Abstract: An analysis of hazing in elite French preparatory schools explores the complex connections between the violent relationships acted out during hazing and the school-related structures of domination obtaining beyond the ritual frame. Hazing is neither a strait-forward expression of existing power relations, nor does it provide the necessary grounds for their realisation. Rather, it constructs a special network of relationships, at once between successive classes of students, between students and administrative personnel, and between persons affiliated with the school and the general public, founded upon the feigned simulation of truly hurtful performances -- an embedding of play within itself. In doing so, hazing establishes a novel, highly integrative and eminently transmittable context for discourse and action in which these and other hierarchical relations may be appreciated, by the various categories of participants, as the interdependent aspects of a single whole.
Processing Request
No Comments.