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CHAPTER 1
CONSTRUCTING AUTHORITY
BUYERS, SELLERS, AND AUTHORITIES
In this book, I hope to arrive at an improved understanding of authority, which is something — an entity? a phenomenon? a status? — I have come to see as extraordinarily complex, hopelessly elusive, and almost as badly misconstrued in most scholarly discussions as it is in popular parlance. For although there exists a large literature on this topic, it generally runs in one of three ruts. First, there is the project of those political philosophers of neoconservative bent, who took the turbulence of the 1960s as a "crisis of authority" in the face of which they sought to reestablish the legitimacy of the liberal democratic state. Then there is the work of those social psychologists whose memories stretch back to events of the 1930s and 1940s, who are more concerned with dangers posed by the state than those posed to it, and who have used a variety of experimental data to point up the widespread tendency of citizens, even in liberal democracies, to follow authoritarian leaders. Finally, there is the set of sociological discussions that involve a fairly conservative manipulation of the typology introduced by Max Weber, in which Weber's subtlety and the more brooding, even ironic, qualities of his thought are mostly lost. Two of the three categories Weber posited as ideal types are thus rapidly disqualified — traditional authority being treated as obsolete, and charismatic authority dangerous — leaving legal-rational authority, the system of the modern bureaucratic state, as the only viable game in town.
In general, I have found a number of works not centrally concerned with the issue of authority a good deal more helpful than those which have it as their prime focus. In this vein, I think particularly of the writings of Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin, Maurice Bloch, and James Scott, all of whom, in very different fashions, treat authority as an aspect of discourse and are more attentive to its labile dynamics than to its institutional incarnations. I read them as posing a set of interrelated questions: Who is able to speak with authority? Where and how can one produce authoritative speech? What effect does such speech have on those to whom it is addressed? What responses does such speech anticipate? What responses does it allow? And what consequences can unanticipated and disallowed responses have for the construction, exercise, and maintenance of authority?
Given these initiatives, the time seems right for a radical rethinking of authority — radical in the literal sense of returning to the roots. Such an attempt could begin at any number of points, including the obvious piece of etymological reconnaissance through which English "authority" is tracked to its source in Latin auctoritas, a word used with many different shades of meaning, usually in connection with the capacity to perform a speech act that exerts a force on its hearers greater than that of simple influence, but less than that of a command. If we are in search of roots, however, we can simplify things somewhat by focusing initially on the sense auctoritas has within legal texts, for there the term makes its first appearance and is used with greatest precision. Four types of legal auctoritas are specified in Roman law, and three of these reflect the capacity to make consequential pronouncements, that is, to take action through acts of speech that hearers will accept out of respect for the speaker and his (never her!) office. These are the authority of the senate (auctoritas patrum or auctoritas senatus), that of the emperor (auctoritas principis), and that of a trustee or guardian (auctoritas tutoris). There is a fourth type of authority, however, which is called into play within certain sales transactions (auctoritas venditoris), and it is this form alone — the one that to our eyes is strangest and least familiar — that is mentioned in the oldest texts, the Twelve Tables of Roman Law, which date to the middle of the fifth century B.C.
Specifically, auctoritas venditoris figures in the highly formal procedure of mancipatio (literally "mancipation"), through which the most valuable and important forms of property — land, livestock, and slaves — were solemnly transferred from a seller to a buyer. In effect a ritual, mancipatio was the process through which one person's claim to these goods — living beings and the means of production — was formally and publicly dissolved (five Roman citizens had to be present and serve as witnesses), while another person's claim was publicly constructed.
Obviously, for any sale to take place it is necessary for the seller to have ownership of the goods in question, and it is here that auctoritas enters the scene. The seller was required to warrant that he had full title to that which he sold, and was further required to guarantee that should his title prove to be invalid, he would not only make full restitution to the buyer but would pay heavy penalties as well. Specialists in Roman law have debated for more than a half a century whether the auctoritas of the seller is best understood as his title to the property or the guarantee he offers, but the distinction may be artificial. The best understanding of auctoritas in this highly specialized context is one that connects it to the other types of auctoritas mentioned above. Accordingly, I would treat it as the capacity to make a consequential pronouncement, and understand auctoritas venditoris as the kind of speech — a guarantee of title — that brings a sale to fulfillment. Moreover, it is a speech that magically puts potentially difficult questions to rest. In this instance, the fundamental question implicit in acts of mancipation: Can one human being be the property of another?
