Power Relations Inscribed in Narratives 

Among the concepts the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, developed is symbolic violence. It is an extension of the term “violence” to include various modes of social/cultural domination. Symbolic violence is the unnoticed and unconscious domination that over time can evolve into every-day social habits, such that the conscious subject doesn’t recognize it as domination or a form of psycho-social violence.

Symbolic violence is thus defined as oppression that is executed within structures of social relationships where it is incubated by oppressive and exploitative behaviour. It is often dependent upon existing social attitudes that the narratives twist into enabling rationalizations for the oppression. In this way, the oppression is not directly linked to threats of physical violence, as in traditional force-reliant authoritarian political economies (although force-reliant systems also employ symbolic violence in order to minimize the need for execution of raw force). 

Oppression linked to patterns of symbolic violence is an important element in the way exploitative and contested arrangements are imposed upon a populace by political and economic elites. In this function, the symbolic violence mainly operates through two overlapping forms: 

A) Memetic narratives (narratives anchored upon memes, or words with constructed and purposive meanings) that inculcate social beliefs built on misrecognitions, designed to obscure the factual oppression and exploitation perpetrated by a dominant elite. 

B) Status domination, whereby contestable social relationships are attempted removed from the area of contest by invoking the status, or alleged professional competence, of people who act as rationalizers for the exploitative social arrangements. 

Memes are word or phrases or even stories that are constructed and brought forward in order to promote certain defined interests. Thus, from their inception they do not attempt to simply convey factual observations or knowledge as elements of a discourse. Their nature and purposes are to change behaviour by twisting perceptions.

As a practical matter, memes tend to anchor upon existing, well-recognized social beliefs and cultural norms in order to gain credence and reduce potential resistance. However, they insert twists into the recognized perceptions or norms that produce an appearance of support for the interests of the meme creator (or the interests of his or her principals). In the current political economy, actual meme creators (outside of the purely commercial use of memes in advertising) are most likely to be the in the modern political landscape ubiquitous spin-doctors and pollsters, often working with support staffs that include high-level scientists in the various relevant social and cognitive fields.

In general, when memes inculcate purposive misrecognitions into the public universe of debates and contest, they become building blocks in the construction of the interest-promoting narratives that flourish in the modern political fields. The creation of memes is therefore an important tool in the modus operandi of the current political economy. 

In the case of the neoliberal narratives, the main social conditions that they attempt to divert attention away from are the economic inequalities and the inherently exploitative tendencies incipient to modern corporate-led market capitalism. In support of this endeavour, the market fundamentalist version of economics have become an important auxiliary by producing memes that anchor on people’s vague conceptions of what markets are, whereupon it twists these vague connotations into the misrecognition of unfettered markets as an absolute and unquestionable social good under all conditions, even when it—as has been the case in the neoliberal economy—leads to preposterous social and economic inequalities as well as environmental neglect. 

When employed as political spin, memes quite often latch on to discriminatory attitudes, since such attitudes, by their propensity to evoke aggression, have shown to be especially effective in diverting attention away from the underlying factual conditions. The effectiveness of memes with aggression-evoking discriminatory twists partly explains the predilection of right-wing politicians to employ hot-button cultural issues. 

In general, the effects created by the various forms of symbolic violence cause the social beliefs of receptive individuals to twist into states that solidify into inflexible misrecognitions that are no longer contested by the subjects. This, of course, often happens without the subjects are aware of the change in their perspectives that constant exposure to the narratives of symbolically violence have engendered over time. 

When a set of misrecognitions becomes a dominant expression of identity that is shared within specific social sub-groups, it will create codes of social paroles that combine patterns of speech, dress codes and even bodily comportment into serving as social identification codes. Of course, this is a fairly common phenomenon in the general culture, and in many social situations subjecting oneself to behaviour of coded parole can be an innocuous way of enhancing a specific social experience such as, say, watching a sports match, where the subjection to the paroles associated with a favoured team—for instance expressed by dressing in its colours—creates a shared experience that might enhance the enjoyment. 

However, when the engendered behaviour is the result of misrecognitions that have been inserted into economic and political fields, the social reactions created are politically purposive and therefore of a quite different nature. As a misrecognition solidifies within a social group and is carried forward by its identifying paroles, the shared experience—which for instance might be experienced during political rallies where the misrecognition is the basis for the group’s coherence—will create a psychological feedback loop that will tend to further solidify the misrecognition. The feedback loop is a function of the fact that the misrecognition is now tied to an emotional experience (the uplift of the rally) that is sought repeated, but which only can exist—and thus only be repeated—by continuing to embrace the socio-political views hidden in the misrecognition.

It is important to discern the fundamental difference between participation in social discourse based on the open exchange of arguments—which is empowering and therefore can be part of expansive and self-actualizing experiences—from activity participation that is based on misrecognitions. When an experience is tied to misrecognitions, it creates a crucial psychological defensive barrier around the given form of social expression. Therefore, all encounters in the social fields that might put the misrecognition under threat are liable to be met with rejection, and quite likely even with aggression, since the subject’s verification of his or her own identity now is closely tied to the misrecognition. In other words, social participation that predominantly is based on misrecognitions will not be empowering, but on the contrary, de-powering, shutting down the ability to absorb new facts and freely engage in the discourses of civil society with differently opinionated and minded individuals. 

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