The Circular Structure of Power: Politics, Identity, Community

by Torben Dyrberg

Overview

Few concepts in social theory have been used so extravagantly in recent years as the notion of power. Yet despite its inflated presence, the term is still unclear and undertheorized. In The Circular Structure of Power, Torben Dyrberg rises to the challenge of conceptualizing power through a philosophical examination of its uses in contemporary social theory.

Drawing on the insights of Michel Foucoult, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Dyrberg brings this continental tradition into a creative dialogue with the Anglo-American tradition represented by figures such as Steven Lukes, William Connolly, Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz. Moreover, Dyrberg moves from such abstract considerations to their implications for political and democratic theory through an examination of the work of thinkers as diverse as Robert Dahl, John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas and Nicos Poulantzas. Simultaneously engaging with and defying many of the dominant definitions of power, Torben Dyrberg destabilizes and undermines the conventional distinctions and polarities through which power is usually understood. The new perspective offered to us by this investigation is one which goes beyond the assumption that power can be based on and derived from either agency or structure, as if these categories themselves were not somehow constituted by power.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781859848463
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	04/28/1997
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.22(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.98(d)

About the Author

Torben Bech Dyrberg received his doctorate at Essex University and is currently a lecturer at Roskilde University, Denmark.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword--Chantal Mouffe
Introduction
1 Power as anInfluence Term and Decision Making
The Behaviourist Conception of Power as Causation
Power as an Influence Term I: Reason and Autonomy versus Causation and Power
Power as an Influence Term II: Indirect Influence and Anticipating Reactions
2 Power, Causality and Political Agency in the Community Power Debate
Decision Making and the `Two Faces of Power'
The `Third Face of Power': Lukes's Theory of Power
The Problem of Power and Structure in Lukes's Theory: Causality and Responsibility in Power Relations
3 Power, Identity and Political Authority: Foucault's Power Analytics
The Politics of Foucault's Power Analytics
Power as Ability: Dispensing with the Constituent Subject
The Circular Structure of Identity:
Reflecting on Limits
The Circular Structure of Power: The Politics of Representation
The Political Authorization of Power: The Juridico-discursive Representation of Power and Disciplinary Power
Concluding Remarks: On Power and Politics
4 The Presuppositionless Conception of Power: Power as Negativity
Advancing a Presuppositionless Concept of Power
I The Discursive Structuring of Social Reality
The Logics of Difference and Equivalence
Overdetermination and Hegemonic Power Struggles
Overdetermination as a Kind of Causality
II Power as Negativity and Identity
Power as Negativity
The Constitution and Negation of Identity
Antagonism and the Imaginary Nature of Identity
5 Identity and the Politics of Subjective and Real Interests
The Great Gift of Real Interests
Lukes's and Connolly's Conceptualization of Real Interests
How do Real Interests (Re)present Themselves
The Relation between Real Interests and Power
Concluding Remarks: Real Interests and Autonomy
6 Democracy and the Politics of Interests and the Common Good
The Circular Structure of Power I: The Political and Politics
The Circular Structure of Power II: Political Representation
The Democratic Political Community and the Common Good
The Common Good I: The Political and the Social
The Common Good II: Individual Interests and the Public Interest
Value Pluralism and Liberal Democracy
Concluding Remarks on Hegemony and Democracy
Postscript on Conceptualizing Power
Power as Retroactive Causation
The Circular Structure of Ability and its Conceptualization
Order as Reality Effect
The Political Ordering of Power
Origin and Power: Is There a Will to Order?
Notes
Index