Power Theorists Research Articles

‘A fundamental weapon’: the transatlantic air power controversy of the early 1920s and the US Navy as a learning organisation

In the period following the First World War, air power theorists argued a future war would be decided from the air. Bombing aircraft would fly with impunity over an enemy’s territory and so disrupt the means of sustaining war and economy that popular revolt would force surrender on its government. Britain was at the forefront of developments in this area and the creation of the Royal Air Force, the world’s first air force independent of either army or navy, stimulated demand for a similar unified air service in the United States. This debate was played out with particular drama in US public life, and transatlantic intellectual currents had an important bearing on the outcome. The campaign for a US Air Force on the British model was led by the flamboyant General William ‘Billy’ Mitchell of the US Army Air Service. In Britain, the RAF had absorbed the Royal Navy’s air arm and the US Navy was determined to avoid a similar fate, creating a predictable and bitter struggle between the Navy, Mitchell and his followers. Mitchell was unsuccessful in his campaign, though later revered as the ‘father’ of the US Air Force, while the Navy retained control of its air arm but struggled to shake off its opponents’ caricature of the organisation as resistant to innovation as represented by air power and obsessed with the retention of the outmoded battleship as the principal capital unit. We argue, by contrast, that the US Navy was an exemplary learning organisation closely interested in the development and application of technology, and mindful of the impact of technological innovation on doctrine. We argue that debates played out at the Naval War College, literally in the case of wargames, in the years of the Mitchell controversy laid the foundations for the success of US Naval aviation in World War Two.

Archaeological Methodology: Foucault and the History of Systems of Thought

Existing accounts of Foucault’s archaeological methodology have not (a) contextualized the concept properly within the intellectual field of its emergence and (b) explained why it is called ‘archaeology’ and not simply ‘history’. Foucault contributed to the field of ‘history of systems of thought’ in France around 1960 by broadening its scope from the study of scientific and philosophical systems into systems of ‘knowledge’ in a wider sense. For Foucault, the term ‘archaeology’ provided a response to new methodological questions arising from this initiative. Archaeological methodology had already been developed into a distinct comparative approach for the study of linguistic and cultural systems, notably by Dumézil. Foucault redevised archaeological methodology for the post-Hegelian tradition of studying ‘problems’ prevalent in the history of systems of thought. The article thus furnishes the groundwork for a ‘sociological archaeology’ or ‘problem analysis’ that is not particularly dependent on Foucault as a social theorist of power.

What is the boundary between public and private? Some reflections, based on the royal domain

In a political society where service to the king and kingdom are passed down family lines – so, where public responsibilities are hereditary, where the monarch himself is simultaneously head of State and head of a lineage but sacrifices his inheritance to run the country – the boundary between public and private is problematic, to say the least. This article uses the royal domain to analyze how theorists of power under the Ancien Régime discussed the dividing line between the public and private spheres. The domain, the inheritance of the kings of France, was originally composed of possessions of the Capetian family but ownership gradually shifted to the crown, thus making them possessions of the State. Private rights then challenged collective interest in a history deeply shaken by the accession of Henri IV to the crown and the union of his holdings with the royal domain. The ensuing enquiry by legal advisors raised issues that are active to this day, ultimately shedding light on a central aspect of political construction both before and after the French Revolution. The connection between the dynastic nature of the monarchical regime and the assertion of sovereignty leads to a tension that opens the path of modernity, but without resolving one of the major contradictions of the system, in which the respect of personal or corporate acquisitions presupposed by privilege could upset an all-powerful dedicated to the benefit of all.

