The Two Languages of Power

Although generally recognized as a central concept in the social sciences, the diverse and in part seemingly contradictory conceptualizations of power have triggered the suspicion that completely different phenomena have been subsumed under the same term. In contrast, this paper argues that the conceptual confusion can be resolved by, first, distinguishing between three levels of power (essence, action, social; see my Logik der Macht, Velbrück 2012).

Arguing that discussions in the social sciences are about what I have called social power, the paper then traces how the familiar distinction between power over and power to refers to two different functions of social power, namely the repression and the constitution of social relations. A sketch of how both of these functions have been analyzed in action-theoretical as well as structural and systemic theoretical frameworks leads to a four-field-matrix which substantiates the claim that the different aspects of social power may only be separated analytically. Any essentialist isolation of these aspects into different types of power necessarily looses sight of and masks how power permeates social phenomena.

Accordingly, all social relations are power relations; power cannot be escaped and evaluated from an external standpoint. However, the study of power has traditionally been motivated by critical concerns. Analyses of power aim at criticizing and altering power relations. The final part of this paper argues that a totalizing conception of power and a critique of power are compatible because they are formulated in different languages: the former in the objectifying language employed by an observer of the social dynamic, the latter in the performative language of a participant entangled in social practices. The relation of these two languages of power is the topic of the theory of pespecival dualism.