#this is dense

[Lyotard] points towards this power of the weak to expose the meta-discursive or, in more common parlance, the unspoken rules by which our communications can be confined and monitored. None feel this more than the sectioned and the sent-down and none feel more keenly the repercussions from the powers-that-be (the powers for whom state legislation is the bank of last resort.) As with the ban on literacy for Black slaves in the Southern States, so these [institutionalized] inmates, similarly deposed from human-feeling and denied cognitive abilities, only need argue back against their diagnosis and captivity to be seen as posing a threat to the meta-discursivity of identificatory power relations that ‘absolve’ the powers-that-be (hence the random sadistic violence towards slaves in the Southern States and the continual litany of multi-institutional abuse.)