As the KSR quote to the left suggests, and as I’ve argued here, the concept of Struggle Forever! is that the fight to create a just and sustainable world (whatever that means) is never ending. The world is continually and constantly changing, and so too will the meaning of justice and sustainability. Furthermore, there will always be people trying to amass as much control as they can – trying desperately to make the world fit into their own myopic vision – and in the process causing great suffering and injustice to others. The goal of Struggle Forever! is to recognize these challenges, and to continue struggling to make the world better for everyone no matter what victories or defeats we may suffer. Past revolutions failed not because they didn’t create a perfect society in the moment of victory, but because they stopped and the world didn’t stop with them. This opens the question, what does continual and constant revolution look like? I would argue that it looks very different from revolutions of the past (and present), but that’s an argument for a different post – for now I merely suggest the possibility and let you muse on it for a while.
This brings me to the question of power. For those of you who know me, and those who have followed this blog for a long time, I’ve been obsessed with finding a working definition of power. One of my major concerns about critical literature is that it fails to define what power is, and how it’s produced and maintained, and therefore it makes it into a nebulous concept that we can do little to actually mobilize against. I understand there are reasons for this – defining power may constitute an act of power itself, and in so doing marginalize certain groups and individuals for whom power is constituted differently. However, without some kind of definition of power, we become helpless to identify it and act against. It becomes a way of explaining without itself being explained – a mode of critique with no possible solution. For this reason, I’ve often been critical of critical literature that simply reduces any activity or injustice to a vague issue of power.
This is why I’ve striven to talk about power in other ways, for example, as the differential distribution of vulnerability (a similarly vague notion, but easier to grasp, I think – see my Imponderabilia essay). Thinking about the concept of Struggle Forever!, I can see another way to reconceptualize power in a way that allows us to start thinking about ways to address it. If the struggle must continue, then power, at least in some sense, is the ability of an individual or group (due to their position in a particular material-semiotic assemblage) to close off the struggle before it has ended (which is never). In other words, it is the ability to make sure that people can’t or won’t continue to fight despite injustice, suffering, or harm. It could be done by exertion of force, or by affective manipulation, but however it’s accomplished, it closes the door to resistance (and thus makes those in power less vulnerable – less open to being altered and affected by others). Of course, the door is never fully closed – there are always cracks through which resistance may seep, and people never truly stop resisting even when faced with an iron cage – this is why no power is ever truly totalizing.
So what can be done? There will always be positions of power in this sense – positions in which a few people are given the ability to shut down struggle before it ends. For those who occupy these positions (who would hopefully have an interest in being just and not causing harm), the ethical approach would be to avoid arbitrarily closing down the struggle before it’s ended – before everyone has had a say and an agreement has been forged. I don’t think this means that those in power need to avoid arguing their own case – they are “stakeholders” in many of these struggles, after all, and deserve some say. It simply means that one’s own opinion shouldn’t be held to any greater value than that of anyone else’s – that all opinions are open to being altered and affected equally (that they are equally vulnerable). For those who are not in positions of power, it means throwing yourself against the door to prevent it from being closed, and, if it is closed prematurely, battering at it until the door is either opened again or knocked down. Finally, and in the long run, it means creating systemic mechanisms that prevent these doors from being closed prematurely – a door stop that holds the door open even though the person who holds it may try.
For an excellent and timely example of (the abuse of) power, see this article on the recent Supreme Court decision on whether or not unions can charge non-union employees fees for certain activities. Whether or not you agree with the union position, it seems like the supreme court overstepped its limits by ruling on an aspect of the case that was not argued in the hearing. Thus, the supreme court has closed this door, making a number of state laws unconstitutional, without hearing the relative merits of the issue at hand.
7 Comments
Hi Jeremy – and thanks for this post.
Power is indeed one of those funny terms that sometimes seems to mean nothing and everything all at once. A couple of things struck me from your post. First, I felt a cosmopolitical conception of power lurking there since your version of power is about the ability to intervene at the level of conditions (of possibility and actualisation) for a particular struggle. This is also reflected in your concern with vulnerability – as a result of which particular struggles in themselves are seen as precarious, relying on certain conditions that must be in place for them to exist.
However, I also felt that in places you seem to suggest a conception of power as something possessed by some and not by others. It seems to me then that this overlooks a few aspects of power that I find quite important. For example, I would not want to consign those we typically describe as ‘powerless’ as having only a negative experience of power: power is what oppresses them. Rather I think that they can also have a positive experience of power. Some have called this ‘counterpower’, ‘power with’ or ‘power within’ and I think it is important to recognise these dimensions of power too. This is all the more important when working with people (and particularly those from marginalised groups) who are engaged in struggles. The recognition (ours and theirs) of their own power (e.g. to resist, to imagine) is critical.
