“Power is not an institution, and not a structure;
neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with;
it is the name that one attributes to a complex
strategical situation in a particular society.”
* foucault *
what is power?
that’s a rather difficult question to try and answer. a question amongst a pantheon of terse, philosophical questions whose answers, evolutions, variations, and offshoots may know no bounds.
questions such as: what is reality? what is truth? what is love? what is violence? what is art?
what is power?
the following essay is my first attempt at publicly philosophizing over this matter.
okidokie – here we go. (excited!)
* * *
what is power?
well, what kind of power are we talking about? nuclear power? horse power? political power? protein power? veto power? what are we really referring to, what are we evoking, when we throw this word around like a frisbee in the domain of the everyday?
of course, the answer to that is rather easy: it depends. everything just depends. all the things i mentioned (and the myriad others i did not) are all different expressions … different forms … different … manifestations! of power. that much, we can agree on, and do so without wading into deep waters. but the follow-up, far less easy question becomes: are we talking about different kinds of power, or, different variations of the same principle of power? does such an underpinning, underlying, fundamental mechanism of power even exist? something upon which all exteriorized power-structures are based? or is the word simply a placeholder, chameleonic, bereft of real meaning?
hold on to your philosophical hats!
an interesting place to begin is with the effect, rather than the cause, of power. in virtually every example, power is both exercised as well as felt. it is in fact quite impossible to have one without the other. they are symbiotic – two sides of the same dynamic. power cannot be exercised if it is not felt, and it cannot be felt if it is not exercised.
a quick sidebar:
(it is worth noting that an immediate rebuttal can be lodged at this juncture. what does it mean to exercise power? sure, we get it in the context of, say, a government administration or the board of directors of a school district – but what about for example the power of the sun on our skin? are we to assume that the sun exercises its awesome power of nuclear fission? of some murky, indistinct volition of its own? that’s absurd. or is it? well, it is and it isn’t. i would argue that my definition of the exercise of power does not necessarily require an agent capable of what can be reasonably assumed to be cognition. furthermore, all manifestations of power in the physical domain will always be of a long dialectic lineage, starting with the metaphysical and thus evolving into a tangible expression often involving the sciences of chemistry, biology, and physics. the road from start to finish in this process is so long and so complex that for the purposes of this discussion, we will concede this form of power to be the most in your face, so to speak, but ultimately not the object of our primary inquiry.)
but let this not be an automatic, tantalizing temptation to think of power in the simplistic terms of oppressor vs. oppressed. though a litany of examples for that kind of structure is readily available for analysis, it is still far too perfunctory a place to look for where power comes from. the necessary diametrics of exercise vs. feel is not the same as intention vs. submission. to put it another way, it is both possible and typical for one to exercise power and not be able to observe or perceive the impact it has on others and, conversely, one can feel the effects of power even when exercised inadvertently and without intention by another. were this not so, were power somehow as easy to understand as an arena with a problem, a carrot, a stick, and two individuals, this would not be a philosophical question at all. it would be fodder for the mind, unworthy of centuries of spilt ink, blood sweat, and tears.
so, what is power?
power is not any one thing. rather, it is situational. power changes from person to person, from moment to moment, from culture to culture, from room to room. power is defined by the zeitgeist – the circumstance of the moment (the immediate, the contingent, and the dialectic) – as it is understood by those involved in it. power is contextual. it is invisible, yet it commands a measure of control over one’s thoughts, actions, and behavior often not experienced as coercive but, rather, sovereign and autonomous.
power is akin
to rushing down
a rapid river
in a small canoe,
all the while believing
that it is you,
not the river,
who is in control.
what is power?
power is going to the front of the store and paying for a pack of gum you’d slipped into your pocket when you could just as easily have walked out, incognito. that is power. power is waiting for the light to turn green before crossing the street even though there is not a vehicle in sight. that is power. power is telling the truth when you easily could have lied. power is concealing an emotion, when you really should have cried. power is the desire, the decision, and the object of a purchase. power is to covet. power is to purge. power is always and in every instance, defined by circumstance.
we create power together. we experience power as a whole. it is in virtually all cases, the result of a group dynamic. and a group of two, or a group of two billion, is still considered a group.
similar, i suppose, to love, truth, freedom (and many others), power is a gestalt, that is: a whole greater than the sum of its parts – and so, the playing out of a situation (ie: a thought – a behavior – an event – a result) based on the influence of power, is power. we are all wrapped up in it. there is no way to escape it. and why would we want to? it is one of the principle factors at play in the coordination of, and navigation through, everyday life. and since we can’t escape it, our goal ought to be to understand it, and become more aware of it, in order to, perhaps, maybe, hopefully! access a new measure of control in the domain of daily life in a society comprised of millions of other human beings, all wrapped up in the same Great Game of Life.
