic comedy written in invented dialect, realistic novels in raw street-speech, historical pastiche and poetic lyrics. We became acutely aware of the fears and preoccupations of the new millennium. There were many novels about children's vulnerability, women in repressive communities, old age, and institutions. There were plenty of male mid-life crises. We often came across characters looking for a secret past, searching for a lost parent, or uncovering a hidden trauma, characters questing for their true self. There was a great deal of...
Puritanism: The Sense of an Unending Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature
...and insane sort ever cherished by man” (“Last New Englander”). To Mencken, “the whole Puritan theological and political apparatus” could be summarized as “the pervasiveness of sin, the importance of moral problems, the need of harsh and inquisitorial laws”(“Notes”). What resulted, Mencken declared, was even worse than the Puritans' “almost total lack of aesthetic aspiration.” The Puritans left a double inheritance of repressive behavior among men of Anglo-Saxon stock: on the one hand, the “intolerable prudishness and dirty-mindedness of Puritanism”; on...
Dispositif Reference library
Ricky Crano
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory
...an Apparatus?,” 12. 90. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 13. 91. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 12. 92. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 11, 20. 93. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 14. 94. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 14. 95. Cf. Tom Frost, “The Dispositif between Foucault and Agamben,” Law, Culture and the Humanities (2015): 1–21. 96. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 15. 97. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 22. 98. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 22. 99. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 23. 100. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,”...
Cultural Studies and Poetry Reference library
V. B. Leitch
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (4 ed.)
...and values as universal, Gramsci distinguishes between coercive domination and negotiated leadership. The success of a controlling group’s ideology—which is relative, temporary, and challengeable—depends not only or even primarily on repressive political control through legal, administrative, military, and educational apparatuses, but on freely given civil consensus molded through the family, church, workplace, union, private school, media, and arts—i.e., through civil society. The leadership of the dominant group needs continual renewal and maintenance in...
Theorizing the Subject Reference library
Sidonie Smith
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory
...of Marx, Louis Althusser shifted the focus to the social subject as a subject of ideology, not in the narrow sense of propaganda but in a sense of the pervasive cultural formations of the dominant class (what he termed “state apparatuses”). Althusser differentiated “Repressive State Apparatuses” (RSAs) from “Ideological State Apparatuses” (ISAs), the former, such as the police, being more openly coercive, and the latter, such as educational institutions, less overtly coercive. Describing the process through which RSAs and ISAs “hail” or call the subject who...
Diaspora Reference library
Smaro Kamboureli
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory
...projects seeking justice, they can engender conflict between Indigenous and diasporic communities while they also bear the potential for solidarity. 17 The culture of redress may manifest as a contestation of and an intervention into a settler nation’s homogenizing and repressive apparatuses, but this does not mean that the ethics and politics that mobilize it are the same in diasporic and Indigenous contexts. Not only are the stakes different, but the strategies and tactics employed, along with the cultural expressions that serve as testimonies instrumental...
The Matter of Drafts Reference library
Jani Scandura
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory
...realm of fantasy, itself impossible to achieve. 288 It is due to the fantasy of complete erasure, of undoing the past, that the destruction of manuscripts and books by burning holds a special significance in the realm of political atrocities and has had a prominent role in repressive regimes since antiquity. The Nazi ideal of Gleichschaltung was brought to visible culmination in the university student burning of “un-German” books and manuscripts on May 10, 1933 —and these were only a portion of the books and manuscripts intentionally and unintentionally...
Ideological State Apparatus Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2 ed.)
...State Apparatus ( ISA ) French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser ’s concept for what is known in contemporary political discourse as ‘soft power’, i.e. the form of power that operates by means of ideological persuasion rather than violent, physical coercion. The latter ‘hard power’ form is referred to as the Repressive State Apparatus ( RSA ). Ideology, for Althusser, is an essential part of the smooth running of any form of government, even the most violent and repressive governments, because without the active support of at least a...
Althusser, Louis (1918–90) Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2 ed.)
... superstructure , by creating the analytic apparatus to explain how the two levels interact. Comprised of two interrelated but distinct systems, the Repressive State Apparatus ( RSA ) and the Ideological State Apparatus ( ISA ), the superstructure provides the conditions needed for the infrastructure to operate by facilitating the reproduction of the social relations inherent to capitalist production. Control of the RSAs (e.g., police, army, courts, prisons) is not sufficient by itself to maintain power, the state must also achieve hegemony over and in...
Homeboy Masculinity Reference library
José Navarro
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latina and Latino Literature
...movement away from her literal home, her cultura, y su familia , in the first chapter, “ Movimientos de rebeldía y las culturas que traicionan .” In this chapter, she argues that the expulsions of queer Chicanas from la familia is a repressive function of Chicana/o culture and, therefore, her move away from this repressive and ideological “home” is a movement of rebellion against heteropatriarchy. She then connects this critique of the Chicano home to her larger Chicana feminist framework that posits a necessity for a queer Chicana familia by giving voice...
Transnational Capitalism in Latina/o Literature Reference library
Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latina and Latino Literature
...apparatuses since the 1940s. 5 Radical changes in one sphere of production always lead to additional changes in other spheres and to the expansion of capital to other areas. 6 Each new change in technology and production also leads to different cultural logics as well as to both the accommodation and resistance of workers, given the necessary class structure of capitalism. Capitalism has been global since its inception, although the notion of the “world” was limited before 1492 . Already by then there existed the absolutist state, as in...
Hispanic Caribbean Sexiles Reference library
Consuelo Martínez-Reyes
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latina and Latino Literature
...to a “real” (and the only) revolution going on in Cuba. Thus, leaving the island proved to be oppressive for Arenas, as he had to opt for the fixed sexual identity at work in the United States. 19 It follows that leaving the island for sexual “freedom” paradoxically became repressive and hindered his ability to connect his sexuality to his politics. 20 Many of the Cubans leaving the island during the Mariel Boatlift faced rejection due to their sexual practices both on the island and in the United States, as at the moment of their arrival the US Immigration...
Chicana/o Gang Narratives Reference library
José Navarro
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latina and Latino Literature
...assessment of the ideological limitations of social banditry, populist rebellions, and nationalist insurgencies.” He adds, “These crime-based subcultures are not always empowering and, to be honest, rarely revolutionary. On the contrary, crime-as-subaltern agency can be as repressive as, and integral to, colonial domination.” 55 Additionally, the cultural-nationalist framework connecting the bandido to the cholo is too broad and does not sufficiently situate the Chicana/o gang figure in the specific historical and material conditions from which the Chicana/o...
Print Culture and Censorship from Colonial Latin America to the US Latina/o Presence in the 19TH Century Reference library
Matthew J. K.Hill
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latina and Latino Literature
...materials required careful scrutiny through censorship, a familiar concept throughout Europe and not one exclusive to Spain or Portugal. Censorship in Spain took two different forms: a priori and a posteriori, that is, before publication (preventive) and after publication (repressive). 13 In 1502 , Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic kings, promulgated the first press censorship law in Spain, mandating that “no book should be printed, imported, or displayed for sale without the examination and previous license of the royal Council of Castile.” 14 In...
