----- Original Message ----- From: "Catherine Driscoll" <catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 5:31 PM Subject: Re: power
>
> Distinguishing between power-over and power-to is misleading.
>
> Let's say that I have "power over" my son/lover/students and they have
"power
> to" recognise or not, participate or not, act on or against my power or
not...
> it makes their power less important than mine in some categorical way. A
range
> of institutions and discourses make my power-to more significant than
their
> power-to, but those effects are specific to those situations. It's not
my power-
> over any of them that gives me the capacity to use my power more
effectively
> than them in a given situation -- it's the institutional/discursive
field that
> comprises that situation.
>
> Catherine
>
======================
>From your perspective vis a vis your son/lover/students, yes. From theirs,
not necessarily and in that dehiscence they can use their understandings
of "power-over" to frustrate the very manner in which the mutuality and
emergence of "power-over" operates within that context, with either an
escalation of conflict or a recognition of non-coerced consensus with each
participants sense of their role transformed; they may come to feel that
they no longer need school --"I've learned enough for now to meet the
challenges of my future", your son may leave home, your lover may fall
even more deeply in love with you or, depending on the issues at hand,
breakup with you.
Moving to the level of the institutional/discursive field within which that event takes place simply takes the "power-to" and "power-over" dyad to another "level," the realm of medium-to-large-scale of collective action. The institutional/discursive field is an ecology of "power-to" and power-over" capabilities too, and those are clearly malleable over time when they encounter legitimation challenges.
Ian