Summary: Political Ecology Of Water

Read the summary and the most important questions on Political Ecology of Water

• Foucault and Power

• What is the main lesson we can take from Foucaults (video 1)?

  Look at history not from a 'now is better' perspective, but use history as an inspiration to live your life in the modern time better.

• What's discursive in this sense? How does it relate to Foucault?

  Textual/linguistic. An example of textual: a 'manual' of bad/good practices in medical science. 
  
  Excavation and comparison across different periods
  of discursive formations as the basis of his first ideologies/work.

• Name two main methodological foundations of his theory?

  1. From archeology to geneology: study development and change in science/other. 
  2. Excavation and comparison across diff periods of discursive formations

• Why is capillary action related to Foucaults perceptives?

  He looks at power as a concept that is everywhere. He sees it as something that works bottom-up.

• Louis Althusser talks about interpellation, e.g. In the form of a Power Hail. What is interpellation?

  How do your inside and the world outside interact?
  
  Interpellation is a process in which we encounter and internalize power, and be recognized by power.
  
  Interpellation is highly related to imagination (cannot go without eachother)

• Do we experience power consciously or unconsciesly (following Althusser)?

  Unconsciously, as we a exposed to it as kids in a variety of domains. The family is important, as this is a.o. Where this conditioning occurs.

• Panoptican gaze is a Foucaults perspective. Why?

  Because power is diffusive, embodied and enacted, discursive, constitutes and forms agents/subjects and acts through normalisation. 

• Self-surveillance, self-policing are forms of power that one exerts on oneself. What are they the result of?

  Panopticon gaze, the feeling that you're being watched and subsequently internalize this power and change your behaviour into self-surveillance, etc.

• What did Judith Butler  try to combine?

  Bring the perspectives of Foucault and Freud together.

• How does Judith Butlers' "I would rather exist in subordination than not exist" relate to feminism? What happens if we turn against the power?

  It's is very hard to step out of subordination, and when we do, we turn against both the power, but also against ourselves (because that power/discourse has been internalized/normalized). This results in a very deep trauma/melancholy, which is hard to overcome. Women often 'agree' with existing in subordination than not existing at all.