Negative Theology, Power, and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

Ludwig Wittgenstein tells us in On Certainty: “It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to begin at the beginning. And not try to go further back.”1 I want to begin this paper with a mini-genealogy of Maimonides's negative theology—which declares that we can only endlessly say what God is not, but not what He is—that traces it to a specific and recurring Talmudic source. I will then go on to argue that Machiavelli, who is one of the great theorists of power in the Western intellectual tradition, structures his argument about power in a…

Turbo-Capitalism and Power in Jean Baudrillard’s social and political ontotheology

If postmodern Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) could be defined as a theorist of power - to the extent that for some this is a contradiction by definition, although something very similar takes place in the case of Michel Foucault, he could be defined as a theorist of meta-power in the globalized era of turbo-capitalism. In his late texts (2005), which were published in 2010, the eminent French philosopher builds a provocative theory about power by using the classic concepts of domination and hegemony within the contemporary social, economic, political and ideological context of neoliberal globalization. In these papers, he analyzes in-depth the metapower of hegemony in comparison with the power of domination. Actually, by signifying the critical passage of postwar capitalism from the phase of production to the phase of consumption, as Zygmunt Bauman does in his relevant work, Baudrillard formulates a meta-power theory as the equivalent of what he defines as turbo-capitalism. What is at stake is no longer the conventional issues of state sovereignty, Marx-inspired concept of alienation and Critical Theory-like negative dialectics but the crucial questions of hegemony, hostage and evilness. In short, Jean Baudrillard builds a new ontological and by extension disciplinary and theoretical field concerning global power, where the ‘Empire of Good’, or turbo-capitalism in his own terminology, is reborn in a totally catastrophic way (see simulation in the sense of a capitalist hypocrisy) either as an ‘Axis of Evil’ or as the ‘problem of terror’ (see simulacrum in the sense of a Lacanian stage of image within which turbo-capitalism represses, through a Freudian process of repelling, its unfamiliar self/i.e. uncanny, unheimlich). Despite the fact that Baudrillard has been sharply critisized for a kind of (apolitical) political pessimism, we strongly argue that, in a pure postmodern sense, Baudrillard illustrates power as a relational and absolutely dynamic, liquid and ambivalent space of antagonism, full of forces and counterforces. In the final analysis, he approaches power as an empty space, as in the similar case of Claude Lefort, open-ended, contingent, without certainties, within an ontological, anthropological and historical context which is characterized of high risk and an abyssal post-foundationalism. In this article, we thoroughly explore this novel and innovative Baudrillardian theoretical frame of power analysis and its potentialities for a New Critical Theory in the 21st century.

Audiences in an Age of Datafication: Critical Questions for Media Research

This article critically examines how fears of audience gullibility, ignorance, and exploitation impede media studies’ response to the pressing challenges posed by the growing power of social media platforms and their innovative datafication practices. I revisit the history of audience research to show how empirical findings contested the pejorative conception of the audience problematically yet persistently imagined by theorists of media power during the twentieth century. As media studies joins other disciplines in responding to the growing datafication of society, I propose that the circuit of culture model can help theorize media (including platform and algorithmic) power by opening up the hermeneutic and action space between production and consumption. In this way, critical scholarship might more effectively analyze such metaprocesses as mediatization and datafication precisely by recognizing rather than erasing audiences’ relation to both the everyday lifeworld and the public world of citizen action, regulatory intervention, and the wider society.

Hannah Arendt, the problem of the absolute and the paradox of constitutionalism, or

Contemporary theorists of constituent power recognize a tension in which the omnipotent novelty of constituent power is necessarily policed by constituted power. Beginning with Arendt’s claim that the categories of constitutional stability and political novelty should be thought together rather than treated as oppositional, this article presents an interpretation of her work that seeks to address this ‘paradox of constitutionalism’. While commentators have come to assert that Arendt repudiates ‘absolutes’ in favour of an account of ‘relative beginnings’, this article demonstrates that Arendt’s argument involves a critical redescription of the absolute, rather than a repudiation. This is significant, for it illuminates the manner in which her account of founding seeks to dismantle the commonplace temporalizations we attribute to our political vocabulary. This is employed to argue that particular stylings of absolutes naturalize the appearance of the new only as temporal ruptures, allowing us to get a handle upon the paradox of constitutionalism, and to think tentatively beyond this paradigm.

