Course:WMST307:Student Pages:Conor Wigert

Ex-nomination, a term coined by Roland Barthes in the seventies, describes the process by which dominating structures go un-named. In this, hierarchal powers maintain their power through an assumption of normalization. They place themselves outside the realm of discourse as they are normalized in opposition to the named ‘other’. This explains the need to attach marginalized races, gender, or sexuality onto the identities that live outside of the named majority. Heterosexual identified bodies do not need to ‘come-out’ because their heterosexuality is assumed. Male identified comedians are not asked to describe what it is like to be a funny man, because their gender is the assumed majority within the industry. As John Hartley explains, ‘The ideological implications of this process are that certain privileged positions in culture are able to present themselves as beyond discourse and outside of the act of naming’ (101). Privilege, a result of ex-nomination, is so hard to explain to the privileged because they are not named as so. When this privilege goes un-named, it complicates the conceptualization of its normative properties.

In its origins, Barthes utilized ex-nomination to explain the bourgeoisie in the French class structure. The bourgeoisie, or, in his terms, ‘the class that goes un-named’, ‘needs no name because it names everything’(Bhattacharjee 21). The tendency here to name others is at the root of stereotyping, and is often reductive of the ‘other’. As described in the textbook, the other within this framework ‘is never neutral; rather it is conceived as deviation from a standard’. Furthermore, this status of deviance works implicitly and explicitly to establish the others as ‘badder than we are’, because they are placed lower in the hierarchy because of their marginalization by the process of being named (225). Group identity is therefore established as communities are formed on their oppositional characteristics to other groups.

References

Barthes, Roland (1972) Mythologies. London: Paladin

Bhattacharjee, A. "The Habit of Ex-Nomination: Nation, Woman, and The Indian Immigrant Bourgeoisie." Public Culture 5.1 (1992): 19-44. Duke University Press Journals. Web

Hartley, John, Martin Montgomery, Ellie Rennie, and Marc Brennan. Communication, Cultural and Media Studies: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge, 2002. Scribd. Web.

O'Brien, Susie & Imre Szeman. Popular Culture: A User's Guide. 1st Ed. Toronto: Nelson Education, 2004. 353. Print.