This study discusses disempowerment and collective action to change power relations, which means dismantling it by recognizing disempowerment. Carrying out recognition as a heuristic device and emphasizing the importance of paying attention to powerless subjects is a concern in carrying out this recognition. In recognizing the emergence of disempowerment, the most important thing is the helpless subject whose suffering is the primary concern. This study then interprets recognition in materialist rather than psychological terms as status subordination – that is, as an asymmetry of power that prevents individuals from participating in society as equals.
This study comprehends invisible power relations at work in disempowerment. Meanwhile, resistance manifests itself through collective action. The complexity in the constellation of power, then, is more focused on looking at collective action as a form of resistance to disempowerment in this context as a form of power relations that immediately emerges and is unavoidable, whether carried out openly or secretly, vaguely and surreptitiously. However, for Foucault, subjectification is never hidden and always overt, and to this extent, it is necessary to complete the analysis with Gramsci’s approach through his central theory: hegemony. How members of society are organized or organize themselves to change power relations or question truths is part of hegemony and counter-hegemony. This concept and theorization complement each other, placed to understand the concept of recognition in disempowerment, which is rooted in epistemic social injustice. By combining the materialist and radical feminist approaches, the analytical framework using Nancy Fraser’s approach is used as a framework for integrating and exploring the process of disempowerment and resistance within it.
Before becoming a lecturer in English courses at the Pontianak State Polytechnic, he was involved in student organizations and became one of the founders of Perkumpulan Gemawan in 1999. Until now, he has been a member of the management board of this association and a consultant for the Swandiri Institute of Pontianak. He completed a bachelor’s degree in the Teacher’s Training, Faculty of Universitas Tanjungpura. He continued his Master of Education at Victoria University in Melbourne. He is a PhD scholar at the Department of Social Development and Welfare, Universitas Gadjah Mada.
Uray Endang Kusumajaya, PhD scholar at the Department of Social Development and Welfare, Universitas Gadjah Mada
