Power as collective Action The human condition – part I

Review: Unit 3, power as control Macat Knowledge and power Power Knowledge Self vs

In-class assignment #2 According to Foucault, why did the “scaffold” quickly fade from use between 1760 and 1840? According to Foucault, what is the most important difference between contemporary punishment such as prisons and more ancient punishments such as public torture? Why, according to Foucault, is surveillance such an efficient way to control behavior? What does Foucault mean by “the soul is the prison of the body”? Name one institution where discipline could be found prior to the 18th century. What two techniques of power comprise the “examination”?

Unit 4: Power as collective action Unit 1: power as victory. Power to overcome foes an obstacles. Power defeats, destroys. Also power avoids costly conflicts (Sun Tzu); Power-Knowledge (Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Lebow); Power dominates (continuous victory ala Machiavelli, Clausewitz); powers of belief “subjectivate” (Sun Tzu, Lebow, Machiavelli, Thucydides). Unit 2: Power as domination. Power located in dominant groups or government. Locke, Marx, McKinnon, Ture and Hamilton. Power excludes and enslaves. Unit 3: Power as control. Power is located in multiple places and shifts around. Power is institutionalized and anonymous. Power makes persons into predictable machines. Power is control. Unit 4: power as collective action. Power involves giving up control.

Hannah Arendt Political theorist and public intellectual On Revolution Eichmann in Jerusalem The Human Condition (1958) Life of the Mind Ph.D., University of Heidelberg Student of Heidegger Appointments at The New School, Princeton, Berkeley, Yale, Notre Dame, Wesleyan, Northwestern, University of Chicago.

Arendt and Foucault society expects from each of its members a certain kind of behavior, imposing innumerable and various rules, all of which tend to "normalize" its members, to make them behave, to exclude spontaneous action or outstanding achievement (40). Economics—until the modern age a not too important part of ethics and politics and based on the assumption that men act with respect to their economic activities as they act in every other respect—could achieve a scientific character only when men had become social beings and unanimously followed certain patterns of behavior, so that those who did not keep the rules could be considered to be asocial or abnormal (42).

Vita Activa Work Action Labor What is “labor”? The activities tied to the necessities of life. What is “work”? The activity which is tied to building and maintaining a world fit for human use. What is “action”? The activity tied to agency within plurality. Plural: containing more than one or more than one kind. “Human plurality is the paradoxical plurality of unique beings” (176). How is the “vita activa” different from the “vita contemplativa”? A way of living, living; active. A life devoted to public-political matters. (pg. 7, 17): How does Arendt define vita activa? What pieces of its original meaning does she think that we’ve lost? Pg. 22-23: “Action alone is the exclusive prerogative of man; neither a beast nor a god is capable of it, and only action is entirely dependent upon the constant presence of others.”

A Theory of “action” “Action has the closest connection with the human condition of natality; the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting. In this sense of initiative, an element of action, and therefore of natality, is inherent in all human activities. Moreover, since it is the political activity par excellence, natality, and not mortality, may be the central category of political thought” (9). What does Arendt mean by “natality”? How does natality relate to “action”? What is the significance of Arendt’s use of the term ‘natality?”

“action”, “freedom”, “Power” by freedom Arendt means the capacity to begin, to start something new, to do the unexpected, with which all human beings are endowed by virtue of being born. Action as the realization of freedom is therefore rooted in natality, in the fact that each birth represents a new beginning and the introduction of novelty in the world. “With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our original physical appearance” (177). “Power” involves the potential for action. Action involves “words and deeds”. What is the significance of Arendt’s use of the term ‘natality?”

Action When? Where? How? Who? What? Why? ..the French Revolution, the Paris Commune of 1871, the creation of Soviets during the Russian Revolution, the French Resistance to Hitler in the Second World War, and the Hungarian revolt of 1956. In all these cases individual men and women had the courage to interrupt their routine activities, to step forward from their private lives in order to create a public space where freedom could appear, and to act in such a way that the memory of their deeds could become a source of inspiration for the future. In doing so, they rediscovered the truth known to the ancient Greeks that action is the supreme blessing of human life, that which bestows significance to the lives of individuals.

Discussion: The Social and the Political 1. What does it mean to describe man as a “political animal”? Why is Arendt so critical of translations that instead describe him as a “social animal”? (pg. 22) 2. How does Arendt define equality? How does she depart from Locke and other theorists we’ve read thus far? (pg. 32-33) What is the significance of being “equals” but not “peers” (pg. 41) – Does this remind you of Marx? 3. How does Arendt define the public realm in contradistinction from the private? (pg. 33) Privacy (pg. 38) 4. What is the social? Why is it so dangerous, according to Arendt? How does the social produce a “mass society”? (pg. 41) What role does knowledge (such as economics and statistics) play in the social? (pg. 42-43)   5. How does Arendt distinguish between wealth and private property? Why does she think it’s so important that we revive this distinction? Privacy & Reality (pg. 58) Wealth vs. Property (pg. 61) Sacredness of property (pg. 62, 64)    4.  Where does law figure in the relationship between public and private? (pg. 62)