The injustice of ideological power: a Lacanian interrogation with a dash of Foucault of its implications for planning in a neoliberal world
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Date
2016
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AESOP
Abstract
Since the 1970s, critical planning theory, in its various liberal, Marxian, post-structural and related persuasions, has extensively explored the concepts of power and ideology, and particularly, how both have been deployed in the manifestation of social and spatial injustice. Yet, the concept of ideology and how it acts as a mechanism of power to structure social relations has often been often discounted in much of this more recent critical literature (Gunder 2015a). This includes that predicated on Foucault’s very insightful conceptualisations of power and discourse, for he ‘admonishe[d] us to move on from a concept of ideology, or hegemony, as it still maintains the concept of sovereignty’ (Gunder 2010: 304). Foucault’s conceptualisations of the nature of power in regard to governmentality, normalisation and inter-subjective relationships continues to provide important insights for understanding contemporary planning contexts; yet, these are often contexts driven by a ‘hegemonic discourse’ of a neo-liberal ideological vision of self-reliant society predicated by ‘self-managing and enterprising individuals’ (Davoudi and Madanipour 2013: 557). Indeed, this paper contends that we continue to reside in a globalised society largely predicated and shaped by sovereign transcendent ideas of a world of progressive entrepreneurial betterment. This is a world still largely produced and structured by ideology.
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Proceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the south
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