How the microhistories work against and within the apparatus of society

Michel de Certeau, focuses on how practical means remain unconsumed by consumer society; Luce Giard delves into the tactics of resistance and private practices that turn living into a subversive art. Both two theorize the idea of â€Å"making do†, emphasizing on how the microhistories work against and within the apparatus of society. Influenced by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, Michel de Certeau tends to integrate the theories of conscious and unconscious with his notion of everyday practice, focusing on the interrelation, interaction, interreiteration between the force of strategy and the power of tactic. Certeau’s concept strongly echoes to Foucault’s notion of disciplinary system in modern society, further nourishing it with plebeian energy. In chapter III â€Å"’Making Do’: Uses and Tactics†, he theorizes the productive practice and consumptive activity inherent in repetitive and unconscious everyday life. A strategy, which is linked to institutions and structures of power( producer), according to Certeau, is called â€Å"the calculation( or manipulation) of power relationships that becomes possible as soon as a subject with will and power†¦can be isolated†(35-36), whereas â€Å"a tactic is a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus†(36-37), and is used by individuals( consumers) to resist to the dominant order in environment defined by strategies. In chapter VII, â€Å"Walking in the City†, Certeau contends that the city, described as a unified whole by maps is generated by the strategies of governments, corporations, and other institutions. Certeau argues that, everyday life, which works by a process of poaching on the territory of others, though, using the principles, rules, constructions, products established in th... ...ody technique, they ways in which from society to society men know how to use their bodies†(203). Superimposed invention, tradition, and education give the gesture â€Å"a form of efficacy that suits the physical makeup and practical intelligence†(203). Gestures lasts only as long as its utility function, when they die out, â€Å"words sometimes still subsist, in the memory of the bygone past†(208). By examining the new market habits, Giard points out that the gestures and practice of the buying woman have had to be transformed into a new killed ability in order to negotiate with those habits, which construct â€Å"a collective scientific knowledge†(209). Giard concludes that in the age of overmodernization, â€Å"room remains for microinventions†, for people working on their physical activities to make choice among the tools and commodities produced within the social apparatus.