Cultural Mediations of Brands

Introduction to Part 2

“If all individuals consider certain commandments to be legitimate, it is because they have all received the same ‘education’. The condition for consensus is the internalization and assimilation of a number of norms instilled in all members of the group.”

(Bourricaud 1969)

Power and knowledge are intimately linked. But perhaps we should talk about powers, recalling Barthes’s words that “power is always one” whereas “it is plural, like demons” (1979, p. 11). Foucault, an attentive hermeneuticist of micro-powers fragmented in the social body, highlighted them in the relationships between humanity and their institutions. Both are generated; they are so intertwined that the objectification of knowledge that tends to substantiate it finally appears as the masking of the conditions of its production. Knowledge is produced by the mediations that contribute to its truth.

Knowledge refers to a sum of beliefs and opinions acquired individually and collectively; it is the result of curiosity, sometimes of an objective. It can be free or expensive, consensus-based or debatable. Knowledge includes “knowledges” which do not all have the same status and legitimacy in society. Some are necessary and consensual, and constitute the common knowledge base that all must possess, while others are expert, specialized and requiring popularization. Singular knowledge and plural “knowledges” are two notional sides; the entirety of the singular “knowledge” does not mean the same ...