power

[Catherine Driscoll]

> >
> > 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 

in fact, in all their understandings undoubtedly so
no student believes the power relation between them and i is the same outside 
the classroom, when the course is over, when it's subject feedback time, or 
that i have any kind of absolute authority over their grades let alone the 
right to do anything i want in a class. moreover, none of them are not aware of 
their power to ignore me, be distinterested, not read things i set, shoose a 
different class or leave mine in other ways, not participate in class, alter 
the tenor of a class or a whole course, criticise me formally or informally to 
a range of degrees, contest my marking, curricula and other apparent forms of 
power, even if they were forced to attend or their were strict rules about how 
they had to communicate with me

i could expand on this and make similar statements about the other examples


> 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.

and all these are... powerful. they must impact on me. 


> 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.

no it's not another level or scale, it's a different way of thinking about 
where power is and how it's shaped

Catherine