Hi there and welcome to our session on Îpower in contemporary modernitiesâ. This session is organised by a group of PhD studends who work at different Dutch speaking universities in North Belgium and organised themself in what they consider a Critical Research Centre for Communication and Culture, working independently. What brought us together in the first place is our common interest in discourse analysis and discourse theory.

In this session, we start from the assumption that there is a debate within current social and cultural theory on the status of power in contemporary modernities. Foucault's analytics of power has proven fruitful for critical interpretation of the way power produces subjectivities, spaces, economies and truth. However, as theorists of modern reflexivity and antagonism ÷ people like Anthony Giddens, Edward Said or Chantal Mouffe ÷ have argued, the execution of power may not be as monolithic as Foucault implied. From our distinctive theoretical backgrounds and our different empirical case-studies, we want to problematize today's power relations, leaving more space for conceptualising politics, ambivalence and disarticulation in the hegemonic structuring of modernity.

My name is Patrick De Vos. I'm a PhD student at the Department of Polical Science at the Ghent University, working on issues like ideological transformation, globalisation and the welfare state. In this session I will act mainly as a discussant, ... introducing, commenting, and contextualising the individual papers of the other Îreal lifeâ participants, since each paper has been prepared and discussed prior to this conference.

So my role will consist of introducing the presentations of the other participants, and of initiating the debate on power and contemporary modernities afterwards. My contribution to the session will therefore be both a sedimentation of our previous discussions, as well as an interpretation of the theoretical issues from within my own background as a political scientist.

The other participants, in order of appearance, are ... first of all, Sofie Van Bauwel. Her PhD research concerns multiple gender identities in popular culture. Her paper will deal with the contradictions in discourses on genderbending. In our current western society, genderbending is apparently an increasingly popular articulation of politics. But do people actually read the so called bending of genders as a subversive practice? Using focus-group-interviews, Sofie rearticulates the concept of Îresistance through pleasureâ, pointing out that there is an ambivalence between the academic discourse on genderbending and the readings of the bending of genders by young media consumers. What academics say is that the act of gender is situated in, on, around and through the body. But young consumers dislocate the resistance against masculine and feminine roles away from the body, ... for example by emphasizing the lyrics of the songs in videoclips. Somehow Foucaults romanticed deviancy seems to fade away in the reading of these youngsters.

Next in line is Arun Saldanha. For his PhD, heâs doing ethnographical research on psychedelic and travellerâs culture in the former Portuguese colony of Goa, in South-India. In his contribution here he emphasizes that most theories of modernity are biased, in the sense that they are Eurocentric. One should realise that there is no such thing as a single modernity. There are indeed others modernities than those in the West and these modernities are complexly constructed as well. In contemporary postcolonial spaces such as Goa, the struggle of defining a modern, Înationalâ identity, against a perceived cultural imperialism of the tourist industry and culture, is taken as a case-study to problematize the Foucauldian conceptions of discourse and power. Through what Arun calls a Îgeography of the tourism critiqueâ, insisting that space is a constitutive dimension of social analysis, he will argue that the case of Goa cannot be seen as a straightforward resistance to forces of globalization.

The third paper will be presented by Jan Teurlings. In his ongoing PhD research, as in this paper, he approaches a specific genre of commercial television programs, which one could label Îdating showsâ or Îlove game showsâ. Shows that have names like ÎBlind Dateâ or ÎStreet Mateâ, and which have been broadcasted on British as well as on Belgian and Dutch television channels. Using a Foucauldian framework and Foucauldian notions like Îproductive powerâ, or Foucaults ideas on regulation and management, Jan then wants to comprehend what is actually happening during the production process of these shows. He will argue, that what one sees, is that participants and production team alike, enter into a relationship of alliances and conflicts, which leads to resistance as well as compliance. His main argument is that one should not celebrate resistance thorough: it can just as well be a guarantee for power to work effectively. This paper is a theoretical exploration of the interlinked concepts of power, resistance and identity as they emerge from his research.

The final paper is from Nico Carpentier. For his already advanced PhD research on deconstruction of participation in audience discussion programmes, Nico is essentially concerned with power relations within media systems. In these programs, as he will point out in his paper, the voices of so called Îordinary peopleâ are given a forum to talk about their everyday experiences. But these voices are managed to a considerably high degree, which brings fundamental notions, like Îparticipationâ and Îempowermentâ of the audience, into an altogether different perspective.Using two broadcasts on immigrants and racism as case studies, and combining notions of power as they were developed by Giddens and Foucault, Nico will first bring into focus the generative as well as the repressive aspects of these power relations. Finally he will turn to the Foucauldian question of the Îoverall effectâ and the production of discourses on power, resistance, participation and empowerment.

Now, before I give the floor to Sofie Van Bauwel, let me just briefly say that after these presentations Iâll be back to summarise the main tenets and to reflect on each of the papers. Finally I will open up the session for discussion and questions. There will be at least 20 minutes for further exploration of the theoretical issues with the audience.