* * *
what is power?
knowledge is power.
the aphorism is true, even as it listlessly trembles through your thoughts. knowledge, in many ways, is power, despite the high ambiguity of such a statement. the concept of ‘knowledge’, then, is what must come under further scrutiny. knowledge is many things. paradoxically, it is both concrete and abstract, public and private, conceded and contested, accessible and concealed. knowledge is less about knowing and more about believing. sometimes, often even, one would precede the other; but not always. and that’s the point.
the fundamental mechanism of power is not concerned with what is true (another tough question for a different day), but rather with what people believe to be true. power is created around that. around the reality of a given situation understood contextually. power is delicate but tenacious, strategic, and yet, spontaneous.
and so when we say knowledge is power, what we really mean to say is that the more you are able to understand and identify what everyone – including yourself – thinks and believes to be true, the more power you wield, and the more advantage you can take of the power already at play in a given situation.
think of power as the invisible strings that facilitate a puppet show.
now you might be thinking: but the strings aren’t invisible, you can see them! you know they are at play, and you can sometimes even see the puppet master manipulating them. so how is that so hard to understand?
aha!
because when i offer up that metaphor, one’s immediate tendency is to think of witnessing a puppet show, but never the experience of one. that is, the puppet (or person) can never see the strings (power) nor, certainly, the puppet master (strategic situation) when in the throes of a puppet show (life).
but even this metaphor is rather tortured, with far too big a temptation placed on thinking of someone as the ultimate architect of the power i am referring to. this would be an erroneous conclusion to arrive at, for it once again misses the illusive, subtle truth behind what power really is.
it is worth saying once more, before i move on, that power is essentially inescapable. and in modern society, where technology is fusing more and more with identity each day, the power around us is greater in strength and more rigorous in structure than ever before.
* * *
what is power?
last week, i had to go into service ontario (government offices) to renew my driver’s license and expired health card. they open every morning at eight thirty, and i had to be at work by ten on this particular day – so there was plenty of time to get everything done, provided i got there early enough to avoid a serpentine line-up.
so i did.
07:10 – armed with a novel and a latte, i arrived at the front door. there were nine people already waiting; not too bad at all. i quickly settled into a spot in line against the wall, threw on some music, opened my book, and proceeded to kill seventy-five minutes reading.
08:25 – the line had grown considerably, solid and sinuous. we all knew it would. it always does at places like this, that’s the whole point of getting there early. invariably, the crowd began to stand and stir as people slowly put away their phones and readied themselves for a bureaucratic exchange.
08:29 – right on time, the uniformed security guard on the inside un-holsters a set of keys and proceeds to unlock the doors. he was carefree and relaxed, in no seeming hurry; but of course, his timing was also punctual and precise, like clockwork.
at that exact moment – a moment that lasted approximately twenty seconds – i noticed someone out of my left periphery:
a woman.
a middle-aged woman.
a middle-aged, black woman.
a morbidly obese, middle-aged, black woman.
a morbidly obese, middle-aged, black woman was plodding her way to the front of the line where the doors were in the process of being unlocked. there was something simultaneously conspicuous and hypnotic about her leaden gait. her distinct awareness of the huge crowd that had been patiently waiting to her right was in direct juxtaposition to her total nonchalance and utter disregard towards them.
everybody was staring at her.
nobody was saying anything.
then, in a moment of perfectly architected serendipity, she reached the front of the line just as the doors swung open. it wasn’t so much that the people at the front let her cut in, so much as that her demeanor and size generated a gravity that allowed it to happen naturally.
she slid into third position in line, no fuss or fury, without so much as a moment’s wait.
the displeasure in the people standing immediately in front of and behind me was palpable. my own annoyance, my sense that something about this is wrong – is unjust – was also pretty visceral. and yet:
nobody said anything.
as the first dozen or so people filtered through, a man behind me couldn’t help but voice his irritation over the matter to his companion, who also concurred as to the uncouth, uncool nature of the woman’s behavior. after a second, i turned around and, with a trenchant whisper, put me two cents of concurrence into the tattle pot as well. and yet, you guessed it!
nobody said anything.
why?
now, invariably, there will be some reader out there who will want to stop me right there and say that had it been them in that situation, they would have said something. maybe they would have. who am i to know? there are many people, in fact, who would have said something. some of those i-would-have-said-something people were undoubtedly even in that crowd. heck, i am that kind of person! i usually say something! i hate letting people get away with things, and i have a habit of calling people on that kind of thing.
so why didn’t i, or anybody else, say anything? what was going through our heads? we all wanted to say something. we even talked about saying something. why doesn’t somebody say anything? someone would say. but in the end, nothing was said.
why?
the answer is: power.
* * *
in this particular strategic social scenario, the minutia (details that perhaps may be unnoticed by some, or, more likely, details that make their mark in an unconscious manner) conflated into what we, i, am now referring to as power.
what is power?
power is a complex strategical situation, created on a multitude of levels, via a multitude of forces (many of them psychological), in a social environment.
it is at the heart of every social situation and every social interaction. it is the invisible, unspoken, unacknowledged thing (i struggle between the words ‘thing’ and ‘force’ here) whose end result is the behavior of those involved and the outcome of any given situation.
power is both exercised and felt.
power is inescapable.
power is everywhere.
sublime.