power

Catherine Driscoll catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au
Sun Dec 8 16:08:58 PST 2002


Quoting Ian Murray <seamus2001 at attbi.com>:


>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Catherine Driscoll" <catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au>
> > >
> > > 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,
>
> ===================
>
> They may not even agree with how you perceive their relationship to you
> within the setting
> of the classroom.

Given that I have discussed this extensively with them I am very confident in saying that they do. I'll grant you it's not the understanding that's *taught* to them by the educational system they come through, it's completely comprehensible to them and, for them, a more accurate description of how they practice being a student than any model which attributes unilateral power to me. I could quote or paraphrase them if you like, but I figure that if you don't believe me now on this, you're not going to.


> And this is simply to define them as power, which as we've been discussing,
> raises the
> issue of whether, when we begin to define every aspect of human relations in
> terms of
> power, we dissipate the ability to use power, in the sense of power-over, as
> an
> explanatory term.

What I'm trying to say is that power-over is not a useful explanatory term.


> Well that's just a quibble over words, then, because I interpret no
> difference in your use
> of *where* and what I intended by level and scale.

Given that we are discussing what words should be used or are most useful, it seems ludicrous to accuse me of quibbling over words.

Catherine



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list