Walking In The City Analysis

Power dynamics are at play in almost every relationship that exists in today’s society. One thing that is less often considered is that power almost always exists as a dynamic of give and take, hegemony and counter-hegemony, power and resistance. Because of the high prevalence of power dynamics, there are many different styles of the relationship. Two essays that explore different versions of this relationship are “Walking in the City” by Michel de Certeau and “(Male) Desire and (Female) Disgust: Reading Hustler” by Laura Kipnis. In each essay, the author writes extensively on an exchange of power that exists in today’s society. While Kipnis explores a source of resistance against class hegemony found in popular culture, de Certeau has a less obvious subject that is
In reading “Hustler”, Kipnis is surprised to find that the low and popular men’s magazine isn’t about the male gaze, but rather operates as a deeply cultural counter-hegemonic resistance to the bourgeois class. The magazine takes the “feminist, bourgeois, [and] academic” and makes them an implied target of their work by subjecting them to what would be considered below their levels of class. It critiques the dominant ideology of society and so empowers the implied reader, those below the bourgeois. Here, the power at play is a more classic version of power, where people are forced to conform through dominant ideology and the resistance is more obvious then was de Certeau’s. The subject of Kipnis’ essay is a clear resistance against what could be considered a clear form of oppression while de Certeau has a subject, walking in the city, that appears mundane and takes analysis to find the quiet, panoptic power and the resistance. Despite this difference, both essays are very similar in that they talk about a subject taking the hegemonic power and making it into the