Media Policy, Media Reform and Media Power: An Interview with Des Freedman

In this interview, Des Freedman discusses his work as an activist in the Media Reform movement, as a critic of media policy, and as a theorist of media power. Freedman explains his approach to media power as a material and relational property, distinguishing it from liberal pluralist, cultural studies and political-economic approaches. Discussing media power in the context of the recent BBC charter review process and the earlier Leveson Inquiry into the ethics of the British press, Freedman clarifies his proposal for a research focus on ‘non-decisionmaking’ in the policy field. Ultimately, he explains how guiding principles, programmes of action, and an understanding of the contradictory nature of media power are all necessary to bring about revolutionary reform.

Does U.S. Soft Power Have Consequences for U.S. Security? Evidence from Popular Support for Suicide Bombing

I analyze whether U.S. soft power is consequential for U.S. national security. Specifically, I test whether three dimensions of U.S. soft power, i.e. favorable orientations towards the country, its people, or its policies, helped delegitimize the use of suicide terrorist violence against Americans and Westerners in Iraq. As alternative hypotheses, I assess the impact of three factors commonly invoked to explain suicide terrorist violence: the security consequences of U.S. occupation in Iraq; Muslim identity and religiosity; and U.S. support of Israel. I find that, as soft power theorists would predict, disaffection towards the United States and its people were the strongest predictors of the support for suicide bombing against Americans and Westerners in Iraq.

ONLY POWERS CAN CONFER DISPOSITIONS

According to power theorists, all (fundamental, perfectly natural) properties (or at least all fundamental, perfectly natural properties that confer dispositions) are powers—i.e. they necessarily confer on their bearers certain dispositions. Although dispositional essentialism is increasingly gaining popularity, a vast majority of analytic metaphysicians still favors what I call ‘the nomic theory’—i.e. the view that which dispositions a property confers on its bearers is contingent on what the laws of nature happen to be. This paper argues that the nomic theory is inconsistent, for, if it were correct, then properties would not confer any dispositions on their bearers—they would only appear to do so (just like how in cases of mimicking the objects do not really have the relevant dispositions, they merely appear to have them). If my arguments are sound, then the nomic theory is incoherent and ultimately collapses into what I call ‘neo-occasionalism’ and dispositional essentialism turns out to be the only available option for those who believe that properties genuinely confer dispositions on their bearers.

O cuidado de si e os perigos de uma ontologia ainda sem cabimento: o legado ético-espiritual de Foucault

O texto discute a noção de cuidado de si, no pensamento tardio de Foucault, desdobrando uma ontologia ainda sem cabimento em nossas reflexões pedagógicas: uma ontologia do si mesmo - uma noção-chave do pensamento ocidental que está na base de questões importantes como a relação entre o sujeito e a verdade. Discutimos os motivos pelos quais a tematização do si mesmo permanece como uma questão ausente dos estudos foucaultianos. Inicialmente apresentamos uma breve discussão da recepção recente do pensamento foucaultiano no campo educacional brasileiro, admitindo um novo movimento de apropriação das suas ideias, que, ao mesmo tempo, supera e amplifica as imagens cristalizadas de Foucault como um teórico do poder, um anti-humanista e um niilista nocivo à teorização educacional crítica. No segundo momento, analisamos sua analítica do cuidado, focalizando a noção de si mesmo, com o fim de extrair implicações para o debate pedagógico em torno da formação humana.