AUTHORITY AND AUTHORITIES
These observations may help us transcend a distinction often made between executive and epistemic authority: between the authority of those who are "in authority" (e.g., political leaders, parents,military commanders) and that of those who are "an authority" (e.g., technical experts, scholars, medical specialists). Although one may distinguish between the ways in which these different types of people come to occupy their positions and the different warrants they are able to produce in support of their authority, what they have in common is precisely that which characterizes the four types of auctoritas recognized in Roman law: they have the capacity to produce consequential speech, quelling doubts and winning the trust of the audiences whom they engage. Thus, for example, the speech of executive authorities in its most extreme form is the military command that produces automatic and unquestioning obedience: the similarly extreme speech of epistemic authorities is the kind of pronouncement that ends all debate on a given question.
In practice, the consequentiality of authoritative speech may have relatively little to do with the form or content of what is said. Neither officers' commands nor experts' opinions need be artfully phrased or even make sense in order to yield results. (Indeed, the authority of the latter may be enhanced by a certain incomprehensibility.) Similarly, it does not arise out of some quality of the speaker, such as an office or a charisma. Rather, I believe it is best understood in relational terms as the effect of a posited, perceived, or institutionally ascribed asymmetry between speaker and audience that permits certain speakers to command not just the attention but the confidence, respect, and trust of their audience, or — an important proviso — to make audiences act as if this were so.
BETWEEN COERCION AND PERSUASION
Authority is often considered in connection with two other categories, persuasion and force — the processes through which one wins others over through acts of discourse or bends them to one's will through acts or threats of violence. Persuasion and force have been contrasted to one another since antiquity, persuasion generally being understood as the realm of words and the mind, and force that of deeds and the body. Authority, however, is yet a third entity, which remains distinct from persuasion and coercion alike while being related to them in some very specific and suggestive ways.
Although authority and persuasion both operate primarily through the medium of language, this superficial commonality ought not obscure their more fundamental differences. First, it is important to observe that the exercise of authority not only involves but often depends upon the use of nonverbal instruments and media: the whole theatrical array of gestures, demeanors, costumes, props, and stage devices through which one may impress or bamboozle an audience. Second, even when authority does work with and through words, it does so in a very different fashion than persuasion. Thus, one persuades by arguing a case, advancing reasoned propositions, impassioned appeals, and rhetorical flourishes that lead the hearer to a desired conclusion. In contrast, the exercise of authority need not involve argumentation and may rest on the naked assertion that the identity of the speaker warrants acceptance of the speech, as witness the classic pronouncements of paternal authority in extremis: "Because I said so," and "Because I'm your father, that's why!"
Anarchists and others have, on occasion, considered such blunt assertions as these to be paradigmatic of authority in general, and have taken them to reveal that by its very nature authority is both unreasoning and unreasonable. Against this charge, others have maintained that, abuses notwithstanding, the proper exercise of authority involves and rests upon what they have come to call "the capacity for reasoned elaboration." According to this line of analysis, the potential for persuasion is always implicit within authority, which is accepted not just on its own say-so but because it is understood by all concerned that if asked to explain themselves, those in authority could and would do so. Persuasion, then, is a possibility encapsulated within authority and one that may be brought forward upon demand, while authority, conversely, is a time-saving device or a shorthand version of persuasion.
Although this formulation has been widely used to defend authority against the charge of authoritarianism, I believe it is severely flawed. In actual practice the exercise of authority depends less upon the "capacity for reasoned elaboration" as on the presumption made by those subject to authority that such a capacity exists, or on their calculated and strategic willingness to pretend they so presume. Authorities need not be able to explain themselves so long as others are sufficiently cowed or respectful that they do not ask for explanations. Moreover, when an explanation is requested, the situation is transformed in subtle but important ways, for the relation of trust and acceptance characteristic of authority is suspended, at least temporarily, in that moment. If authority involves the willingness of an audience to treat a given act of speech as credible because of its trust in the speaker, then under the sway of authority an audience acts as if it had been persuaded, when in fact it has not, while accepting the fact that its regard for the speaker obviates the need for persuasion. In contrast, when authority is asked to explain itself and responds to that request by arguing in earnest rather than simply reasserting itself, it ceases to be authority for the moment and becomes (an attempt at) persuasion.
