[lbo-talk] Power (Waiting for Foucault)

[Miles Jackson]

Eric wrote:
>>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.
> 
> 
> Power never preexists relationships. Like all concepts, it can only 
> describe something after it happens, but in no way does it, as 
> Foucault uses it, refer back to a master signifier. It only exists in 
> certain time at certain places with certain actors.

Umm--that's exactly Foucault's point.  Power is an emergent property of 
social interactions.

Miles