The Drama of Identity in the Mesh of Power, or, The Many Ways to Skin a Cat (Another Post for Mr. Obama--who hasn't responded to me yet)

Society is an archipelago of different powers (Michel Foucault, “The Mesh of Power”)

In my first post on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I had set my aims on taking down what I had isolated as Lee Patterson’s argument:

In defining for his audience “the subject of history…as the individual person forged in the dialectic between subjective and the social” (19), Lee Patterson mentions Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as “historical context that Chaucer’s explorations of the dialectic between an inward sense of selfhood—subjectivity—and the claims of the historical world should be placed” (11).  

In light of this week’s “Mesh of Power,” I find myself circling back to my first post on Sir Gawain, regarding the individual and historicity and the drama of identity. Foucault’s argument about the myriad of power relationships that form society and subject positions re-draws the lines of comparison.  Whereas Patterson envisions a singular individual reckoning a singular sense of self in relation to a  “social” or “historical world,” Foucault defines the social world as “in reality the juxtaposition, the link, the coordination and also the hierarchy of different powers that nevertheless remain in their specificity” (Mesh of Power). That is not to say that Patterson’s definition of “the social” is opposed to Foucault’s; Foucault’s clarification of what it means to be in a society constituted of various circulations of power suggests that the individual, as a historical subject, is negotiating multiple dialectics between self and social power relationships at any given moment.

            We find this consideration and constellation of power relations quite evident in Gawain’s contract with the Green Knight. The Green Knight says:

“Sir Gawain, forget not to go as agreed,

And cease not to seek till me, sir, you find,

As you promised in the presence of these proud knights.

To the Green chapel come, I charge you, to take

Such a blow as you bestowed—you deserve, beyond doubt,

A knock on your neck next New Year’s morn.

The Knight of the Green Chapel I am well-known to many,

Wherefore you cannot fail to find me at last;

Therefore come, or be counted a recreant knight” (448-456).

In this charge, Green Knight isolates multiple obligations that Gawain has in executing this task. According to the Green Knight, Gawain has to fulfill his promise because of:  the Green Knight himself, his fellow knights, the equity of fighting (in reciprocating “a blow as you bestowed”), Green Knight’s general reputation (“I am well-known to many”) and to his own reputation and honor (“or be counted a recreant knight”). It seems then, that Gawain’s single duty is mediated by multiple social relationships bearing down upon him to uphold his promise. 

Such a reading, I think, reflects the larger thrust of the poem: that in one act, Gawain encounters multiple characters and multiple subject positions.  While such a quick conclusion would seemingly rehash the arguments about multiplicity and the nature of poly-determined realities in my recent blog posts, I would argue further that the prospect of multiple subject positions demonstrates three key ways that notions of the individual, the social and history triangulate the drama of identity. First, we should recall that Foucault says that “it’s a stupid critique” to limit our gaze at only identifying positions of power, but that “what is indeed interesting is to know how the mesh of power functions in a given group…the localization of each group within the net of power” (“Mesh of Power”). Accordingly, in determining the individual’s subjective consciousness in relation to the larger net of the social and its various power relationships, our ideal would not be to limit ourselves to thinking of historical subjects in mere negotiations, but in localized negotiations that are contextualized. 

Second, in contemplating how Sir Gawain may serve as context for thinking about how Chaucer explored the relation between the inner sense of selfhood and the larger historical world, it is abundantly clear that Gawain does not only experience various power relations over time, but even at single moments, as evinced in Gawain’s contract with the Green Knight. History, then, appears different than narrative logic would initially prescribe; whereas we may agree on surface that Gawain has different power struggles at different moments in the text—giving time and teleological progress dominance in how we look at power relations—the text reveals that these power struggles (to The Green Knight, to court, to reputation) are happening simultaneously and ever-present at every moment. 

Last, if there is a “drama of identity” (which Patterson regards as The Green Knight’s statement: “thou art not Gawain the glorious”), this drama does not play out merely in the theater of the subjective, if Gawain is constantly negotiating self-estimation in various contexts; nor can this drama play out in the theater to history, since many of the power relations remain the same over time and occur all at the same time.  If identity can ever be located, I would suggest that revealed identity in these multiple negotiations and multiple contexts are really isotopes. Just as Bertilak shifts shapes, so does Gawain—who at any given moment can be glorious or not glorious depending on who you ask, and depending on when you look.