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form of everyday experiences. As such, the violence and violation
conduced from public events such as war, colonization, or military
coercion, instead of creating trauma, are turned into affective
events of subject-formation. Characters move through the
historical events, responding to the intensity of the events in the
milieu, making adjustments and adaptation, and undergoing
transformation.
In order to substantiate my argument that affective response
can be a force contributing to subject-formation, I find it useful to
draw a parallel between historiography and Foucaudian theory of
power. If we place the formation of affective subject in the matrix
of Foucauldian discourse of power, the events of the public can be
seen as the manifestations of institutional power, while the crisis in
the everyday is that of the disciplinary power.
Institutional power
is top-down and coercive, and is exercised through government
and institutions; disciplinary power is implicated in everyday life
and exercised through disciplinary institutions, such as schools,
hospitals, families, and intimate domains. Hardt and Negri would
call the institutional power a transcendent form of rule, and the
subtle disciplinary power an immanent form of governance.
5
While transcendent power is repressive, and often results in
outright confrontation and resistance, the immanent form of rule,
i.e. disciplinary governance, appears to be positive for it produces
knowledge and discourses internalized by individuals, hence
enabling individuals to govern themselves. The writing of national
history often concentrates on events of epochal significance, thus
foregrounding the exercise of transcendent power
—
the power of
the government and institutions
—
which assimilates the subject into
5
The terms immanence and transcendence are originated from Deleuze and
Guattari and adopted by Hardt and Negri to differentiate a specific form of
power (immanence) that characterizes the boundless space of Empire from
that of the sovereign power (transcendence). For Hardt and Negri, the power
of immanence is an uncontainable power, which is protean with infinite
creativity. This immanent power is in contrast with a restricting power of
transcendence. See Hardt and Negri (2000)
.