Re: The power of one

In a message dated 5/24/98 3:41:53 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
mtoye@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

<< Why does resistance to
the system have to be focused on the guard in the center? That sounds to me
like: if in fact where power is operating is in the internalization within
each person, then the focus of resistance should be directed here and not
towards some fictional/absent center. >>


I think we have to look in both places and consider the relation, otherwise we
will be getting away from the historical issues and into issues about human
nature which I am sure Foucault was not alluding to. There is the physical
space of events, of interaction,
and there is the space of representing within each of us which interprets,
attributes, etc.
But I think that what Foucault is getting at is the idea that the operative
power opposing each of us has insinuated itself within us, within the space
where our representations take place, and interiorizes a strategic manner of
representing physical reality whihc we are unable to critique. Much as we are
unable to understand the predicament of human nature, but now we attribute
agency as causing this inability, rather than nature. As if
the history of human relationships, previously dictated by humans with
powerful social positions, has been so internalized that we are unable to
emancipate ourselves from its representation.

Vunch

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