ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the power/resistance relation through exploring the concepts of discourse and representation. It shows how identities and different images of identity can be seen as representations that might challenge different discourses. However, resistance is not only a response to power, which might display power, but resistance also affects power relations, creating entangled interactions between power and resistance. In Michel Foucault's description of disciplinary power, power prevails as at least partly repressive. The very base of the discourse theory of Laclau consists of a few structuring notions: discourses are never 'done'; meaning can never be fixed; and there is a constant battle in regard to the different signs of discourse. Hall argues that identities are the result of a successful articulation or 'chaining' of the subject into flow of discourses. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR, where the concept of resistance is heard more often than 'revolution', 'its connotations must be clarified'.