Other transformative possibilities also exist, and if authority's liberal defenders point proudly to its "capacity for reasoned elaboration," they are generally more reticent about another capacity, which it harbors in equal measure: the capacity for repressive violence. The fact that force is implicit within authority, however, and that authority may deploy force rather than argumentation in response to anything it regards — or chooses to regard — as a challenge is something known to all who are involved in the asymmetric relations constitutive of authority: ruler and ruled, officer and private, teacher and student, parent and child. But if force is actually used, or if threats of force are made with anything less than extreme delicacy (a delicacy that insures deniability), authority risks being perceived as a fig leaf of legitimacy that conceals the embarrassment of naked force. And when authority operates (and is seen to operate) on pain and fear rather than on trust and respect, it ceases to be authority and becomes (an attempt at) coercion.
Authority is thus related to coercion and persuasion in symmetrical ways. Both of these exist as capacities or potentialities implicit within authority, but are actualized only when those who claim authority sense that they have begun to lose the trust of those over whom they seek to exercise it. In a state of latency or occultation, persuasion and coercion alike are constitutive parts of authority, but once actualized and rendered explicit they signal — indeed, they are, at least temporarily — its negation.
AUTHORIZED AND AUTHORIZING OBJECTS, TIMES, AND PLACES
Above, I made passing reference to "the whole theatrical array of gestures, demeanors, costumes, props, and stage devices through which one may impress or bamboozle an audience." It would, no doubt, be of interest to consider the myriad trappings that serve this purpose — the precise physical postures and facial expressions that at one time and place or another have been used to convey attitudes of gravity, solemnity, decisiveness, and the like, or the seemingly endless variety of uniforms and insignia (badges, diplomas, special seats, vehicles, headgear, etc.) that are used to mark certain people as distinguished for their rank, status, office, lineage, special training, etc., and which thereby help them lay claim to an audience's attention, respect, and trust.
At a certain level, however, we can dispense with an investigation in detail that would be virtually interminable. For as an iconic emblem (if not as a practical instrument), the judge's gavel is functionally identical to the doctor's stethoscope or the athletic coach's whistle and clipboard. All of these items (and countless others) announce the authority of their bearer for a given audience and within a circumscribed context or sphere of activity. Some emblems, particularly those insignia of office associated with the most sweeping and consequential forms of authority, play a more active role than others in the construction of that authority. Thus, rituals of coronation transform pretenders (a significant title!) into kings by placing the crown on their heads, and priests cease to be priests when they are literally and ceremonially defrocked.
The conventional analysis of such data is that the king's crown and the priest's vestments are arbitrary representations of offices, and authority resides within the office. Those who wear the crown or the robes (like those who wear a policeman's badge, to cite another familiar example) signal to others that they are acting in an official capacity. When they appear without these trappings, they signal that they act with their own personal authority, not that derived from their office. The moment of coronation, then, is the moment when someone is endowed with the authority of the royal office, of which the crown is a mere sign or emblem, and defrocking is the reverse procedure with regard to the priestly office.
Such a view has much to recommend it, but there are cases that reveal its limitations. Consider the example of impostors and usurpers, who are able to wield authority effectively when they possess the insignia but not the office precisely because the insignia obtain for them the trust of those people who in the moment of trusting become their "subjects." The inverse case — those who hold the office but not the insignia — is exemplified in the story of the emperor's new clothes, which points up the shortcomings of any model that locates authority simply and straightforwardly in the person, the emblem, or the office. Although the emperor's office permitted him to demand that his subjects show their trust by acting as if his absent insignia were present, and although his subjects complied with this demand up to a point (out of respect for his authority), there were very definite limits on their willingness or ability to do so. At the moment when one member of the audience (significantly a child, which is to say, one least schooled in and least intimidated by the ways of authority) gave voice to skepticism, the emperor's authority effectively crumbled. Moreover, that delicious moment reveals to us that offices, insignia, and office holders all advance claims which are most effective and consequential when correlated with one another. When audiences accept these claims — for whatever reason and with whatever measure of sincerity — authority is the result. Finally, it is consistent with our emerging view that authority depends on nothing so much as the trust of the audience, or the audience's strategic willingness to act as if it had such trust.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Authority"
by .
Copyright © 1994 The University of Chicago.
Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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