Power and Identity: The Wire as

a critique to institutional Power

Alexandros ZOMAS1*, Maria PAPAVASILEIOU2

1Architect AUTH, Msc Space, Design, Culture, NTUA, Phd candidate, NTUA
2Architect NTUA, Master in Regional and Urban Strategy, Sciences Po, Paris, Msc Space,
Design, Culture, NTUA (graduate student)

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Inaugural air June,2 2002

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Inaugural air June,2 2002

American cable channel HBO

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Inaugural air June,2 2002

American cable channel HBO

last episode March 9, 2008

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Inaugural air June,2 2002

American cable channel HBO

last episode March 9, 2008

60 episodes

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Inaugural air June,2 2002

American cable channel HBO

last episode March 9, 2008

60 episodes

5 seasons

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece
Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece
Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece
Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece
Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece
Ways in which “the Wire” depicts different social institutions

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Ways in which “the Wire” depicts different social institutions

The presentation of dominant and minority groups

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Ways in which “the Wire” depicts different social institutions

The presentation of dominant and minority groups

Certain characters define themselves, their identity and their place in

society

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

 Television and Penal System

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

 Absolute law of the sovereign to his subjects

Vs

Society consisting of a network of institutions that operate according

to the logics of disciplinary power.

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

 Truth to single person

Vs

plethora of scientific data

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece
Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece
Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece
 "really about the American city, and about how we live
together. It is about the impact of institutions on the individual,
and how ... whether you're a cop or docker, or drug dealer, or
politican or lawyer, you are ultimately corrupt and should
remain in the institutional foundation where you have
committed to obey. "

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Absence of power – absence of knowledge

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Identity and racial discrimination

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

blame certain individuals rather that analyze the power structures
that allow these reasons to exist and spread out

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

 people are subjects and subject
to power relations, to strategies and to forces at work in society.

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Our identity, our beliefs and our actions, are all defined by our
position in a grid of power.

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

 racial construction VS racial formation

Race should be seen as a social construction. That is, human

interaction of natural variation should be considered the source and
basis for racial classification. The process by showing the racial sense
is marked as racial formation. In this version, race is not a
determining factor for any other social phenomenon, but it stands on
its own as a merger of competing social forces. Racial Formation
includes both the increase in racial groups and ongoing reification in
social thought. I am inspired by this theory, but I use the term tribal
structure. Construction involves the function of human hands, and
suggests the possible intent to deceive. More than the industry
meaning of formation, which carries connotations of neutral
construction and indifferent process in individual intervention,
referring to the construction of race we focus on the human element
that causes plastic and unsettled character of race.

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Cognitive Mapping and Capitalism

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece
Baltimore is, for the most part, a mess. Not the kind of enchanting
mess that makes cities such interesting places to explore, but an awful
mess.
This is a development that is highlighted in the series, when McNulty,
who has been relegated to the Coast Guard, remembers with his
partner, as they cross the bay on how fathers of both were fired from
their jobs in factories in the mid of 70. The Wire in this sense it has
much in common with a nostalgic recovery of moral economy of labor
and handicrafts (in this powerful work of Richard Sennet). This issue of
the end of "real work", and its replacement from the vicious
entrepreneurship neoliberal work (drug trafficking), and the informal
economy of survival and feasibility is closely linked to that of
"unfettered" capitalism.

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece
The capitalist city is the arena of the most intense social and political
confusions at the same time as it is a monumental testimony to and
a moving force within the dialectics of capitalism's uneven
development. How to penetrate the mystery, unravel the confusions,
and grasp the contradictions?
- David Harvey, The Urban Experience

Institutions, Politics, Performance, 24-28 September 2015, Athens, Greece