Tristero, who writes at Hullaballo, gets one right:But the truth, George W. Bush knows, can be magically nullified through the exercise of sufficient power. That - and only that - is his mad delusion, a delusion nurtured by his toxic upbringing where his family shielded him from the consequences of his failures and incompetence. It is a delusion that has led to the pointless suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of people.
All I have to say is that wouldn't it be nice to be a world where 'power' was not defined as the ability to fuck people over against their wills?
Oh, and in the case of the Lebanon School Board, um, the answer is no. Rick will never exercise enough power to nullify the truth. That doesn't mean he and his cohort haven't tried. But creating an alternate reality is hard.
Says Ralph Ellison: "Could politics ever be an expression of love?"
Were it only the case.
(h/t CM for the quote)
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Truth and Power
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2 comments:
Since you are a philosopher, you might find Foucault's understanding that knowledge is not power, but rather the reverse is true (power is knowledge, that is, those with power create knowledge). Or you might also find Eve Sedgwick's understanding that ignorance, knowledge, and silence are all forms of power, and that sometimes ignorance is more powerful than knowledge (as is the case of Ronald Reagan not knowing French so having the power to make the French ambassador speak English to him).
And if my brain was intact, I would have noted the Foucault angle already. I agree with it, but I also think that most definitions of power I have read are simultaneously correct.
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