The Practice of Everyday Life
Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Print.
Summaryde Certeau uses a poetic style throughout his text. He begins with an investigation of sorts as to how users operate. The General Introduction offers a nice overview of the book's themes. The text at large is about how consumers use what they purchase. In Chapter IV, Certeau denies the originality of authorship, including his own originality.
de Certeau spends time on the notions of strategy and tactic. Tactic has the power of the everyday, while strategy conceals connections to power. One of the tensions here is the strategy of self-disciplining versus the tactic of breaking out of self discipline (36). The notion of inscribing is also important (8). The paradox of authority involves both the enacted and inscribed. ResponseIn Chapter IV, de Certeau denies the originality of authorship, including his own originality. This makes sense to me, as we are always drawing on a sea of others' ideas that have formed over time.
In class, we discussed how strategies are used by institutions, while tactics are used by individuals. I find the disconnect between institutions and people fascinating. It's as if only mass groups of people can hold power, but never alone. I was particularly moved by the notion of mass marginality (xvii). de Certeau explains how marginal groups are the silent majority. We traditionally view the majority group as having the most power, so his shift of writing the traditional minority into the majority is worthy of mentioning. I love the concept of pedestrians seeing the city as text, while also writing it (chapter VII). While de Certeau isn't necessarily saying here that the individual gains power though his or her surroundings, the concept of people creating something good as a group--and being part of the meaning-making (powerful) process--this idea is a pleasurable one. Connections/QuestionsChapter IV is about Foucault and his work to connect the everyday to ideology and habitus.
Both de Certeau and Foucault believe that language has agency. In Chapter IV, Certeau denies the originality of authorship, including his own originality. This reminds me of Derrida's talk on how all words/signifiers are dependent upon other words/signifiers (7), as just as we words are formed from other worlds, our ideas, too, are not completely original. Bakhtin suggests that there are two forces in language (272): one pulls in and the other pushes out (centripetal and centrifugal). These forces occur in any word, and may be seen as essentially layers on words. de Certeau says we exist in bodies, while strategies distance us and tactics draw us in. In class we discussed the word, metis, which appears on page xix in de Certeau. Metis, the rhetorical art of cunning, which uses embodied strategies to transform rhetorical situations, reminds me a bit of Derrida's concept of deconstructions. Specifically, Derrida's way of using other theorists' words, and twisting them around to argue against their own ideas seems to have a cunning element to it. |
Key Quotes
"What is an art, or 'way of making'?" (xv)
"Marginality is becoming universal. A marginal group has now become a silent majority" (xvii).
“By adopting the point of view of enunciation—which is the subject of our study—we privilege the act of speaking; according to that point of view, speaking operates within the field of a linguistic system; it effects an appropriation, or reappropriation, of language by its speakers; it establishes a present relative to a time and a place; and it posits a contract with the other (the interlocutor) in a network of places and relations. These four characteristics of the speech acts can be found in many other practices (walking, cooking, etc.)” (xiii).
“Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless ways on the property of others” (xii).
"[Tactics] show the extent to which intelligence is inseparable from the everyday struggles and pleasures that it articulates" (xx).
“Art is thus a kind of knowledge that operates outside the enlightened discourse which it lacks” (66).
“If the art of speaking is itself an art of operating and an art o thinking, practice and theory can be present in it” (77).
"The act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language" (97).
"It thus seems possible to give a preliminary definition of walking as a space of enunciation" (98).
Writing as a “mythic practice” (134)
"Marginality is becoming universal. A marginal group has now become a silent majority" (xvii).
“By adopting the point of view of enunciation—which is the subject of our study—we privilege the act of speaking; according to that point of view, speaking operates within the field of a linguistic system; it effects an appropriation, or reappropriation, of language by its speakers; it establishes a present relative to a time and a place; and it posits a contract with the other (the interlocutor) in a network of places and relations. These four characteristics of the speech acts can be found in many other practices (walking, cooking, etc.)” (xiii).
“Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless ways on the property of others” (xii).
"[Tactics] show the extent to which intelligence is inseparable from the everyday struggles and pleasures that it articulates" (xx).
“Art is thus a kind of knowledge that operates outside the enlightened discourse which it lacks” (66).
“If the art of speaking is itself an art of operating and an art o thinking, practice and theory can be present in it” (77).
"The act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language" (97).
"It thus seems possible to give a preliminary definition of walking as a space of enunciation" (98).
Writing as a “mythic practice” (134)