But we could also go beyond this to look at the way that ‘the powerful’ themselves are subjected to power’s effects. They are not free from their own entanglements in various relationships (with humans and non-humans), their values and beliefs, which also shape the way that they imagine, dream and live. One theorist of power I found really interesting in this regard is Clarissa Hayward who, in her book De-facing Power, describes power as something along the lines of ‘the network of social boundaries that enable and constrain action’ (and I would make sure to bring non-humans fully into the definition of the human)… This is not to liberate the so-called ‘powerful’ from complicity in perpetuating injustices but to also recognise what Stengers would (as in Capitalist Sorcery) describe as their ‘capture’ as minions serving capitalism. This firmly locates the exploiters (a category we in the west are almost born into) as victims (of a system of sorcery), so that they too are subject to power’s effects.
Power, then, could be thought of as the distribution of abilities across entities (or groups, assemblages or systems of sorcery, etc.) to modify the conditions for the possibility of existence of others.
Anyway, just some thoughts on power, apologies if somewhat disjointed!
oops! I meant ‘to bring non-humans into the definition of the social‘!!!
Andre, thanks for this – it expands what my exploration of power in some positive and very helpful directions…. I’m very much in agreement.
Just to expand a little further – I think this conception of power as the ability to close off the struggle (which is, I think, the basis for existence, and so the closing off of struggle is a kind of closing off of existence in some sense) is really better characterized as a particular kind of abuse of power rather than as a definition of power itself. And it’s this (and other typese of) abuse of power to which we really need to attend. As you point out, everyone has some kind of power in the sense that everyone has the ability to alter and affect others (and so, here we should talk about powers rather than power in the abstract), though these abilities are unevenly distributed within the social (human and non-human) assemblages that we compose. As a definition of power, mine isn’t really able to account for things like “power with” and “power within” (although, my conception of “counter-power” is a little different – for me it’s those systemic and structural mechanisms that prevent the accumulation of power in the hands of a few… I mention this in the paragraph on what can be done). It works much better to see it as a particular form of the abuse of a particular kind of power – i.e. the abuse of an ability to close down the struggle, which is a very common form of abuse, I think. Still, all of the points I mention hold, as do those in your comment.
Thanks again!
I suppose, I’m attempting to open up the possibility for an onto-cartography (to borrow Levi’s term) of power.
my 2 cents (or maybe its trillion). i think of temrs like biopower, power over/with, or what is discussed in econ on the bnarchives (jonathon nitzan, capitalism as power). from a ‘graeberian’ perspectivism, one kight say power is a debt-like relation (even of the form of ‘if you cooperate you won’t get hurt’—which i always think of when i hear people discuss things like societies based on cooperation rather than competition. and then (since i studied some physics) i go in the ‘andrew sokal’ mode and look for analogues in physics (eg maximum power principle in biology/self-organization, related to entropy). (i will say i never really could understand the derrida/lacan type vocabulary which i looked into because people i knew were into semiotics—there is now even a field of biosemiotics. it mostly looks like a form of poetry which like music affects the brain a different way than a strictly logical empiricist view. the physicists tend to say (eg p dirac ‘physicists try to say the most in the simplest and shortest way possible, while philosophers (eg badiou) try to say the last in the most confusing and lengthy way possible’—a sort of indoctrination/hazing ritual. but i’m into music, so that meme (virus of the mind) i have consented to (or am in debt to, financially as well). ‘road to ruin, born to loose’.
i must think out of the box, since i always get ‘dang’. box check, box check.
ps. i looked at the end of the article. it tyends to define power negatively (fight the power’—public enemy). but some argue for trying to get your own power via ‘power with’, as social movements against oppression do (though they tend to folow the iron law of oligarchy and then create new caste systems, which may be almost a ‘universal law’ due to cognition (for anything to be anything it must make a sifference that makes a difference (linguistics).
another view suggests (and this actually effectively is my own form of activism (the endangered species sort) sortuh deny power. they don’t even have to ‘open the door, i can get it myself’ (james brown) because there are other doors or perception and one can deny (eg by ignoring, which i’d say is a la graeberian types or OWS) it exists. i dont see any doors. ‘who’s that knocking on my door, open it up…’ (old gogo song).
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