HARVARD COLLEGE

Modeling Minorities
An Examination of the Causes and Effects of
Majority and Minority Power Relations
Jason J. Wong
5/17/2008

Table of Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2
Power-Relationships in Society ..................................................................................................................... 3
Sigmund Freud .......................................................................................................................................... 3
Michel Foucault......................................................................................................................................... 4
Simone de Beauvoir .................................................................................................................................. 5
The Problem and the Solution ...................................................................................................................... 6
Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................. 7

This essay is primarily concerned with existing power relations among minorities in today’s society. We
begin with Simone de Beauvoir’s analysis of the subjugation of women, and use this discussion to
springboard into the idea that her ideas can be expanded to encompass not only women, but most
minorities. In order to gain a better idea of the existing power relations among majorities and
minorities, we attempt to look at Freud and Focault’s idea of society and civilization, and how societies
and civilizations shape the individuals that comprise them. Finally we conclude with the thought that
although economic conditions have allowed for greater equality than before, that is, that capitalism
tends to break down discriminatory barriers, minorities will never truly be free of their subjugation
unless society is made more aware of their existence, and culturally highlight the diversity of the human
race rather than limit it.
Introduction
In her 1949 treatise on the condition of women, Simone de Beauvoir sought to explain how it
came to be that women came to be regarded as the “Other” as opposed to equals. Titled The Second
Sex, this work analyzes how the group of people who she deemed as relatively alien, unexplored and
second-class in society has come to be treated as objects rather than equally transcendent individuals.
This essay does not seek to refute Beauvoir’s views on the condition of women. Rather, this essay hopes
to utilize Beauvoir’s book as a springboard for a discussion of minorities and the subjugation of
minorities by analyzing and evaluating this treatise on women. One of the major faults of this work is
that an analysis of only one group of people does not nearly go far enough. Beauvoir’s analysis on
women is particularly valuable and salient because much of what she explores can be applied not only
to women, but to any group of people whose rights and liberties are frequently suppressed or denied
outright.

Given the enduring nature of human conflict among such groups, the importance of Beauvoir’s
analysis on women and other analyses on human subjugation cannot be understated. Conflicts naturally
arise when one group of people possess power over another, or seek to possess power over another.
The number of examples supporting this idea is substantial: the attempt to attain power over Jerusalem
has led to religious conflicts in that area for millennia; colonization is a historical example of social and
economic subjugation (the effects of which are present to this day) that have led to military and social
conflict for centuries; what are wars but an attempt on behalf of states and/or people to acquire
territory, wealth, and power from other states (or the prevention of such ambitions), etc. etc. The
struggle for equal rights in America was also a struggle of the minority’s attempt to affirm itself as
equals to a hostile populace.

The complex interactions and relationships among competing groups of people, given their vast
number, are difficult to explicate outright. The optimistic idea of human progress presupposes the
sentiment that human conflict can be minimized if not stopped altogether. Modern society is
increasingly globalized and interconnected. Many people, even in a country as diverse as America, are
increasingly exposed to a variety of new peoples and cultures. Modern technology has raise our
standard of living and increased the ease of access to travel, and yet at the same time has increased our
potential to harm each other and destabilize entire communities.

This paper seeks to raise the question of what can we do to minimize group conflicts, and at the
same time increase our potential to live in a more harmonious society. Beauvoir offers a poignant
analysis on the subjugation of women in society, which when assessed from other ideas as expressed by
Freud and Foucault, also offer a salient, although incomplete, analysis of the subjugation of
minorities. This paper hopes to show that although power relations among minorities and the rest of
society cannot be avoided, steps can be taken to minimize conflict and promote social harmony through
the use of social policy, science, and popular culture.
Power-Relationships in Society
Key to our understanding of the nature, concept, and theory of a peaceful and increasingly
multicultural society are the thinkers Simone de Beauvoir, Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault.
Beauvoir, Freud, and Foucault all address a perennial problem concerning the power relationships
among individuals and groups in society. Freud is concerned about the relationship between civilized
society and the individual. In his work on Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud asks the question,
“What means does civilization employ in order to inhibit the aggressiveness which opposes it, to make it
harmless, to get rid of it, perhaps?” (Freud, p. 83) Foucault takes up the sobering idea that society is a
manifestation by which the struggle for and application of power is unavoidable. Society necessitates
the development of “docile bodies” from which a structured organization can emerge (Foucault, pp. 137
- 138). Key to the development of the docile body, for Foucault, is the ability to discipline and punish. In
his book, aptly titled Discipline & Punish, Foucault writes that order is centered on the idea of
punishment. Both propagate the other, which leads to the unhappy conclusion that a civilization
without power relations, of which the relationship between the majority and the minority is a part, is
impossible.

