Revisiting Varied Notions of Power: Contexts and Connotations

Like many basic ideas and concepts, power is a contested conceptual construct. Understanding power and its covert underpinnings, if not difficult, is to some extent vexing because of its political connotations and subtle contentious implications. Power, as we know, is an abstract and pervasive entity that exists everywhere in different forms and patterns. Its nature is political, conflictive, and exploitative. Defining power is a bit complex because of its multiple meanings and implications. Since we are here concerned with imperialistic and colonial power, let’s see how it has been defined in this context. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines it is as the ability or right to control people or things. In political parlance, power is defined as an ability to influence or control others by dint of coercion or persuasion. Joesph Nye, the American political analyst, public speaker and writer, defines power in the following words:

Power is the ability to influence the behavior of others, to get the outcomes you want. But there are several ways to affect the behavior of others. You can coerce them with threats; you can induce them with payments; or you can co-opt them to want what you want.” (Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics 17)

Michael Foucault, who is one of the main theorists associated with the idea of power, says that power is a structural expression of strategic situation in a given social setting that requires both constraint and enablement. (The History of Sexuality 93)

Hence, we can say that the overall meaning of power as reflected from various sources is that of control, coercion, influence, and effect.

Types of Power

Power is of many types: we speak of dictatorial power, patriarchal power, biopower, economic power, hard power and soft power. The basic premise and essential implication of every kind of power is control, violence, subjugation and exploitation. Political power, dictatorial power, and patriarchal power have one thing common to them, which is oppression of the subject. Political or dictatorial power exploits common masses through its deceitful discourse and physical maiming. Patriarchal power victimises a particular section of society, which is woman, through an agency of rape and other allied means. Economic and soft power use different means and measures to oppress and exploit subjects. Through economic power bourgeois exploits a certain section of society called proletariat and lumpen proletariat. In Marxist terminology, proletariat is the working or labour class of the society.

The working class has always been controlled by the capitalistic class. The exploitation is perpetrated by paying fewer wages against a hard physical labour. This class cannot resist or protest against the capitalistic master because of their economic insecurity and livelihood vulnerability. Lumpen proletariat in Marxist idiom is the unrecognized section of society. The condition of this section of society according to Marx remains unchanged and stagnant. Prostitutes, insane, thieves, drunkards fall in this group. Prostitutes are oppressed and exploited through sexual slavery etc. Insane, thieves and drunkards are controlled and thereby oppressed through imprisonment, quarantine and physical lashing. The types of power discussed above operate very strictly on the subjects. These powers control the subjects through surveillance. Foucault writes in this regard:

Although surveillance rests on individuals, its functioning is that of a network of relations from top to bottom, but also to a certain extent from bottom to top and laterally; this network “holds” the whole together and traverses it in its entirety with effects of power that derive from one another; supervisors, perpetually supervised. (Discipline and Punish 176-177)

Foucauldian Concept of Power

Michel Foucault the main theorist associated with the concept of power, especially, ‘biopower’ and ‘disciplinary power’ offers a very meticulous and comprehensive explanation of power. Foucault starts his explanation with the caption ‘How not to understand power’. Foucault writes:

The word power is apt to lead to a number of misunderstandings with respect to its nature, its form, and its unity. By power, I do not mean “Power” as a group of institutions and mechanisms that ensure subservience of the citizens of a given state [such as characterize many liberal analyses]. By power, I do not mean, either, a mode of subjugation which, in contrast to violence, has the form of the rule [typical of psychoanalytic approaches]. Finally, I do not have in mind a general system of domination exerted by one group over another[i,e class oppression] a system whose effects, through successive derivations, pervade the entire social body[ as in Marxist views]. (qtd.in Michael Foucault Key Concepts 16)

The most important, interesting and at the same time significant concept given by Michel Foucault is that of biopower. Biopower is a concept that has wider application and is open to various implications. Foucault actually used this term in his lecture series at College de France. But the term appeared in print in his book The Will to Knowledge (1976). Defining biopower is not an easy job. In order to simplify its definition, let’s break this compound word into two elements. Biopower, as we know is a combination of two words ‘bio’ and ‘power’. So, the literal meaning of the term is something that has a control over life or body of a persons or subject. Foucault defines this in laconic and cogent terms. Foucault says, “Biopower is the power which could foster life or disallow it to the point of death.” (qtd. in Michel Foucault Key Concepts 43)

Other Theorists of Power

Power, especially, political or dictatorial power has been the main point of discussion and deliberation since the time of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes. Power, as is documented in the pages of history, has usually been misused by the people, countries, races, religious structures, and political institutions. The misuse of power has been the moot point of many fictional and non-fictional works. Power has been the subject of analysis for theorists like Michael Foucault, Edward Said, George Lucas, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Frantz Fanon and Antonio Gramsci. These theorists have differently theorized the concept of power in their respective works. Louis Althusser, a French Marxist philosopher; had given a very enlightening and at the same time cogent thesis about the concept of power. His essay ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus’ is a very informative piece of work on the concept and theory of ‘power and ideology.’

