The Hidden Transcripts

1450 Words6 Pages
The hidden transcript: a novelty in understanding hegemony and resistance T he novelty of the way James C. Scott handles the language of politics and social movements in Domination and the Arts of Resistance is his introduction of the ‘hidden transcript’ and ‘public transcript’. Put briefly; ‘transcript’ stands for a complete record of speech and non-speech acts such as gestures and expressions. ‘Public performance’, in most general sense, is the performance “required of those subject to elaborate and systematic forms of social subordination: the tenant to the landlord, the slave to the master, a member of a subject race to one of the dominant race …” (1992: 2). Scott attributes the term ‘public transcript’ to the open interaction between subordinates and dominants. Thus, the ‘performance’ we will mention is not the usual exchange of pleasantries at others but the one which has a “strategic dimension”, or as George Eliot claimed; “there is no action possible without a little acting” (p. 1). Action in this line summarizes Scott’s discussion on how resistance indeed emerges offstage (p. 184 – 192: The Infra-politics of Subordinate Groups). This calls for another realm of interactions - ‘the hidden transcript’ since the public transcript alone “is unlikely to tell the whole story about power relations” (p. 2 - 4). Turning back to the context of ‘theatrical imperatives’ in public situations, which simply require giving a credible performance; the lines and gestures of the ‘libretto’ represented by the dominant is followed Creating this artistic analogy, Scott lays bare how the public transcript, by its nature is (ibid); … evidence for the hegemony of dominant discourse. It is in precisely this public domain where the effects of power relations are most manifest, and any analysis based exclusively on the public transcript is likely to conclude that subordinate groups
Open Document