Concept
Power
What accrues to whoever occupies the center — deferral converted into command
Ask AI about Power“In order to make it the point, we can begin by pointing out that power comes from the center, and the center comes from deferral. Insofar as someone occupies the center of a scene, that person wields power.”
From the Archive
“Power is always differential because some members of any group, in any situation, will exhibit greater powers of deferral: they will be able to stop and examine a situation while others are rushing in, and they will have the patience to wait and see when the unfolding reality provides an opening for action.”
“The paradox of power is that it is possessed insofar as others acknowledge that possession as preceding their acknowledgement. Power is both a priori and provisional, a location and its occupant.”
“I think that power is simply a display of discipline greater than those impressed by that display consider themselves capable of.”
“This, I would now say, is because all power is exercised through judgments: you have power insofar as, and to the degree that, contending parties bring their grievances, counter-grievances and defenses to you rather than resort or revert to the vendetta.”
“The paradox of power is that the more central the authority, the more authority depends upon the widest distribution of the means to recognize authority; to put it in grammatical terms, the paradox of power is the paradox of the most unequivocal imperative leaving the largest scope of implementation of that imperative.”
“For GA recognizes the inherent powerlessness of the central object, which derives its power from the common desires that impinge on it.”
AI Overview
— AI-generated synthesis. The archive passages above are the primary source.Katz and Bouvard locate power at the center and trace the center back to deferral: "power comes from the center, and the center comes from deferral. Insofar as someone occupies the center of a scene, that person wields power." Power is therefore differential before it is coercive — it accrues to "those exhibiting a greater power of deferral," those who can "stop and examine a situation while others are rushing in," and ultimately to whoever "best articulates" the single demand the center can make at any moment. On this account power is "simply a display of discipline greater than those impressed by that display consider themselves capable of": one defers to it rather than being forced by it. Even brute force is read back through the center — for Gans, GA "recognizes the inherent powerlessness of the central object, which derives its power from the common desires that impinge on it."
What makes power distinctly paradoxical is that occupancy precedes acknowledgment yet depends on it: "it is possessed insofar as others acknowledge that possession as preceding their acknowledgement," so power is "both a priori and provisional, a location and its occupant." The same paradox scales into distribution — "the more central the authority, the more authority depends upon the widest distribution of the means to recognize authority," the most unequivocal imperative leaving the largest scope for its own implementation. And because the center generates the very resentments it must contain, the work of power is juridical: "all power is exercised through judgments," converting grievance that would otherwise revert to the vendetta into "donations to the center." Power, then, is the standing interpretation of the center's demand, continually re-secured by the discipline of the one who answers for it.
Across the Corpus
How this idea is developed elsewhere in the archive, earliest to latest.
“To the participants on the scene, the object appears to emit a force at a distance, and by so doing it initiates the conceptual category of virtual—as opposed to immediate, physical—power. To the extent that language effectively redirects individual action, language delivers force over a distance, without an obvious transmitting medium. GA postulates that…”
“Paradox is constitutive of power and sovereignty as well, a point of supreme importance for absolutism. Power is located at the center—whoever occupies the center is powerful. If we attend to some object that is both attractive and repellent (a source of desire and therefore danger), that object exercises power over us (it holds us in place, first of all).…”
“What, exactly, is power? Who obtains it, who holds it, how is it manifested and used, how is it transmitted, and why? Power, as de Jouvenel says, is credit, which suggests that the origin of power is in the ceding of the decision to one person, or at least a single will, when all have to adhere to the same decision. We can think of obvious examples where…”
“We can model all centrality on the originary scene, where all participants constitute themselves as members by representing and imitating the desired and (therefore) forbidden central object. On this scene there is what I have been calling “centered ordinality,” which means that one member hesitates and successfully communicates that hesitation first,…”
“The converse of the axiom, that someone with power must be loaded up with corresponding responsibilities, while true, is not as primary a principle. Power may have to accede to its responsibilities, it may precede and discover them, power precedes any delegation, and is always at least somewhat in excess of any responsibilities. Fixing power with its…”
“If power is subordinated to a higher principle or purpose, like freedom, or peace, or the greatest good of the greatest number, or equality, or the protection of rights, then it will eventually turn out that power is a site of struggle between opposing conceptions of freedom, peace, equality, right, etc. and therefore of opposing powers. If, on the other…”
“[Q:TwatBrah] I don't fully understand these things: -What is meant by "creating realities" in this context? -What does it mean that the center "makes demands" and why can only one demand be made at a time? -How can we know that those with the greatest power of deferral always ends up in power? The paragraph in question: >What generates power, and gives one…”
“For generative anthropology, the unique human capacity for transcendence , access to a domain of non-material beings (ideas, signs, gods), arises in the originary event as a means to defer mimetic violence. Language is no less transcendental than the sacred, and signification, as the most accessible mode of transcendence, provides a model for…”
“Time is precious, and to devote time to signifying something beyond simply attempting to make use of it is to defer one’s worldly relationship to it and to everything else. As language users we of course take this for granted. The purpose of generative anthropology is to explain the necessity of this deferral in terms of the human need to avoid…”
“The exercise of power involves, first, exhibiting deferral: when others give in to some mimetic contagion, like panic, whoever is able to resist that contagion and model another way of responding to the situation is exercising power. In so resisting, the agent turns himself into a center of attention—he has done something others couldn’t or didn’t think to,…”
Key Texts
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