When Dignity Is Impossible

This presentation questions whether and how the exercise of power in the form of the submission to power can act as a formative force upon the operations of the imagination, perception, and cognition by making the constitution of certain types of meaning significantly more likely than others. This restricts not only the types of meaning that can emerge in what is taken to be the objective world, but also the types of self-reference, with the latter extended to include possibilities for action on the part of individuals. This results in social life operating with a determining causality to the degree that social interaction constitutes subjection to power, the restriction or reduction of alternative ways of thought and action, and the perpetuation and expansion of alienation in both subjective and objective forms.