----- Original Message ----- From: <catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, December 09, 2002 7:43 PM Subject: Re: power
>
> >
> > > Definitions shape explanations and the other way around. The
> >distinction is
> > > spurious at best.
> >
> >=========================
> >
> >Nice to see that adolescent incredulity still exists among some
members
> >of the academic class.
>
> You flatterer.
> Dare I ask? Yeah, why not. In what sense am I adolescent? In what
sense
> incredulous?
=====================
Because you betray no hint of thinking through the tortured history of the failures and successes in the philosophy of science, law etc. that have pointed out the need for distinctions between explanations and definitions........? :-)
>
> > > If power-to and power-over are so dissimilar, how come they're
both
> > > specifically/definitively modes of "power-"?
> > >
> > > Catherine
> >
> >======================
> >
> >Uh, because the inherited genealogy of discourse regarding the
> >predication of power "weighs upon" contemporary grammar? You're the
> >academic philosopher, why don't you de-obfuscate the fuzziness of the
> >distinctions we've gotten from Machiavelli, Weber, Green, Dahl, Lukes
> >etc...........?
>
> From flattery to sheer nastiness. I admire your flexibility.
> But you're mistaking me for someone else. I don't even know who Lukes
is,
> let alone have read or 'philosophised' anything concerning (at a
reasonable
> guess) him.
==============================
Now who is being accusatory, yet again? What color is my hair? Stephen Lukes, author of "Power: A Radical View" and other texts.
>
> Yes a history of thinking about power weighs upon how we now conceive
of
> "power". And if this was all I had to rely on in order to claim that
> "power" is a concept we can't jettison simply because it's messy, I
think
> it would be enough. However, I meant that not only are we part of an
> historical field of discourses on power, but your own categories
> acknowledge the ways in which apparently oppressive power and less
> hierarchical forms of power cannot be disentangled as neatly as you
seem to
> claim.
>
> I do love the line "de-obfuscate the fuzziness"... it's like something
from
> a Disney song sung by cartoon-Zizek.
>
> Catherine
=======================
Well that is especially the case when some desire to define everything from electromagnetic"fields" to love in terms of power. I have no desire to exercise power over them in order to point out the ludicrousness of employing a term to so many contexts, events, entities, relations etc. that what categorical distinction we do work with no longer convey useful info/meaning. I'm not into neatness, I'm just for undoing the desire of others to engage in power-over without resorting to "it" myself when dealing with them........Authoritarians fear comedians, musicians, poets, philosophers etc. It's up to "us" to demonstrate that there's nothing to be afraid of............
Ian