Domination and the
Arts of
Resistance
Hidden Transcripts
James C. Scott
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
44 Domination, Acting, and Fantasy
script. The inventiveness and originality of these fantasies He
in the artfulness with which they reverse and negate a particular
domination.50 No one recognized this more fully than W, E. B, Du
Bois, who wrote of the double* consciousness of the American black
arising from racial domination: "Such a double fife with double
thoughts, double duties, and double social classes must give rise
to double words and double ideals, and tempt the mind to pretense
or revolt, to hypocrisy or radicalism."5} Occasionally, Du Bois
thought of individual blacks as representing one or the other
consciousness. Those given to "revolt" or "radicalism" were those
who "stood ready to curse God and die," while those given to
"pretense" and '"hypocrisy" had forgotten that "life is more than
meat and the body more than raiment," We can, I think, more
usefully think of the former as the hidden transcript and the
latter as the public transcript embodied in the same individual;
the former being the site of the rage and anger generated by the
necessity of preserving a deferential or obsequious public demeanor
despite humiliations. If Du Bois associated the radicalism more
with the North and the hypocrisy with the South, this was probably
because blacks were somewhat freer to speak their mind in the
North.
At this point in the argument, a skeptic might wonder if the
official, or public, transcript of power relations serves any
purpose at all- Who takes it seriously? We have seen that
subordinate groups are generally careful to comport themselves in
ways that do not breach the etiquette of power relations determined
largely from above. Even then, however, they are quite capable of
tactically manipulating appearances for their own ends or using a
show of servility to wall off a world beyond direct power relations
where sharply divergent views may prevail. Dominant elites, for
their part, are unlikely to be completely taken in by outward shows
of deference. They expect that there is more here than meets the
eye (and ear) and that part or all of the performance is in bad
faith. They sense that they are being "jockeyed" even if the
harness is of their own devising. If, then, this is all a gigantic
shell game in which there is no real dupe, why bother with the
pretence? The next chapter addresses this question.
50,A standard and much commented on traditional woman's fantasy
involves an inversion ofdependency in which the dominant male, in
this case the object of affection, would be imagined asbecoming
blind or crippled and thus helpless. The woman entertaining such a
fantasy imaginesboth the harm and the devoted care that would
demonstrate both power and affection.
51."On the Faith of the Fathers,'1 in his The Souls of Black
Folk, 221-22.
CHAPTER THREE
The Public Transcript as a Respectable Performance
The humbling of inferiors is necessary for the maintenance of
social order.
MADAME DE sV!GN
He who is master cannot be free.
j-j. roussfau
The Value and Cost of the Public Transcript
relations of domination are, at the same time, relations of
resistance. Once established, domination does not persist of its
own momentum. Inasmuch as it involves the use of power to extract
work, production, services, taxes against the will of the
dominated, it generates considerable friction and can be sustained
only by continuous efforts at reinforcement, maintenance, and
adjustment. A good part of the maintenance work consists of the
sym-bolization of domination by demonstrations and enactments of
power. Every visible, outward use of power each command, each act
of deference, each list and ranking, each ceremonial order, each
public punishment, each use of an honorific or a term of derogation
is a symbolic gesture of domination that serves to manifest and
reinforce a hierarchical order. The persistence of any pattern of
domination is always problematic, and one may well ask what, given
the resistances to it, is required to keep it in place how many
beatings, failings, executions, secret understandings, bribes,
warnings, concessions and, not least, how many public
demonstrations of grandeur, exemplary punishment, beneficence,
spiritual rectitude, and so forth?
I hope in this chapter to identify first, in a rough and ready
way, the political work represented by the public transcript.
Affirmation, concealment, euphemization and stigmatization, and
finally, the appearance of unanimity seem central to the dramaturgy
of the sorts of domination analyzed here. Expanding on the notion
of unanimity, I then argue that dominant elites attempt to portray
social action in the public transcript as, metaphorically, a
parade, thus denying, by omission, the possibility of autonomous
social action
45
Public Transcript us
Public Transcript as Performance 47
by subordinates. Inferiors who actually assemble at their own
initiative are typically described as mobs or rabble- Finally, I
return to the question raised at the end of chapter 2: who,
precisely, is the audience for these displays?
Some events are planned essentially as discursive affirmations
of a particular pattern of domination. The May Day parade in Red
Square is a massive display of hierarchy an
