Re: group power/individual power

Blaine wrote:

> Well, here's a start: It is nigh on impossible for *all* of us to be
> *relatively* powerless. That's just what "relatively" means...that if we
> are *all* involved, then the frame of reference shifts such that the
> dynamics of power are maintained. No?

Well, obviously. So what I had in mind was an interpretation that doesn't
make it so trivially uninteresting. Something like: if power didn't reside
in _groups_, then... I think if one gives it an "if not" kind of formulation
then it may be doomed right away, but there are probably ways of considering
issues of group power -- the way groups exercise power over individuals --
that don't doom it. There is a Fassbinder play -- I think it's called
"Paradise Sorry Now" -- that consists entirely of otherwise unrelated
episodes in which two people clump together to victimize a third; a sort of
molecular-level study of the phenomenon of grouping.


-m




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