----- Original Message ----- From: <billbartlett at dodo.com.au> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 4:26 PM Subject: Re: power
> At 12:20 PM +1030 4/12/02, Catherine Driscoll wrote:
>
> >Accepting the possibility that I and everyone I know have completely
warped
> >love lives and other relations of care -- these all involve power and
yes even
> >in the sense of power over... we can help, harm, betray, support,
manipulate,
> >influence, seduce, distract, monitor, belittle, dismiss, praise,
ignore, value,
> >and so on and on those we love, care, or are responsible for. Even at
that
> >level those relations not only rely on the power over someone and/or a
> >situation but are power. Just because it doesn't go only one way
doesn't mean
> >it's not power. Power isn't defined by abuse of power.
>
> That would be my thoughts too. Love is power.
===================
This makes power an infinitely malleable and applicable signifier. I think that trivializes the manner in which we select from the plural, yet finite, definitions of power in order to explain social phenomena of perform certain modes of communication/behaviour.
> Isn't that the whole purpose of love? Love of children is the power that
compels parents to care for their helpless children. Love of parents is
the power that compels children to adopt their parents' social customs and
values. Love of one's partner is what compels spouses to make sacrifices
for one another. Love of fellow members of a society compels us all to
feel solidarity and thus lend a hand.
>
> This is a very real and the very oldest form of power. Such power is
quite natural, so natural in fact that it might not even occur to us to
see it in that light. But when the baby cries out in the night, it is not
only a plea, it is a command backed by real power.
===================
This seems like projection to me. A baby crying for milk has no command capabilities. It is we [some of us anyway] who choose to see it as a command. Of course one can easily slip to a legalistic/sociologistic frame and say the baby's crying is a command backed by the sanction of the state that it not be denied being fed and hence we have laws to prevent infanticide and the like, but isn't the whole point the fact that the overwhelming number of parents want to feed and love and cherish their baby, despite when they have bad hair days?
Ian