Civil Power and the Deconstruction of Scholasticism in the Thought of Marc'antonio de Dominis

SummaryMarc'antonio de Dominis is well known to historians as a figure in the political and religious culture of early modern Britain and Europe. This article contends that he was also a major theorist of civil power: his critique of Catholic scholastic political thought is compelling and his account of divine right kingship sheds light on conceptual problems that troubled a range of early modern thinkers. De Dominis dismantled the scholastic theory of political power on its own terms, insisting that Almain, Bellarmine, Suárez and others could not distinguish, as they sought to, between the potestas politica in general and the rule of particular princes. By this insight de Dominis could vindicate royal authority against the deposing pretensions of the Pope, the main objective of James I's supporters during the Allegiance Controversy, but his own positive account of how to think about power ran into theoretical trouble which he evidently perceived himself. If the potestas politica cannot be abstracted from a specific regime, and if the prince's absolute sovereignty depends on this fact, can politics be understood only at the level of the particular and contingent? The article closes by setting Thomas Hobbes—well versed in Jacobean polemic—in the context of this question.

“Foucault and Critical Animal Studies: Genealogies of Agricultural Power”

AbstractMichel Foucault is well known as a theorist of power who provided forceful critiques of institutions of confinement such as the psychiatric asylum and the prison. Although the invention of factory farms and industrial slaughterhouses, like prisons and psychiatric hospitals, can be considered emblematic moments in a history of modernity, and although the modern farm is an institution of confinement comparable to the prison, Foucault never addressed these institutions, the politics of animal agriculture, or power relationships between humans and other animals more generally. The few times that Foucault discussed animality or human–animal relations, animals and animality remained metaphors for humans and human experiences. Despite Foucault's failure to analyze human–nonhuman animal relations, a significant body of Critical Animal Studies literature has mobilized Foucault's work over the last decade. In particular, a number of scholars have taken up Foucault's writings to consider how relations between humans and nonhuman animals in agriculture might be conceptualized as instances of sovereign power, biopower, disciplinary power, and pastoral power, as well as why we may not think that these are power relations at all. This essay provides an overview of Foucault's accounts of power and of the Foucauldian scholarship that applies these accounts to human–nonhuman animal relations in animal agriculture.

De la biographie au miroir du prince : le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V de Christine de Pizan

Although, at first glance, the Charles V was in the biographical genre, Christine de Pizan, however, had no intention of providing the reader with a chronicle of this reign. The moral project constructed by the writer encourages the reader to see the work as a theoretical tract, which, by showing the virtues required by a prince, presents itself as a manual of good government. It is still the case that this traittie gives considerable renewed life to the tradition of the mirror for princes. Whereas the theorists of power referred until then to examples from the auctoritates, Christine refers to a quasi-contemporary model, which updates her pedagogical treatise by adding a layer of lived experience to it. The remarkable nature of this mirror for princes lies more particularly in the predominance it gives to the perfect moderation that never ceased to govern the monarch’s behavior. This self-control is presented as the tangible manifestation of the inner wisdom, both political and moral, required by any sovereign worthy of the name.

Understanding Institutional Change in International Environmental Regimes

Histories of regime theory often characterize research during the 1980s as being focused on whether regimes matter and, during the 1990s, as being focused more on how they matter and what makes them (in)effective. Today, constructivist theorists of organizational power and principal-agent theorists concerned with the difaculties that agent strategies can create in contracting, though they may agree on little else, are in complete agreement that institutions, once established, are unlikely to persist forever in their initial state. For scholars of international environmental regimes, the need to understand institutional change has taken on even greater urgency, given the rapidly growing web of legal commitments and institutions that have been created in recent decades. While few would lament the global environment’s rise to prominence on the international agenda, it is far from clear what consequences growing institutional proliferation will have for the future of environmental governance. There is good reason for the discipline’s current concern with institutional change. Few scholars are as well placed as Oran Young to comment on these developments. In Institutional Dynamics Young makes the case that we should view environmental and resource regimes through the prisms of complexity and systems theory. Such approaches need not be relegated to the study of naturalphysical systems; Young argues that they are equally valuable for understanding social systems. Accordingly, Young proposes to study institutional change in terms of the various stresses (both internal and external) that confront environ-

