*****Tahir: This captures the problem nicely that I have with the notion of power that is under discussion. The trouble with it is it's such a dead end. So this is all power. So right, so what? What have we gained by subsuming all of this under one 'signifier'? Talking about 'forms of power' moreover reinforces the notion that all of these phenomena are just 'forms' of (essentially!) the same thing. But why should they be? In what sense is the exploitation by the big boss the same as the passive resistance of the alienated employee the same as the action of the whistleblower etc. etc.? Let's add a few. Let's also talk about the 'power' of the disabled person to make others feel sympathy, the 'power' of the homeless beggar to make me feel guilty, my 'power' to tie my own shoelaces, the 'power' of women when they deny sex to men friends. And so on. Yes this could all be power in some very general sense. But 'power' here is just as good, or as useless, as calling all of these things by some other universal -- 'life', 'force', 'vitality', 'control', 'manipulation' -- anything you like.****
I have reviewed a long thread on this list re "power" in December of 2002 -- and that thread leads me to about the same conclusion Tahir argues here: Power is not a very useful explanatory concept, but merely a sometimes useful label for relations which must be analyzed without prior recourse to the concept of power. As an analytic concept it is a bit of vular Platonism.
Carrol