Power and ideology are very much loaded terms. Both these terms are complementary to each other. One cannot understand the meaning of power and how it works without juxtaposing it with the institution of ideology. Ideology is the basic premise on which and through which the institution of power works. Power is executed only and only through ideology. So, we can say, both these terms complement each another.

Althusser had long before divided power structure into two categories: The ‘Ideological State Apparatus’ and ‘The Repressive State Apparatus’. The ‘Ideological State Apparatus’ is that division of power structure that controls the subjects through ideological and soft means. Institutions like school, religious institutions like church, temple etc. fall under the ambit of ‘The Ideological State Apparatus.’ These institutions colonize and subjugate subjects in a very soft and coaxing way. In a word subjects are “interpellated” through ‘Ideological State Apparatus.’ The ‘Repressive State Apparatus’ on the other hand uses repressive and forceful means to colonize and control the subjects. Institution like police department is termed as ‘The Repressive State Apparatus’ because it uses repressive force to curb the subjects. Like Althusser and others, the Cameroonian political analyst and writer, Joseph Achille Mbembe has propounded a very novel and seminal concept called ‘necropolitics’. This concept has been thoroughly discussed by him in his book titled ‘Necropolitics’ (2019). ‘Necropolitics’ in simple terms may be taken as an opposite to Foucauldian idea of ‘biopower’ and ‘biopolitics’. Biopower and biopolitics constricts or disallows living bodies and necropolitics restricts and disallows the dead bodies of the victims for a respectful burial. Achille Mbembe defines ‘necropolitics’ as ‘subjugation of life to the power of death’. The use and deployment of necropolitics gives birth to what Mbembe calls death worlds or "new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to living conditions that confer upon them the status of the living dead. (Necropolitics 92)

Necropolitics operates at two levels: First, it uses oppressive political power to dictate how some people must live and how some must die. Second, it dictates the terms and conditions regarding the dead bodies of the colonized. On the whole, we can say that necropolitics is based on the premise and strategy of exploitative ideology and colonial oppression.

Deliberations and discussions on the idea of power and power politics are profusely available both in fiction and non–fiction. This has mainly been done by those writers who have gone through the sordid experience of colonization. The writers from the erstwhile colonies boldly depict the misuse of power by the colonizers. They show the resistance of the colonized in response to the exploitation perpetrated by the colonizers. Apart from using the physical violence against the weak and marginal subjects, the colonizers also use the strategies that are meant to belittle and destroy the culture of the colonized. The colonized are essentialised and stereotyped in order to render them culturally poor and petty. Besides this, an attitude of colonizer compels the colonized to resist and wrangle. Olaudah Equiano, in his seminal book ‘The Interesting Narratives of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) writes:

When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them, in your conduct, an example of fraud, rapine and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war. (77)

Resistance to power is important. Both go side by side. Foucault opines the same notion when he says that where there is power, there is resistance. (The History of Sexuality 93)

When the colonized resists the power of the colonizer; it not only shows the will of the colonized to survive but also his attempt to live with dignity and respect. This act of the colonized puts him/her on the highest pedestal and thereby makes him/her the focus of analysis.

Where there is power, there is influence and dominance. Power bestows upon a person, organization, party, and country, the subtle and pervasive elements of influence, effect and dominance. For instance, the powerful countries like the USA, the USSR, and Israel etc. have always been calling the shots when they are juxtaposed with the countries that are less powerful and do not have any kind of clout and leverage. The countries like Somalia, Palestine etc. that do not have any strong influence and effect in the world are at the mercy of those countries that are politically, economically, and strategically strong and more influential. Likewise people who are in minority are always intimidated and trampled by the people who are in majority. The binary of majority and minority works on the premise of power. The minority is always at the disadvantageous position whereas majority always stands at the position of superiority and advantage.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that power is a pervasive force. It is based on the premise of control, exploitation, and manipulation. People who are at the helm of power structures or institutions of power are always out to victimize the powerless and weak subjects or in other words we can say that powerful people dictate and powerless are supposed to conform to this dictation.

Dr. Bilal Ahmad Dar has done Ph.D in English from AMU. He has qualified UGC-NET and JKSET for Assistant Professorship.