Hubris or Humanism? A Reply to Susan White

I would like to thank Susan White (1997) for the interest she has taken in my paper, and indeed for her partial endorsement of my thesis. However, she raises a number of serious objections to my analysis which require response. As my allotted space is very limited, I must apologise in advance (not least to Sue White) for my brisk, blunt, skeletal and selective approach. Probably the most serious error that I am charged with is that I 'inadvertently equated power with repression', thus neglecting productive power, which 'ought to have been central' (1997:348) to my analysis. Accordingly, I failed to recognise that power can be enjoyed as well as suffered. There was nothing inadvertent in my treatment of productive power. I directly addressed the Foucauldian concept of the production of the subject and the possibility of 'happy prisoners within the panopticon', arguing that without the inclusion of some notion of coercion 'the concept of subjectification loses its critical purchase' (1996:70). Now it may well be that White does not accept my inclusion of conflicts of interest as an essential component of power, productive or otherwise (1996:74, cf. Lukes 1974), but, if so, it is incumbent upon her to argue the case. By not acknowledging that I explicitly articulated such a position, she absolves herself of that responsibility. My reason for attempting to pin down power was based on dissatisfaction with the broadness of Foucault's conceptualisation. If knowledge is produced by power, if pleasure and pain are produced by power, if discourse, 'truth' and indeed reality are produced by power, if our very human subjectivity is produced by power, then what isn't? There are two related problems here. First, the breadth of explanatory work that is being expected of power means that it loses the capacity to aid our understanding of specific instances. As the invariable answer to any question, it becomes a routine formula, an empty signifier. Conversely, such an approach does violence to the specificities of the social world, in that it attempts to dissolve the complexities of thoughts and actions into the universal of power. For these reasons, I cannot accept White's contention that my critique of Foucault's portrayal of power as ubiquitous was

Agency (philosophy · Coercion (linguistics · Epistemology · Nothing · Panopticon · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Subjectification · White (mutation · Critical Realism in Sociology · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Psychology

• Power

  Open Access•Steven Luke, Steven Lukes•Power•1974

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• The Order of Things

  Michel Foucault•The Order of Things•2018

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• Sociological Theory

  Kurt H Wolff, Lewis A Coser et al.•American Sociological Review•1958

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• Not always Suffered, but Sometimes Enjoyed

  Open Access•Susan White•Sociology•1997

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• Contra-Foucault

  Open Access•Sam Porter•Sociology•1996

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