Beauvoir’s analysis reflects both of what Freud and Foucault have to say concerning power
relations on how women have been subjugated due to their lack of power, and the effects that this
subjugation has had on them. If power differentials among two groups of people are unavoidable,
which in Beauvoir’s analysis takes up the example of the male and the female, then the follow-up
question would be how to control for these power differences that can help us mitigate conflict and
promote harmony and equality? Beauvoir’s solution to this predicament revolves around sociological
and scientific advances and achievements that help minimize biological deficiencies for women, the rise
of a capitalist system that can put women on a more equal playing field, and the increased recognition
of literature, philosophical ideals, and successful role models that women can use as models for success.
Taken together, these ideas work to increase our understanding of the treatment of minorities in this
society, who are often dominated by the majority and who are more susceptible to the majority’s
influences.

Sigmund Freud
Freud’s simple answer to the question of, “What means does civilization employ in order to
inhibit the aggressiveness which opposes it, to make it harmless, to get rid of it, perhaps?” (Freud, p. 83),
is the idea that “Civilization, therefore, obtains mastery over the individual’s dangerous desire for
aggression by weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency within him to watch over it, like a
garrison in a conquered city.” (Freud, p. 84) The way in which civilization compels itself among
individuals, however, is anything but simple. In Freud’s view, the suppression of individual emotional
desires is a premise to the development of society. Human beings derive their purpose for life from the
pleasure principle (Freud, p. 25). Freud writes that this “principle dominates the operation of the
mental apparatus from the start.” On the other hand, these pleasures that bring us joy must be
necessarily repressed by society. Freud argues that:

One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be ‘happy’ is not included in
the plan of ‘Creation’. What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the
 (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree,
and it is from its nature only possible as an episodic phenomenon. *…+ Thus our
possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution. (Freud, pp. 25 - 26)

From this line of reasoning we can explicate that the development of a civilization of discontents stems
from the fact that human natural animalistic tendencies are forcibly repressed in order for a civilization
to develop. This is important for our analysis for two reasons that we will now go into.

The first is that a civilization of discontents more easily induces the stupefication of the human
capacity for sympathy that may prevent discrimination and subjugation. It raises the question of what
happens when one group of people imagines that a source of their discontent is the existence of
another, weaker group of people? Similarly, what happens when one group of people imagines that a
methodology in which they can decrease their discontent is through the direct or indirect application of
suffering on others, such as redistributing the weaker group’s property or reallocating them? Secondly,
Freud’s line of reasoning concerning civilization’s ability to repress individual desires is very similar
ideologically to Foucault’s analysis of the political anatomy’s ability to shape individuals. Foucault
argues that punishment, and the power to mete out punishment, is the method by which the machinery
of power (society) explores the human body, “breaks it down and rearranges it.” (Foucault, p. 138) If
this is the case, then this leaves room for society’s political anatomy to shape a more equitably
egalitarian society.

Michel Foucault
Foucault writes that the discovery of the ability of men to control each other through the use of
punishment was a watershed moment in our history. “The historical moment of the disciplines was the
moment when an art of the human body was born, which was directed not only at the growth of its
skills, nor at the intensification of its subjection, but at the formation of a relation that in the mechanism
itself makes it more obedient as it becomes more useful, and conversely.” (Foucault, p. 138) Thus, the
first great communities of men were able to use punishment to mold a more effective society. Think of
the ancient Egyptians ability to build monumental pyramids at the expense of their slaves, which they
forcibly repressed through the use of physical punishment and the threat of capital punishment.
Additionally, Foucault uses the example of the soldier, to which he writes that “the soldier has become
something that can be made; out of a formless clay, an inapt body, the machine required can be
constructed; posture is gradually corrected; a calculated constraint runs slowly through each part of the
body, mastering it, making it pliable, ready at all times, turning silently into the automatism of habit, one
has ‘got rid of the peasant’ and given him ‘the air of a soldier.’” (Foucault, p. 135)

It is important to note that in the past, the major methods by which political entities and society
asserted its control was through physical punishment, murder, humiliation, and other methods that are
presently deemed archaic and barbaric (although Singapore, Taiwan, Japan and the United States are
the few exceptions among democratic industrialized countries that still use the death penalty). This
doesn’t mean that Foucault’s theory on how society controls individuals is any less poignant today than
it was when physical punishment and discipline were more prevalent. Rather, it shows that the
methods that society uses in order to exert its influence on individuals are changing. Now, countries
tend to deprive unsavory people of their liberties rather than torture them.

Simone de Beauvoir
Culturally, people may disapprove and negate by using public opinion acts that society has
deemed problematic, such as homosexuality and sexual abstinence education. Public opinion is utilized
as another form of control by encouraging behaviors that are approved by the political state, or a
majority of people, such as certain religious beliefs, political views, and even certain lifestyle choices.
People in the minority who delineate from these social norms are susceptible to discrimination, loss of
business, and even jail time. Many states have anti-sodomy laws, and although these laws are rarely
enforced anymore, the existence and persistence of such laws and actions (such as discriminatory
legislation and gay hate crimes) are indicative of the majority’s attempt to limit this minority’s lifestyle.

