ABSTRACT
In his provocative study Domination and the Arts of Resistance, James Scott examines what he terms public transcripts, that is, the public and visible interaction between the dominant and the subordinate. Affirming similar ground plowed by Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks, Scott argues and successfully demonstrates that while public transcripts provide the most immediate understanding of the power relationship between the powerful and the powerless, they veil a more critical engagement occurring beneath the surface in the hidden transcripts. From this framework, he goes on to do battle with the theory of hegemony, which, he contends, at best misunderstands the counteroppositional power that lies in both the performance of the public transcript and the empowering character of the hidden one. Neither an imprudent defiance of overwhelming power nor a complete ideological subjugation characterizes the subaltern’s relationship to power, Scott argues. It is the space in between these two extremes that functions as more a continuum expressed in the dialectic between the hidden and the public, and there the counteropposition voice and actions of the oppressed can be found.
