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Easier Than Saying No: Domination, Interpellation, and the Puzzle of Acquiescence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2023

Alexandra Kogl
Alexandra Kogl*
Affiliation:
Political Science Department, University of Northern Iowa, 1227 W. 27th St., Cedar Falls, IA 50614
*
Corresponding author. Email: ana.kogl@uni.edu
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Abstract

This article treats ambiguous heterosexual experiences—not quite rape, but not quite “just sex” either—as a form of domination, distinct from both coercion and productive power. It argues that if we wish to make sense of the power dynamics involved in these experiences, it may be useful to view the domination that takes place as a kind of interpellation, understood in the Althusserian sense as a mutually constitutive dynamic in which ideologies create “good subjects,” and subjects reproduce ideology. Considering heterosexual domination as a form of Althusserian interpellation enables us to see the power in question as an embodied, intersubjective relation that demands the complicity of dominated persons, with lasting effects on their subjectivity. This approach avoids positing the dominated as helpless victims or passive objects, while bearing witness to and shedding light on their experiences.

Type
Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , Fall 2022 , pp. 784 - 800
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

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