The Powers of Emptiness

Foucault is often considered to be the commensurate theorist of power. His late work provides an impressive array of concepts that enables a multi-dimensional analysis of the historical, material, and discursive facets of power. What is missing from this approach, however, is the factor of passionate attachments, or what we might term the sublime motivations that underlie any regime of control. Lacan’s ethical thought prioritizes precisely the issue of the sublime, and, more to the point, the process of sublimation which establishes an effective “short-circuit” between socially valorized objects and direct drive satisfactions of individuals. Key here is the notion of das Ding, the place of the absent object of primordial satisfaction that generates libidinal enjoyment and draws the subject toward the pinnacle of social valorization. Lacan thus shows us what Foucault cannot theorize. That is to say, if sublimation consists of a relation to the real of das Ding, then it cannot be limited in the terms of its activation to the powers of discursive domain alone; it remains a self-initiating and self-regulating form of power.

Putting Powers Back on Multi-Track

Power theorists are divided on the question of whether individual powers are single-track (for a single manifestation type) or are multi-track (capable of producing distinct manifestation types for distinct stimuli). EJ Lowe has recently defended single-tracking, arguing that the multi-tracker can provide no adequate reason for treating powers as capable of having multiple manifestation types, and claiming that putative instances of multi-track powers are either single-track powers in need of unifying descriptions or are merely several single-track powers. I respond to Lowe on behalf of the multi-tracker, first by arguing that he overlooks the extra-empirical features of the debate, then by posing a dilemma for any single-track account of powers concerning the single-tracker’s ability to appropriately deal with fine-grained manifestation types. Finally I provide the aforementioned reason for thinking that there are multi-track powers.

Consenting to Domination? Theorising Power, Agency and Embodiment with Reference to Caste

Conventional analyses of domination ultimately conceive of individuals internalizing aspects of their contextual social environments (desires or norms) which determine their future behaviour in a pre-conscious fashion. We suggest that this conception of domination is mistaken and stems from a commitment to theoretical models which view individuals' actions as the result rather than a cause, of durable social structures. We offer a critical analysis of Lukes and Bourdieu as paradigmatic theorists of power who hold such a view, and contrast their work to that of Barnes and Foucault. Drawing on the latter we develop an intrinsic model of power which views interaction as central to social phenomena and understands social processes as arising from the continuous interaction of heterogeneous and calculative but mutually susceptible individuals. This approach re-conceptualises three central dichotomies in studies of power: consensus versus conflict, agency versus compliance and mind versus embodiment. We argue, contrary to extrinsic views of power, that calculative agency is essential to both compliance and consensus and view both domination and resistance as integral to power dynamics. Contrary to theories of false consciousness we understand bodies, rather than minds, as central to the routinization of power dynamics. Whilst the paper primarily develops theoretical debates on power we briefly illustrate our position by reference to empirical data on untouchables in India.

Erving Goffman: A major theorist of power?

This article argues that Erving Goffman’s interactional sociology offers many useful insights into what power is and how it actually works, and that in addition to his other reputations we ought to think of Goffman as a significant theorist of power. A critical Goffmanian approach potentially allows us to comprehend the normal, diffuse ubiquity of power while according full recognition to the practices of individuals, whether self‐conscious or habitual, rule‐observant or improvisational. How Goffman’s understanding of power may help us to understand the contemporary realities of the early twenty‐first century is also discussed.

John Kenneth Galbraith: Cultural Theorist of Consumption and Power

This article counters the claim that John Kenneth Galbraith’s work was descriptive in character. Instead, the case is made that Galbraith’s work was theoretical in nature. Galbraith was primarily a cultural theorist rather than the deductive formalist type theorist typical in mainstream economics. In particular, it is shown that Galbraith’s “revised sequence” is part of his substantial contribution to the theory of consumption. Additionally, his analyses of economic power are not merely descriptive but instead constitute a cultural theory of economic power.