“Power is everywhere not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.” — Michel Foucault

POWER, being a complex concept, can be defined in different ways. Most of the time power is seen as an ability or right to control people or events. If we look at the history of mankind, we see people using the tool of violence to demonstrate their power and control others.

There was a time when large fighting forces and deadly weapons were considered important instruments of power. We then saw a change in the strategy as the focus shifted from large armies to more sophisticated weapons, espionage equipment and computerised weaponry. The urge, however, remained the same — controlling others by demonstrating one’s own power.

For a long time, the terms ‘control’ and ‘hegemony’ were associated with coercion, i.e. the use of force. Antonio Gramsci, an Italian thinker, offers another view of hegemony in his seminal book Prison Notebooks written during 1929-35 in jail.

Gramsci refers to two approaches to hegemony; one is through spontaneous consent in which general directions are imposed by dominant groups on social life. According to him, this consent is caused by the prestige which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.

The second approach, according to Gramsci, is “through the apparatus of state coercive power which ‘legally’ enforces discipline on those groups who do not ‘consent’ either actively or passively”. Supremacy through spontaneous consent is a clear reference to a discursive method which appears to be more effective than coercive tactics.

The discursive approach draws our attention to another defining attribute of power — influence. Thus we can see power as an ability to influence other people’s choices, behaviour and acts. Coercive power is usually used by the state ‘legally’ by exercising the authority vested in it. This suggests that ‘authority’ is a legalised version of power. Steven Luke, in his work, Power: A Radical View discusses three dimensions of influence.

The first two dimensions refer to decision-making and agenda-setting. The third dimension deals with shaping ideologies, perceptions and norms. Referring to the third dimension Luke suggests, “Is it not the supreme and most insidious exercise of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things, either because they can see or imagine no alternative to it, or because they see it as natural and unchangeable, or because they value it as divinely ordained and beneficial?” This dimension of power is closer to what Gramsci describes as spontaneous consent.

Foucault also delves into the issue of power. In fact, his search started with tracing the history of knowledge when he realised the strong connection between knowledge and power. Foucault discovered that with new knowledge and technologies, novel manifestations of power and control are invented. Instead of using the traditional violent power and destroying the opponent altogether, modern technologies have different strategies to control.

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault describes the contemporary version of power, “…[I]t defined how one may have a hold over others’ bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determines. Thus discipline produces subjected and practised bodies, ‘docile bodies’”. These techniques of knowledge and power were initially used in isolated institutions like prisons, factories and schools, but later on they were employed in other contexts as well.

The role of discourse is crucial in the formation of knowledge. It is the discursive formation of objects that can construct a certain kind of knowledge that leads to new techniques of power and control. Power, by contemporary thinkers, is not viewed as a product but as a process which means that it is not fixed or located in place; it is rather transitory, fluid and relational in nature.

Power, in other words, as Foucault puts it, is relation which is structured by discourse. This suggests that the relationship of the powerful and powerless is not permanent, that is, the once powerful becomes powerless or vice versa in another moment in history. This has a direct implication for the possibility of resistance.

Foucault in The History of Sexuality refers to the points of resistance available in the dynamics of power, “the strictly relational character of power relationships [is such that] their existence depends on a multiplicity of points of resistance: these play the role of adversary, target, support, or handle in power relations. These points of resistance are present everywhere in the power network.”

This view of power is optimistic in nature as it doesn’t lump power in one location and views it as a static object. On the contrary, it looks at power as something scattered around us in different networks. There is a constant struggle between power and its adversary and there are points of resistance available within the process of power for the act of resistance.

The writer is a director at Lahore School of Economics and the author of Rethinking Education in Pakistan.

shahidksiddiqui@yahoo.com

BACK in July, behind in the polls and stuck in neutral, John McCain’s campaign released its widely discussed TV adverts comparing Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. They were mocked, but helped McCain gain traction. Something rang true to some segment of the American public.

If the Obama campaign were as canny — or cynical, take your choice — they would now have adverts out comparing McCain to a mythic character in American film. An aging starlet, a Norma Desmond whose celebrity has faded but, surrounded by courtiers, persists in behaving as if she were still the cynosure of Hollywood’s eye, saying: “All right, Mr DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

As I write, Congress has yet to reach a deal on the Wall Street bail-out. The Democrats and President Bush, interestingly, are largely in agreement and could pass a bill at any moment. But 100 conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives have balked.

In this context, it’s been a singularly instructive week to observe the candidates’ competing management styles. Usually, how a candidate campaigns doesn’t really have that much to do with how he will govern.

An Obama mantra throughout has been “no drama Obama” — it’s the campaign’s way of saying he will engage in or indulge no acting out, no internal squabbling beyond legitimate disagreement, no leaking, no grandstanding. He’s run a tight ship, and the mantra is credited with having a lot to do with getting him this far.

He sometimes eschews drama to a fault, and one could argue he did so this week. I attended a press conference on Thursday night, after the White House negotiations had proved fruitless. He spoke for 10 minutes in a very circumspect fashion, and then answered a few questions in ... a very circumspect fashion.

Behind the scenes, Obama was apparently trying to play a constructive role. The New York Times reported of the meeting that “participants said Mr Obama peppered [treasury secretary] Henry Paulson with questions, while Mr McCain said little.”

By contrast, McCain has been almost entirely about the theatrics — trying to swoop into town and finagle it so he could either take credit for any deal or (more likely) grandly announce he would regretfully have to “put country first” and oppose it. He certainly hasn’t been engaged on a substantive level. He acknowledged to a Cleveland reporter on Tuesday he hadn’t read Paulson’s proposal, released two days earlier and running to all of three pages. Back in Washington, he clearly allied himself with the Republican intransigents. But as the Washington Post reported of a meeting between McCain and the GOP’s House leader about the conservatives’ alternative plan, “Neither man was familiar with the details of the proposal ... and up to the moment they departed for the White House Friday afternoon, neither had seen any description beyond news reports.” No wonder he said little.

Even McCain supporters will acknowledge high finance is not his strong suit. But in this matter, which will clearly consume a great deal of the next president’s time, McCain was concerned wholly with how to gain political advantage. He stood before the mirror, awaiting his close-up.

— The Guardian, London