Simone de Beauvoir carefully considers the political and social power-relations that we just
described in the context of how they have worked in tandem to subjugate women. Beauvoir writes how
throughout human history women have been traditionally submissive to men with regards to political
power and influence. On page 139 of her book The Second Sex, Beauvoir writes:

History has shown us that men have always kept in their hands all concrete powers;
since the earliest days of the patriarchate they have thought best to keep woman in a
state of dependence; their codes of law have been set up against her; and thus she has
been definitely established as the Other. This arrangement suited the economic interest
of the males; but it conformed also to their ontological and moral pretensions. Once
the subject seeks to assert himself, the Other, who limits and denies him, is none the
less a necessity to him: he attains himself only through that reality which he is not,
which is something other than himself. That is why man’s life is never abundance and
quietude; it is dearth and activity, it is struggle. (Beauvoir, p. 139)

She takes note of the idea of the powerful projecting themselves on the weaker sex which they hope to
mold according to their own image, like clay. She offers one reason besides economic and biological
conditions that assist in the male’s dominance of the female: culture.

On another level, somewhat different to Freud and Foucault, Beauvoir takes the idea of
subjugation and personalizes its effects by showing how cultural influences can affect the weaker group
in order to propagate stereotypes and other forms of control of the stronger group. Beauvoir gives the
example of the young girl, who has been given mixed identities and is in a state of confusion until she
comes to reject her own desires in place of what society has deemed better for her. Beauvoir writes:

This is the trait that characterizes the young girl and gives us the key to most of her
behavior; she does not accept the destiny assigned to her by nature and by society; and
yet she does not repudiate it completely; she is too much divided against herself to join
battle with the world; she limits herself to a flight from reality or a symbolic struggle
against it. Each of her desires has its corresponding anxiety: she is eager to come into
possession of her future, but she dreads to break with her past; she wants to “have” a
 man, but she does not want him to have her as his prey. And behind each fear lurks a
desire: violation horrifies her, but she yearns toward passivity. She is thus doomed to
insincerity and all its subterfuges; she is predisposed to all kinds of negative obsessions
that express the ambivalence of anxiety and desire. (Beauvoir, p. 352)

In order for this subjugated group of people to transcend their status as objects, several things have to
happen. Beauvoir writes that on the case of the female, first science has to negate several biological
disadvantages. (Beauvoir, p. 34) This has already been accomplished through birth control, and the
advent of machinery and technology that allows for less reliance on muscle power. Secondly, the
economic conditions of society must allow for equal opportunity for both males and females to succeed.
(Beauvoir, p. 369) Finally, the persistence of harmful social stereotypes must be addressed, on both the
part of the oppressor and the oppressed. The oppressor must begin to believe in the equality of
conditions that exist between them and the traditionally subjected class. (Beauvoir, 1952, pp. 352, 430,
480 - 481) The subjugated class must break free of their own reliance on socially determined mores in
order to transcend their status and finally become self-affirming individuals.

The Problem and the Solution

Adam Smith and his Theory of Moral Sentiments return us to the question of what constitutes a
moral society. Smith would argue that the rule of law agreed upon to be instituted by men from which
their conduct would be judged, particularly in respect of property and man’s Natural Rights, is the
foundation for a just society. But herein lays the problem. The idea that men come together and decide
on what rules to follow leaves the door open to a tyranny of the majority; what happens when the
majority of decision makers reject ideas of equality and justice, and decide to pursue their self-interest?

This all brings us back to Beauvoir and our idea that Beauvoir’s problem is not entirely separate
from those of other minorities and groups of people. Beauvoir takes a comprehensive approach
concerning her analysis on the condition of women. Namely, she addresses both biological, and social
and cultural factors that are prescient to our understanding of the second sex. But women aren’t the
only ones in society that are regarded as the “Other.” Group identifications such as minorities,
homosexuals, religious fundamentalists, and even archetypes such as politicians and corporate
executives are also the victims of objectification. Even in an egalitarian society of supposed equals, the
threat of the tyranny of the majority is an ever-present danger.

Freud writes that individual superegos are influenced by impressions from society, especially
from great leaders who are “men of overwhelming force of mind.” (Freud, pp. 106 - 107) Although we
didn’t go into detail about Freud’s better known theories concerning the unconscious, his other theories
on civilization are more relevant to our analysis. Throughout this paper we hoped to show by what
methods society can influence individuals, and in turn how individuals can respond to society’s
influences. In our ever more egalitarian societies, where states are no longer ruled by a single monarch
or king, it is harder to reach systemic reform. Change requires that the majority of the people be
cognizant and educated of their effects on society, and be willing to change. The Civil Rights Movement,
although difficult and risky at the time, goes to show how democratic governments and a group of
people can go a long way in changing racist mores and social prejudices in society. Since then, these
previously disregarded groups of people have made many times more contributions to American society
relative to their past history that couldn’t have happened before the Civil Rights Movement. Imagine
before then if an African American could ever seriously contend for President of the United States.

Bibliography
Beauvoir, S. d. (1952). The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books.

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline & Punish. (A. Sheridan, Trans.) Paris: Vintage Books.

Freud, S. (1961). Civilization and Its Discontents. (J. Strachey, Ed.) London: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd.