Relational Materialsim and
Citizen X
Chapter Three -
​Part Six
This is the sixth and final part of Chapter Three.

The purpose of this part is to rectify and dispel what John Searle refers to as ‘the paradox of government.’ By doing this, I hope to shed further light on some of the topics we have been discussing in Chapter Three as well as setting up the beginning of Chapter Four.

Searle’s paradox, emerging during his discussion of the ontological status of our social reality, is stated as follows:

“(G)overnmental power is a system of status functions and thus rests on collective recognition or acceptance, but the collective recognition or acceptance, though typically not itself based on violence, can continue to function only if there is a permanent threat of violence in the form of the military and police.” (Searle, ‘Building the Social World, pp. 163).

The paradox is this: The legitimization of government authority explicitly depends on (rests on) the collective recognition of the state as the state by the citizens, but the recognition of its legitimate status is not enough to maintain the vitality of state power over time. To sustain itself, there needs to be a permanent and recognized perpetual threat of violent means for the state’s functional ends.

The paradox hinges on the necessity for non-violent collective recognition of state power and necessarily violent state power maintenance. Thus, the legitimacy of state power both rests and does not rest purely on collective recognition. Recognition is necessary but not sufficient, yet recognition needs to be both necessary and sufficient to legitimize the state.

Does a paradox exist within the basic frame of our social apparatus? And do the mechanisms of state authority necessarily require a continual threat of violence from the state towards its citizens to maintain their legitimacy? This is certainly a concern.

Relational Materialism
and Citizen X
Chapter Three - Part Four

In Part Three, I began defining ‘Power’ and ‘power’ and mentioned that individual agents have the capacity for action, their own personal power, but the ability to exercise this power is a matter of contingent degree. 

Any expression of power faces resistance from its relation with the external world, and this fact brings limitations to expressions of intentional action.

Limits to personal power, then, also function to limit personal autonomy.

The relation between power and autonomy and a few definitions

I spoke of autonomy at some length in Chapter Two, but it important to recap and renew that previous conversation.

Autonomy, from the Greek auto meaning ‘self’ and nomos, ‘law’ or ‘rule,’ describes the individual’s capacity to maintain authority over the directions, choices, and actions that concern her life.

The core notion of autonomy is “self-authority,” that is, the ability to decide and act in accordance with one’s own choices, without deferring to or confirming those choices with any authority higher than one’s own.

Among traits Marina Oshana lists (and I endorse) as necessary for self-authority, are “reasonably astute cognitive skills and a developed set of values,[1]” as well as “certain psychological characteristics and a history of experiences conducive to self-directed agency.[2]”

These characteristics frame autonomy as a relation of constitutive social forces and degrees of personal disposition, development, and recognized authoritative opportunity.

In distinguishing autonomy from freedom, Marina Oshana says, “To be free is to possess the power to decide or to act, but autonomy deals with agential authority over those decisions and actions.[3]”

Autonomy is closely bound with “authority,” which I understand as “power that acquires legitimization.” In other words, an authority is an agent who holds legitimate power over one or more other agents, including her own “self.”

Another definition necessary to restate is that of ‘agency.’ I understand “agency” as the capacity to make and impose choices in the world; an agent is one who acts.

This action, as fundamentally a capacity, is ontologically based in the phenomenological subject, the individual, the “agent” who may only act to the extent that she is able to with self-deliberation and empowerment.

Ideally, an “agent” maintains the capacity to express her personal power with no limitations and with complete self-authored deliberation. However, as I have taken pains to mention and explain, practical limitations to “agency” exist in the simple fact of physical and social reality.

Acknowledgement of these empirical conditions negates the usefulness of ideal theories, requiring practical theory to base itself in material paradigms such as my proposed model of Relational Materialism.

The relation between power and resistance

The concept of resistance is vital to my overall project.

In upcoming chapters of this blog series I will be returning often to resistance so for now, I want to quickly bring the idea into play and offer a short description of how resistance functions in relation with power. It will be discussed in greater detail as we move forward.

First, Foucault claims that resistance is internal to the exercise of power, a dynamic part of the action. Of resistances, Foucault writes, “They are the odd term in relations of power; they are inscribed in the latter as an irreducible opposite.”[4]

I understand this to mean that resistance is found in the relation itself, at points of instantiation when an agent intentionally utilizes her capacity to act.

What I mean is this:

Where the technical term “Power” deals with the internal experience of Citizen X, the basic experience of being ‘in’ an external world, the concept of “power” contains both internal and external aspects, it is our common, colloquial notion of being able to act in the material world and the ability to effect the objects we encounter.

In every case, power is in relationship with resistance so as to facilitate tangible actions, the capacity and/or the ability to do something in the physical world.

This implies some degree of relationship between objects, as the concepts “power to” and “power over” tell us that there is a form of resistance that is being overcome.

My initial definition of ‘resistance’ is: “The impeding or opposing effect executed by one material thing upon another.” This definition will evolve as the discussion continues in future chapters, but for now it is enough to move on.

Moving On: The Sociopolitical State

Resistant forces can be understood as environmental, other agents, the agent’s own materially-considered phenomenology (i.e. psychological and physical limitations), or most importantly for this blog, the sociopolitical state.

In this section, I will begin with a general definition of sociopolitical power, one endorsed by Iris Young. From this initial attempt, I will build my own definition of sociopolitical power based on a Relational Materialist model.

In general, the “sociopolitical” involves a combination of social and political factors, an idea found in Iris Marion Young’s claim that sociopolitical justice “concerns all aspects of institutional organization, public action, social practices and habits, and cultural meanings insofar as they are potentially subject to collective evaluation and decisionmaking.”[5]

Traditional descriptions of sociopolitical power, also described as “state” power, are in terms of the “sovereign,” a common and legitimate political authority.

According to this model, individual agents trade some degree of their “personal” power and autonomy, their “agency,” for the benefits of an organized and structured social system: protection, opportunities, creative and fulfilled lives free from the instabilities of non-political existence.

Hobbes describes such existence as the “state of nature,” while John Rawls hypothetically calls this the “original position.” In either case, what they are describing is conceptually equivalent: a model of human life without a political state or sovereign authority.

Models of human life without legitimate political authority are used to develop the idea that the fundamental relationship between individual agents and the political state must be justified.

I agree that this fundamental relationship must be not only justified, but continually maintained, an idea I will return to.

What I want to draw from this conception of an original state of nature is the idea that there is a fundamental relationship between individual agents and the political state that must be justified, legitimized, and maintained.

This relationship is based on recognized and accepted authority; political subjects, citizens, recognize the state’s authority over their lives and accept the benefits of political life, i.e. protection, law, increased opportunity for felicity or a “good life,” in trade for the necessary burdens of such arrangements. Burdens include restrictions, taxations, and limits to personal expression of power such as laws against stealing, yelling “fire” in theaters, traffic regulations, and so forth.

In the traditional context, political power was considered the sole possession of a lone sovereign or ruling class.

Current philosophical inquiries into the subject, following Foucault, have to admit to a shifting in the locus of political power.

There can be no legitimate discussion of a single authority guiding the mechanisms and apparatus of the State, the sources of power have become abstract, the major influential factors in a secular, capitalistic democracy too diverse, parasitic and demanding of one another to be thought of as one coherent entity.

With the growing specialization, consolidation, and cohesion of industrial, political, and economic systems, the traditional idea of ‘power as sovereign’ fails to hold.

No longer confined to the simple form of an absolute ruler, the paradigm and structural mechanisms of ‘power as sovereign’ has become embodied in and by the social system itself.  Power is now everywhere, wrote Foucault, for “it comes from everywhere”. (Foucault, “History of Sexuality- volume 1”, pg 92-93)

Foucault realized that our modern society has developed such as to internalize two crucial mechanisms of ‘power as authority’, those of Surveillance and Exclusion, and the panorama of disciplines and controls that stem from these.

Its authority has moved beyond traditional limits as citizens have come to internalize the mechanisms and ideologies of state power, enacting the capacity of that external authority over themselves.  Born from foundations of post-industrial, capital-driven politics, individual agents produce, reproduce, and are subject too, political authority, and enforce its power with their everyday actions, assumptions, relationships, and norms.  We have become more than the ‘units’ of power’s application, Foucault says, we are ‘vehicles’ for its expression. (Foucault, “Power and Knowledge”, pg 544)

The idea of the ‘sovereign’, he writes, is enough to propagate its continual rebirth. 

My initial definition of ‘power’ is “an agent’s (1) capacity to act, an internal potential that manifests in actuality as an (2) intentional action involving (3) a dynamic relationship with the external world. To this I must now add further points to encompass our relation to the modern political state.

The power of the common authority we enact has become (4) a net-like system that is (5) internalized by agents in dynamic relationship with their own personal power. I will develop these ideas further in upcoming chapters. 

The Structure of Sociopolitical Power

Structurally and mechanically, contemporary sociopolitical power is exercised in three forms: Argumental/Persuasive,[6] Compulsive/Brute,[7] and Deontic/Structural. In this blog, I am concerned specifically with deontics.

Broadly, deontic power constructs the basic structural limits of the socio-political system, and enables an agent of power, be it state, individual, or group, a de facto authority, to get other agents to behave in desired ways without having to resort to actual physical coercion or force.

Searle writes that deontic power provides “desire-independent reasons for action.”[8] He means that on a practical level, the rights, restrictions, and duties imposed by the deontic structure of law and regulation produce, on the theoretical level, intentions to act that are not based on an agent’s own initial desires.

Stopping at a red light on an empty street when in a hurry is an easy example. One way relevant to this paper involves the agent of power getting the subject to actually want what the agent wants him to want, while a second way involves the agent getting the subject to only perceive certain courses of action as open, manipulating the subject’s subsequent actions and intentions.[9]

I have a problem with Searle’s idea of ‘desire-independent reasons for action’ and I will return to it in upcoming chapters.

I do, however, agree with his assessment that the contemporary sociopolitical state’s legitimacy and regulative force is, in Searle’s words, “intentionally-relative,” that is, “people’s attitudes are necessary to constitute something as money, government, political parties, or final examinations.”[10]

Political agents accept the benefits of political life, i.e. protection, law, increased opportunity for a “good life,” in trade for the necessary burdens of such arrangements, including the state’s authority over aspects of their lives.[11] Foucault writes, “What can the end of government be? Certainly not just to govern, but to improve the condition of the population…”[12]

The ability to carve the space for oneself to realize, develop, and exercise personal power is relative to one’s relationship and standing to the society at large.  The more power one holds over their choices and movements, the better the chances to fulfill one’s own particular ‘good life’, an important concern in liberal discourse.

This “pastoral” state, with the population its flock, contains the mechanisms for large-scale discipline of the individual body, where conformation to the expectations of the state was linked to the well-being and advancement of both individuals and the general population; the state as the sole means to the best end.[13]

I will return to these ideas in the Part Five.

Two more definitions necessary for upcoming discussions

Allow me to briefly step back and offer two definitions that will become of growing importance as we move forward. This discussion evolves and moves quick in this blog format, so I do not want to risk letting these definitions slip through the cracks.

First, I will use the term ‘System’ to describe “a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements in relationship to each other as to form a complex whole”.

Second, ‘Economic’ is “the system concerned with the structure of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods, services, and resources in a society, including finances, labor, and institutional relations”.

Thank you and I will see you again in Chapter Three, Parts Five and Six.

In Part Five, I will begin discussing this notions of the pastoral state and “biopower,” as well as offering my definition of sociopolitical power. Five will also lead us towards Iris Young and her rejection of distributive theories of power and justice. Her rejection forms the base of my own model of Relational Materialism.

Part Six will delve into Searle and answer to some objections I have with his conclusions. 

Footnotes
[1] Oshana (2003) pg. 102
[2] ibid. pg. 101
[3] Oshana, 2008, pg. 199
[4] Foucault (1990) pp. 96
[5] Young (1990) pp. 9
[6] Slogans, propaganda, the food pyramid, political primaries, nationalistic rhetoric and symbols.
[7] Imprisonment, penalties, sanctions, the death penalty, military presence at social demonstrations.
[8] Searle (2010). pp. 23  “the glue to hold civilization together,”[8]
[9] See Searle (2010) and Lukes (2004) This ability to reflect upon first-order desires, and then to act upon consequent second-level reasons, is a trait particular to humans and “distinguishes language-based rationality from rationality that does not require language.” Searle, pp. 128
[10] Searle (2010) pp. 17
[11]Such burdens include regulations, taxations, and limits to personal expression of power such as laws against stealing, yelling “fire” in theaters, traffic fines, slander, and so forth.
[12] Foucault, 2004, pp. 105
[13] “And the instruments that government will use to obtain these ends are, in a way, immanent to the field of population; it will be by acting directly, on the population itself through campaigns, or, indirectly, by, for example, techniques that, without people being aware of it, stimulate the birth rate, or direct the flows of population to this or that region or activity.” (2204, pp. 105)

Relational Materialism and Citizen X
Chapter Three - Part Three

In Chapter Three – Part Two, I concluded by saying that politics is primarily a matter of decision-making and is therefore a matter of Power.

This begs the question then: What do I mean by Power? Why capital ‘P’ Power as opposed to simply ‘power,’ and do I mean to make a distinction? Further, how does Power influence politics and decision-making in a Relational Materialist frame?

In Chapter Three – Part Three, I will begin to answer these questions and I will start with definitions of Power and power.

To begin…

To begin, I want to bring attention to my use of capital ‘P’ Power and draw a distinction between it and lower case power. My intention with this distinction is to differentiate a technical term Power from the more colloquial sense of power in common academic and literary uses.

My technical use of Power is similar to Husserl's technical use of Intention as opposed to intention. The technical use of ‘Intention’ is a specific phenomenological term used to describe the intangible aspects of our experience, where we use ‘intention’ in a more colloquial capacity.

All experiences are, phenomenologically speaking, Intended: they are Intentional, they are experienced as about some particular object in the Lifeworld. This is a separate idea from common ‘intentionality’, which is what we use when we say, “I intended to call you last night.” Here, intention is about what you want to do in the world, what action you so desired to exercise. As this is concerned with action, common intentionality is both internal and external, dealing with physical actions in the Lifeworld. In contrast, technical ‘Intentionality’ is purely internal: it is the experience of our connection to the Lifeworld, concerned with epistemology, not praxeology.

My technical use of Power is a similar notion. ‘Power’ is used to discuss the intangible aspects of our common conception of power and how it relates the phenomenological agent to the external world it experiences.

This will all become clearer as I explain my understanding of ‘Power’ and ‘power’, so allow me do that.

Defining power and Power.

The word ‘power’ derives from an older form of the French pouvoir, through the Latin posse, meaning “to be able to.” At its heart, power is a capacity, “to be able” to do something. It is an internal potential realized as material action within the world. An adequate phenomenological definition of ‘Power’ must account for the internal and external factors operative in any Lifeworld exercise of ‘power.’

My initial definition of ‘power’ is “an agent’s (1) capacity to act, an internal potential that manifests in actuality as an (2) intentional action involving (3) a dynamic relationship with the external world.

All expressions of power are intentional, that is, “directed at, or about, objects and states of affairs in the world.” Until the action realizing the intention occurs there is no exercise of power. The capacity remains, the exercise of action simply fails.

A Short Description of Citizen X’s Relation to the Lifeworld

-  Citizen X is ontologically and epistemically distinct from the Lifeworld, this allows for X’s phenomenological experience.

-  Citizen X’s epistemological experience is that it acts and reacts to the distinct Lifeworld, including itself.

-   Citizen X’s ontological experience is that it acts and reacts in the distinct Lifeworld, including itself.

-   Acting ‘to’ the Lifeworld, ‘towards’ it, is distinct from acting ‘in’ the Lifeworld and I am using Intentionality and Power to name this distinction.

-  Colloquial ‘power’ and ‘intentionality’ are both concerned with the physical reality of direct experience, utilizing the basic ontological and epistemological distinction and 'experiencing’ it, active and alive, drawing together the inner and outer life in a moment of actual life.

-  Citizen X, on the individual, or “personal” level, contains both tangible and intangible elements, and expressions of power result in definite and discreet physical artifacts, i.e., actions in a material world.

An Example

As mentioned, exercises of power occur in relation with the external world and this fact brings with it limitations to expressions of intentional action. First, as physical beings, basic physical limitations hinder our freedom to act in important ways. For example, our needs for nourishment and rest, as well as general bodily limitations such as having only two arms, two legs, no wings, no gills, the effects of aging, proneness to injury and so on: the body both produces and limits its own expressible power. In addition, the reality of different environments brings opportunities and obstacles such as weather, landscape, climate, and various geographical factors.

To explain, take something as simple as eating an apple.

Seeing an apple on a tree, an individual wants to pick and eat it. It is in her capacity to be able to do this. She can choose to pick the apple. It is within her ‘power’ to do so. In the colloquial sense just used, power refers to the individual capacity to meaningfully interact and to be an active force in the external world. An individual exercises her power when she reaches out and plucks the apple off the tree:[2] “power” describes how action manifests as well describing the force of the action itself.  Until the action realizing the intention occurs there is no exercise of power.[3]

Common “power” describes how we are able to act, to make decisions and carry them out. Individual agents have the capacity for action, their own personal power, but the ability to actually exercise this power is a matter of contingent degree.

Returning to the apple example, an individual is hungry and so she intentionally expresses her power by reaching up, plucking an apple from the tree and eating it. However, things are not always so straightforward with our relationship to the external world. What if the apple is too high in the tree to reach, or what if the apple, when picked, turns out to be rotten, thus inedible?

In the examples given, I have described an agent’s ‘personal’ power, the capacity each individual carries to act in the world, to decide and carry through with some intentional action. The agent has “power to” pick and eat the apple, and she has “power over” her environment just in case she uses her personal power successfully.

If the apple is too high in the tree, her intention to pick and eat the apple is frustrated, her hunger grows, and her power over her environment becomes compromised. Of course, with ingenuity and inventiveness, she could overcome environmental limitations; say by building a ladder or perhaps working with another agent to secure her desired outcome.

There are countless examples of the manners that we succeed, fail, change desires, achieve unintended outcomes, and so forth, and ample literature on these subjects exists, however in the context of this blog, it is important to apply this discussion to the more philosophically important relationships between Citizen X and the Lifeworld, or in more practical terms, the relationship between any contemporary agent and the capital-based modern liberal state. [5]

Searle and One Last Thing

One last thing: Philosophical discussions of power generally concern either ‘power to’ or ‘power over.’ ‘Power to’ describes a capacity, an ability to act, where ‘power over’ describes power as external, involving control of one’s environment or getting other agents to behave in desired ways.[6]

John Searle shows this distinction by separating the capacity for power from its physical expression, logically distinguishing them by stating that ‘X has the power (is able, has the capacity) to do A’ does not include the relational quality, ‘X has the power over Y with respect to action A’ that an expression of power contains.[7] This means that exercises of power involve a second, external element, some Y, to exercise power over.

This relational aspect involves two general constraints Searle claims must be met to be a successful expression of power. The “exactness constraint” requires “one should be able to say, who exactly has power over whom to get them to do exactly what,” applicable even when the agent and subject of power are technically unknown to one another, such as a senator over her district.

Second, the “intentionality constraint” requires a specification of the intentional content of the exercise, the general motivation and direction of the agent’s actions. Colloquial intentionality is extended to cases where the threat or known option of an exercise of power is recognized, including not only the actual intentional content of the threat, but also the counterfactual specification of possible imposed sanctions, including political and economic exclusion or embargo, fines, imprisonment, being kicked out of your bridge club, detention, solitary confinement, and so on; the list of the degrees and types of ‘possible imposed sanctions’ is long and varied.

The core notion of political power for Searle is formalized as, “X has power over Y IFF X is able intentionally to get Y to behave in a certain way with respect to action A whether or not Y wants to behave that way.”[8]

Searle’s definitions of power will be returned to in the relative future. As we move forward, I will look at them from time to time and see what in them holds and what is shown to be insufficient.

Coming soon in Chapter Three: Part Four will pick up this discussion with the ideas of power and autonomy.


Footnotes (yes, I know there's no one or four - silly blog formatting)

[2] Searle (2010) pp. 146.  Searle separates the capacity for power from its physical expression, logically distinguishing them by showing that “X has the power (is able, has the capacity) to do A” does not include the relational quality, “X has the power over Y with respect to action A” that an expression of power contains.
[3] When she reaches out and plucks the apple, she has exercised her power to do so, just as when she eats the apple she has exercised her power to eat the apple. If she wants to walk over to another tree, she likewise has the capacity to do so and exercises her power by doing it.
[5] By which I include both individual agents and more formal notions of ‘agent’ such as a social group or complainant in a court of law (i.e. Brown v. Board of Education).
[6]  Searle, (2010), pp. 146
[7] ibid. pp. 146
[8] ibid. pp. 148

The Overall Plan of the Blog Series "The Value of Power"

Before releasing the next part of Chapter Three, I find it necessary, for my own organization and for my fear of you feeling organized while reading such a dispersed and drawn out blog-style philosophical tome, to give a general structure of the chapters and upcoming topics involved in the project.

So, subject to many changes of course, here is a general table of contents.

The Value of Power

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Evolution, Devolution, and Other Political Possibilities
Contains 3 parts and deals with the basic problems and ideas of meaningful political change.

Chapter Two: The Value of Autonomy in Relation to Personal Power - The Origins of Citizen X
Contains 5 parts and deals with the ontological and epistemic status of the politicized phenomenological agent.

Chapter Three: Relational Materialism and Citizen X
Contains 5 parts and deals with distribution, personal and political power and the ontology of the political state.

Chapter Four: Distribution and Political Justice in a Relational Materialist Frame
Contains 5 parts and deals with Iris Young's argument against distributive models  and my reply to her argument.

Chapter Five: Domination and Dependence - The Value of Power
Contains 5 parts and deals with the role of power in the phenomenology of the political agent.

Chapter Six: Power and Resistance - The Value of Citizen X
Contains 5 parts and deals with resistance to oppressive political practices and assumptions.

Chapter Seven: Relational Materialism and Practical Theory
Contains 5 parts and deals with prescriptive measures and practical ideas for meaningful political change.

As mentioned, this is all subject to modification and updates as I move forward with this project.

My intention is to finish this blog series by early 2015. Once finished, I will take this blog, add to it, change and edit what needs to be changed and edited, and release the longer, more detailed, updated version in both print and ebook formats.

Thank you for your interest and I always appreciate your comments and thoughts.

Cheers, Viva, Devrim!!

David Edward Wagner

Chapter Three
Part Two 

Relational Materialism and Citizen X

In Part One of this chapter I made several large claims important to the upcoming discussions. Allow me to briefly summarize and categorize the main points.



Main Claims from Chapter Three- Part One

Phenomenology is the study of individual experience and this includes both the first person point of view of an experiencing “I” and the structure of the experience itself. All experiences are Intentional, a technical term meaning they are ‘directed at’ or ‘about’ something, most notably other experiencing individuals and the shared Lifeworld of culture, history, and belief.

While the discipline of phenomenology certainly has influenced political philosophy, a full systemic account of political philosophy in a phenomenological frame has not yet been developed. My project is to do just that for both theoretical and practical reasons.

To do this, I will base my argument around “Citizen X,” my term for the politicized phenomenological agent. Agency importantly involves embodied action in the external world while Politicization involves the inclusion of the experiencing individual as a member of some socio-political group and the structure supporting sociopolitical inclusion.

My phenomenological system is termed Relational Materialism and based on what I understand as a fundamental phenomenological relationship between agents, as both individuals and groups, and the sociopolitical state, I argue that sociopolitical power is usefully conceived within an alternative “distributive” model.

Now to move forward.

Moving Forward: An Alternative Distributive-based Model

In the past, distributive models/descriptions of social relations have been controversial and have been argued against by many philosophers including an important and influential argument against it by Iris Marion Young. As I move forward, I will use Young’s arguments explicitly in the construction of my own model. However, for now, the remainder of this blog entry will be devoted to explaining some of the intricacies of my account of distribution in contemporary liberal society.

To understand what I mean by my claim that “sociopolitical power is usefully conceived within an alternative distributive model,” two things must be explained.

First, what exactly is ‘distribution’ and what does it consist of?

Two, how does distribution fit with my phenomenological model of Relational Materialism.

Distribution

In general, distribution involves the division and allotment of material and immaterial goods, services, and resources within a given territory and population. A territory and its population is a broad definition of a contemporary sociopolitical state, and each state follows some particular distributive scheme.[1]

The primary purpose of any distributive system is to satisfy the wants, needs, and demands for services, goods, and resources within a territory.

“Services” are intangible economic activities, examples of which are haircuts, taxicabs, or ‘expertise’ such as visiting a doctor or a financial advisor.

Services contrast with “goods,” generally physical items that satisfy some want, utility, or need. More accurately, goods can be tangible (an apple, a car) or, increasingly, intangible, for example, information or news that is distributed through some physical instrument such as a newspaper or computer.

Goods that are limited relative to demand are termed ‘economic’ goods (cars, computers), contrasted with ‘free’ goods, goods needed by society and available without limit, such as water or air. However, clean air and water are more recently considered (controversially so) ‘common goods,’ as competition over them has become rivalrous.

Private goods can be privately owned, such as a car. Public goods, by contrast, are non-rivalrous; the light from a streetlight or national defense are examples.

From this all-too-brief distributive primer, I want to take three specific ideas.

First, it is not distorting or surprising to understand ‘goods,’ in a practical and academic sense, as intangibles, as actions manifested and marketed. Goods and services alike have recognized intangible elements adjoined to corresponding physical relationships. A massage is an idea and an action marketed and commodified in the form of merchandise, professionals, and specialists. “Taxi” is an idea made concrete in driver, car, and cab company.

Second, that values are created and that “valuing” relates directly to “devaluing.”

Third, that these intangible and manufactured elements of distribution are relational, that is, they occur in relationships between some particular agent and some external element. I will develop this claim further over the next several chapters.

Simple and Complex, Conceptual Idealism and Actual Realism

There are two broad views of the equal distribution of goods in a society: Simple and Complex. Though there are various arguments and camps within each of these schemes, they all fall within this basic delineation.

Simple Equality ideally demands goods are to be distributed evenly, in equal, uniform manners. Each individual gets the same amount of each ‘good’ in morally and materially considered ways; an egalitarian land of enough and as good as.

Complex equality says there is more to it than that. There are circumstances that have true effect on the egalitarian aspirations of our distributive system.

My understanding is that we, as embodied politicized phenomenological agents, or more simply, as “material agents” or just “agents,” exist in a material world where the structure of our sociopolitical requires, necessarily I might add, a complex description of distribution.

We do not live behind a Rawlsian veil that would blind us to differences in social station, background, assumption or convention, and we are not unencumbered by the realities that these differences present to us. We see who and what we are, and we are weighed down with the cumbersome accumulation of histories, decisions, social mores, and consequences.

Thus the ideal, that all social goods be distributed to the benefit of the least-advantaged member of the particular society, Rawls’ conception of the ‘Difference Principle,’ is an egalitarian response to the actuality of our complex social relations. It acknowledges that there is more to the heart of our situation than what can be salvaged from pragmatically untenable simple conceptions of absolute uniformity of distribution.

The locus of the political

Something important is brought to light with Rawls’ Difference Principle, something inherent in all sociopolitical theorizing including my own.

There is a fundamental distinction to be made between Ideal and Actual: it is an ontological difference of priority. The Ideal is a rational construct, it is a formalized construct of reasoned experience. Ideal theory asks for a priori categorization, how could things be if stripped of the actuality of material experience. It is a theory of concepts, a theory of theories. Passive and disconnected, Ideal theory is the theory of the concept of theories.

The Actual, in contrast, is the theory of the concept of action. It is materially based, embodied, the experience itself, not the categorization of the experience. Actual theory is ontologically based in the phenomonologcal world, the world of experience and the structures of experience. It is therefore active; it is the act of experiencing.

Ideal theory is ontologically based in the deliberations and judgments of the phenomenological consciousness, logically subsequent to and comparatively more passive than the act of the experience itself.

The Actual is prior to the Ideal, it is what brings the ideal to being. It is ontologically prior in two ways. One, that a “material agent” must exist and sustain considerable experience before conceptual categorization can occur. Two, that the “material world” exists independently from the agent and it is the agent’s coming into being and out of being within this external ‘lifeworld’ that frames the accumulation of ideal concepts.

A common element in contemporary liberal theory is exemplified by Rawls’ principle of equalizing social differentiations, that as veiled and unencumbered agents, we can ask that our political paradigm be legitimated with the Ideal as the ontological starting point.

The Ideal is a proper place for postulating and theorizing, but the actual drafting of our practices should not come from an ideal vantage point. The questions of Idealism are commonly “how” and “why,” Rawls’ own question was how can we create an equality of distribution because some people have nothing while others have too much.

However, before answers to “how” and “why” can be meaningfully solved there is a prior question that needs dealing with. “How can we become equal and move closer to the ultimate level playing field” depends first on the prior inquiry: “what is causing the disharmonious relationships in our systems, economic, political, and social, and what actual decisions can we recognize as disharmonious to the whole, and can therefore choose to change in fundamental ways?”

This is a question of Actual theory, of Realism, of material concern.

As I want to wrap up this blog entry at the fear of running too long and/or digressing too fully, I want to make one more summarizing statement and then conclude.

Relational Materialism is Actual theory, ontologically based in the active world of experience. The sociopolitical questions I want to raise deal with the activity of experiencing agents and the Lifeworld we have created.

Before any type of prescriptive/descriptive analysis of "why" any particular capital-based liberal state is facing the contemporary problems it faces or "how" those problems can be alleviated, the questions of “what is a contemporary state qua state,” and “what is the structure of a state qua state” must both be answered.

Those two questions will form the bulk of the next many months of my philosophy blog entries.

As I mentioned previously, a state is a political entity and ‘politics’ deals importantly with  decision making. Thus, as I will begin to discuss in the very next entry, Politics is a matter of Power: power in the society we have constructed and live in, power in relation to the power of others, in relation to our own histories and our shared experiences, power in relation to other necessary social goods: nourishment, shelter, health, security and, perhaps, a good life. And these things are, to be certain, fundamentally political concerns.

As always, I encourage you to leave comments, to argue and ask, as I may have very well skipped over things, not explained things, or otherwise not clarified myself.  Also, perhaps you don't agree or maybe you even do, for whatever reason at all, I hope you feel free to comment and continue the discussion. 

Footnotes
[1] The United States utilizes a mixed distributive scheme and economy, blending elements of a free, unrestrained, privately owned capitalist market with state-owned public goods and regulatory measures.

Chapter Three
Part One

Relational Materialism and Citizen X

Introduction

In this blog entry, I will begin discussing the idea of and need for a phenomenological model of political philosophy. I will also begin explaining the structure of Citizen X, the politicized subjective agent, and the details of X’s relationship with the external world.

What is a phenomenological model of political philosophy? This is a good question. First, a few concepts and ideas:

- The core notion of Phenomenology is that it is the study (logos) of phenomena (appearance of things, things as they appear to us in our experience, the ways we experience them). Put simply, it is the study of experience and the structure of that experience.

- Importantly, Phenomenology studies experience from a subjective and first person point of view (I do, I see, to my left, beside me, etc.).

- Phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience including perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, volition to body awareness, embodied action, and social activity including linguistic activity.

- The structure of an experience involves its Intentionality, its being directed towards something, the simple fact that it is an experience of or about some object. In phenomenology, Intentionality is a technical term and should not be confused with the more standard idea we have of intention.

- Concerning Intentionality, Husserl claimed that our conscious experience is directed towards (represents, ‘intends’) objects/things only through particular concepts thoughts, ideas, images, etc. These make up the ‘meaning’ or ‘content’ of a given experience and they are distinct from the things they present or mean. So, the tree you see in the park is distinct from the general concept of ‘tree’.

- The idea of ‘Lifeworld’: Intersubjectivity (relations between agents) forms the basis of the shared external lifeworld (as termed by Husserl). The lifeworld can be thought of in two ways. One, in the beliefs of the single agent, the rational structure underlying their everyday experience, the beliefs against which his/her everyday attitude towards him/her self, the objective world, and other agents receive their ultimate justification. Two, as the full realm of socially, culturally, or evolutionarily established concepts of general structure (motion, spatial shapes, causality) that groups or collectives of agents conceive of their world through. This includes language and the basic shared nature of a common external world that allows translation of languages and ideas between historically or culturally distinct lifeworlds.

- The two leading figures in the formation of the phenomenological method and discipline, Husserl and Heidegger, utilized distinct approaches. Briefly, the bulk of Husserl’s work concerned transcendental phenomenology and was epistemological in nature (concerning knowledge and the cogito), while Heidegger’s work concerned a more existential phenomenology that was ontological in nature (concerning being).

These ideas will be discussed in greater detail as we move forward in this blog series and they are presented here briefly to simply get us going. Please feel free to ask questions, add your own ideas, or whatever you want in the form of comments. I look forward to them.

 My notion of Citizen X

To explain what I want to do by formalizing a systemic phenomenological account of political philosophy, I must first add the basics of my conception of Citizen X to the all-to-brief phenomenology primer given above.

Citizen X is the ‘politicized phenomenological agent.’ This description has three components, so let us look quickly at each with the promise of getting into greater depth and detail in the course of this multi-blog entry chapter.

I understand “agency” as the capacity to make and impose choices in the world; an agent is one who acts. This action, as fundamentally a capacity, is ontologically based in the phenomenological subject, the individual, the “agent” who may only act to the extent that she is able to with self-deliberation and empowerment. Ideally, an “agent” maintains the capacity to express her personal power with no limitations and with complete self-authored deliberation.

However, as described in Chapter Two of this blog series, practical limitations to “agency” exist in the simple fact of physical and social reality, and acknowledgement of these empirical conditions negates the usefulness of ideal theories, requiring practical theory to base itself in material paradigms.

A phenomenological agent is an experiencing agent, a subjective consciousness with a first person point of view of the external world around him/her, including other subjective agents.

Since the phenomenological experience is embodied, it occurs through a physical, living, existing conscious body, I feel the proper term to describe the embodied experience is through the concept of the "phenomenological agent."

Finally, the ‘Political’ refers to the processes of social relations: decision-making, state action, power structures, and the cultural habits, assumptions, and practices of distinct and diverse communities.

‘Politicized’ then means the action, process, or result of making something political. In this case, it is the action, process, or result of making the subjective phenomenological agent into a political being.

In my conception of a phenomenological system of political philosophy, I understand two main ideas. One, that an individual experience of the external world necessarily involves both transcendental (a priori, intangible) structure and materialistic (a posteriori, tangible) structure. Two, that both the transcendental and materialistic aspects of any experience are affected by and effect the politicization of the shared external world.

What is the need for a phenomenological system of political philosophy?

A limit has been reached in political philosophy, and this limit, I claim, is exposed in the growing body of research based in “relational” paradigms, examples of which I include, among others, Michel Foucault, Iris Young, Marina Oshana, and Judith Butler. I do not claim these authors necessarily agree or always share views, however I understand that the basic mechanism at work in each one’s general theory as “relation-based.” Further, in this relational model it is stressed that these relationships, in the sociopolitical context, fundamentally have become domineering and oppressive.

By emphasizing the material context of oppressive relationships of sociopolitical power, I understand that every exercise of power has three elements, the capacity to act, the actual exercised action, and some form or forms of resistance to the exercise. The capacity to act hinges on the phenomenology of the agent, how her experience is structured as a conscious “I.” This in turn hinges on the agent’s relation to the external world. The choices and actions an agent recognizes as open to her are deeply shaped by sociopolitical conditions, that is, the conditions concerning an agent’s social and political circumstances.

Based on what I understand as a fundamental phenomenological relationship between agents, as both individuals and groups, and the sociopolitical state, I argue that sociopolitical power is usefully conceived in an alternative “distributive” model, termed “relational materialism.” Distribution involves materially satisfying the needs and wants of a populace in any social arrangement. Two important mechanisms are involved in the action of distribution at the sociopolitical scale, control and valuation. I argue that these mechanisms are not necessarily oppressive. However, in the contemporary liberal state, the systemic abuse of these mechanisms by capital-based liberal ideology results in a deep and diverse normatively justified state of sociopolitical domination.

These ideas then will be the guiding motivations and directions future entries in this blog series will take, beginning with the upcoming Chapter Three Part Two where I discuss the concept and problems of Power. I will talk about personal and socio-political power as well as going into my conception of Citizen X in greater detail.

Please leave your comments, questions, or the like in the comment section. I look forward to starting a meaningful dialog with you all.

Chapter 3 -Preface

A summary of Chapters One and Two with a roadmap of Chapter Three and beyond


The Value of Power a primer (for newer and older readers)

            In Chapters One and Two, I feel I moved quickly, presenting large ideas in rapid succession and not completely linking them together. This was needed, to a point, to lay the background for the upcoming chapters where those links will be expanded upon and tied together.

            In this preface to Chapter Three, I want to step back a moment and summarize and direct this blog conversation.

My motivation for writing this blog series, The Value of Power.

            In contemporary philosophy, there are two movements that I am fascinated by with and impressed with. The first is Phenomenology, a discipline carved out in the early-20th century, generally attributed to Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, but precursored and informed by the likes of Hegel, Nietzsche, James, and Bretano. The second is Social Ontology, studying the fundamental state of being of both citizen and society. This is a rather new movement and has yet to fully emerge as a standardized discipline. Philosophers working on social ontological questions include John Searle and Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir.

            My motivation is the fact that the discipline of Phenomenology lacks an adequate model of political philosophy. Many phenomenologists have touched on political theory, but it is agreed upon that a complete phenomenological system has not been developed.

            I believe that the work I have been doing the past five years is just that: a model of the phenomenology of the political. It is based in my concept of Relational Materialism and accounts for not only the phenomenological experience, but for the epistemic structure of that experience as well as the ontological structure of the structures of the experience. This personal work of mine has been greatly influenced and inspired by the recent multi-discipline endeavors in the Social Ontology and UC Santa Cruz's History of Consciousness.

Main Ideas and Summary of Chapters One and Two

            In Chapter One I discussed the intricacies and difficulties of a meaningful and true political revolution. This introduction to my blog series was inspired by recent political events such as the Arab Spring, the Turkish Gezi protests, and the Occupy Movement.

            I wanted to present the realistic obstacles and possibilities of popular revolution and lay out the fact that this blog is ultimately about such revolution and is interested in healthy and meaningful political change.

The main ideas of Chapter One include:

1. Badiou’s theory that Political Existence is created and sustained by Facts and Truths.

Facts are objects, ‘things’ conceived in the dominant group’s language, pieces controlled by the structures of the State in order to maintain, legitimize, and empower its own hierarchal authority. Facts are not truths. Facts are concrete, preconceived, and catagorizable.

Truths reveal themselves in the process of their discovery, in the moment of creative, dynamic and evolving self-definition. Truths are spontaneous organizations and relational social interactions resulting between self-creating political subjects interacting in harmonious congress.

Truth is found in the subject’s recognition of her/his ‘self’ as a political vehicle, and as this is a communal event, it is relational, thus incorporates the cumulative subjectification of all those involved in producing new ways to perceive and understand.

In sum: facts control, truths emancipate.

2. Both Badiou and Machiavelli stress the fact that an Event of political revolution is destabilizing and destructive, and there is a deep need to cling to aspects of the old social structure while simultaneously dismantling and replacing it.

These two conflicting needs of the Event create a contradiction of necessities both internal to and external to individual political agents: the need to fill the vacuum created by a revolution struggles against the need to sustain the impossible creative momentum of the revolution.

3. If modern civilization is to move forward in a healthy and meaningful way, there needs to be an in-depth analysis of the structures involved in revolutionary actions, an analysis designed to locate the vital ontological structures creating the stage where political agents experience their lives in relation to natural and social forces.

Chapter Two concerned the phenomenological agent, which I called Citizen X.

I brought in the ideas of autonomy and power, and discussed these concepts at both individual and state levels. Using Foucault, Bartky, and Oshana, I began to lay out the basic interactions between state power and individual power and how personal and social identity create the space for both oppressive political behavior and emancipatory personal growth.

The main ideas of Chapter Two include:

1. The core notion of autonomy is “self-law,” or better, “self-authority.” An autonomous agent is able to decide and act in accordance with his or her own choices and does not need to confirm these choices with any authority higher than their own.

True autonomy is a rarity in contemporary society and this is due to the fundamental structure of the modern liberal state and its hierarchical and temporal normative assumptions and practices.

2. Citizen X, the phenomenological political agent, does maintain a complete and vital “Self” in the midst of all social construction, fragmentation, and mystification. This self is the seat of subjective experience and political truth creation.

3. Modern Princely (State) power is no longer strictly a hierarchical chain of command as in the past, but now it is embedded in social structures and bureaucracies and exists as relationships within a complex of social situation.

4. Power itself exists in the actions of agents (be they individual or groups such as in a legal action, i.e. Brown v. Board of Education). Power is a capacity that exists only as action and the limit to every exercise of Power is Resistance, the point where the action of one agent reaches the limits of its capacity.

Foucault writes that modern state power is an action upon actions, and I understand this as meaning that  political resistance ultimately occurs at a point where an action resolves from the choices that could be made into the one actually made.

5. The structures of the modern state are fundamentally oppressive, as what the state needs to operate involves a necessary restriction of personal autonomy. These mechanisms are not inherently oppressive, but under the influence of the current model of capital-based liberal ideology, they unarguably are.

Moving forward from here: Chapter Three and Beyond

Moving forward, I will slow down a little and begin going into more detail concerning certain topics, most importantly Power and Value.

I will explain in great detail the notion I have brought up of Citizen X, the phenomenological political agent.

I will also begin unpacking my original model “Relational Materialism” and show how and why it is a fully adequate and complete model of a phenomenologically based political philosophy, and how it is useful to our greater community of theorists and activists.

In the upcoming Chapter Three, Part One I will begin my task.

Viva!

Chapter Two - Part Five 

The Value of Autonomy in Relation to Personal Power - The Origins of Citizen X

Another look at Oshana

The mechanics that legitimize state authority bear a remarkable positive parallel to the negative description presented in Oshana’s theory.

By this I mean that the mechanisms involved with legitimizing the state’s authority to exercise its power are parallel to the restrictions placed upon individuals from exercising their power and usurping the common authority of the liberal state.

To explain, let us look a little closer at the structure of State Power.

A first look at the Structure of Political Power

Political power is traditionally spoken of in terms of a “sovereign,” traditionally a particular individual or select group “holding the reigns” of state authority.

Using the insights of Foucault, we see the idea of political power as an exclusive possession of a lone ruler or cabal does not describe the modern state, but “sovereignty” instead is embodied in “more-or-less organized, hierarchical, co-ordinated cluster(s) of relations.”

In the modern capital-based liberal state, Princely State power has become structural and bureaucratic and is exercised in three distinct forms: Argumental/Persuasive, Compulsive/Brute, and Deontic/Structural. I will be speaking primarily of deontic power in this blog.

The term 'Deontic" comes from the Greek, deon, meaning obligation or necessity. Deontic power therefore concerns, is related to, or is explicitly about the duties and obligations inherent in large scale social arrangements.

Broadly, deontic power constructs the basic structural limits of the socio-political system and it is expressed in varied, interrelated manners: the standing directives of criminal law and civil society, the rights and duties imposed by constitutional amendments, the permissions and restrictions inherent in institutional bureaucracy.

The enforcement of deontic apparatus involves the legitimate interference of the state into the personal lives of its citizens. Rights, obligations, restrictions, the standing intention and threat of violence empowering authorized military and police action, and the basic assumptions, habits, and norms of our social background all constitute the basic structures of the state and all serve to actively create, express, and maintain the legitimacy of state power.

The dispersion of authority throughout the system allows for the deontic mechanisms at work to strengthen the identification and recognition of state regulations and authoritative patterns.  And once the recognition of an external authority is internalized, it is the acceptance of deontic state power that allows for its authority to compel, by law, force, and argument, the choices and actions of agents standing as subjects to its will.

It is collective recognition of agents as both objects and subjects of state deontic power that empowers state authority and the greater the element of control over the autonomous actions of agents, the more efficient and effective the powers of the state can be exercised. 

The tensions of Power

Agential acceptance of state authority is established and maintained when individual agents recognize the state’s claim of possessing the sole means to provide citizens with the structured and level playing field in which to develop the skills and opportunities needed to live their own chosen ‘good life,’ a liberal cornerstone that I must assume, for the sake of this blog, to be generally understood.

Recognition of state authority ultimately hinges on the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence within it territory and the state’s ability to peacefully resolve group conflict.

This conflict resolution is tied to a larger issue of the state being seen as capable of creating a space for individuals to live lives free from unwarranted intrusions and dangers, thus to promote conditions of security and personal value.

To do this, the state must be recognized as legitimately having the authority to sanction or punish any activities taking place within its borders and must have absolute control over legitimate means of violent behavior within that territory, making itself the lone source of authoritative coercive punishment and legitimate intervention.

Further, it must be known to exercise its power through its police, military and penal systems. The main justification for such interventions, to speak in broad terms, is for the protection or good of the people, as it must be seen as able to provide relative security and opportunity for those who live under it laws. 

The state must make use of and justify certain paternalistic measures so that it may promote an environment of mutual safety and respect for all of its citizens. Placing restrictions on drunk driving, shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, or the compulsory mandates of education and minority-group equality fall into arguably justifiable interventions, but beyond such notions, the needs of state authority are at odds with the needs of agential authority. 

In theory, the state must be seen and known to promote general social conditions favorable to individual growth, prosperity, and self-authoritative control, but, in practice, the state must create underlying conditions that go against these basic ideals.

To remind you, Marina Oshana’s model describes empirical conditions in which autonomy is the possession of the few and the general constitution of such conditions leave many agents with a fundamental lack of control as they face their general social environment.

The criticisms Oshana's theory faces concerning a general “lack of control” and  allowing excessive paternalism could be usefully directed towards the liberal system itself where evidence supporting her claims is revealed in the actuality of lives that are marginalized, excluded, and disempowered.

By framing her theory as a description of what mechanics are involved in the creation of a social system where only a minority may qualify as self-authorities and justification for potential abuse of paternalistic measures are readily available, I have tried to explain how empowering state authority requires a general condition of disempowerment for agential autonomy to insure its power is legitimate and its authority complete and uncontested.

This is perhaps making a stronger claim than Oshana herself would want to make, but I feel it does sufficiently describe the mechanics of our liberal state where the lives of citizens become mere apparatus for its maintenance. 

Objection and defense of Oshana’s theory

An objection to Oshana’s overall thesis is that her descriptive theory is simply wrong and individuals are afforded more autonomy in the contemporary liberal state than ever before in the forms of personal and civil rights. This objection points towards a potential flaw in her (and therefore my own) reasoning.

Such an argument could claim that far from facing the restrictive conditions proposed by her theory, the socio-political structure has actually increased the area of personal choice and action by affording greater room for personal control in areas such as reproduction, lifestyle choice, and employment or ownership opportunities.

The argument would conclude that the legalization of abortion and advancements in minority group rights following the civil rights movements are examples of this widened sphere of self-authority and ownership.

To respond to this type of objection, I argue that these rights, while affording a greater degree of freedom in particular choices and opportunities, do not effectively increase the more relevant ‘global’ conditions of autonomy necessary to possess de facto control over the final decisions one makes concerning his or her life. 

In distinguishing autonomy from freedom, Marina Oshana says, “To be free is to possess the power to decide or to act, but autonomy deals with agential authority over those decisions and actions”. To truly be autonomous, to have actual authority over oneself and one’s decisions, requires more than having the freedom to choose between options that are controlled by an authority higher than oneself.

The more entrenched and internalized the mechanisms of power come to be, the more outlets for the expression of localized autonomy are needed. These outlets afford the agent a relative degree of freedom and independence, but the general conditions within which the agent operates are fundamentally structured to force an underlying subjection to the authority of the state. To recognize that one has the right to choose what to do with her body is to recognize the prior standing authority of the state to be able to decide if your capacity to choose or act according to your own intentions and deliberations is a legitimate option or not. 

To be autonomous, not merely free, in the reality of our social system, requires more than having the capacity to be an authority over one’s own choices and actions. To be autonomous, one must fully exercise that capacity and hold de jure entitlement over ones deliberations and actually be the de facto authority over oneself.

Once the structure of the modern state’s dispersion of authority is recognized and internalized, the range of individual freedoms is able to open even as the range of the conditions suitable to autonomy is diminished.

Conclusion to Chapter Two

This blog has argued that autonomy, traditionally believed to be a granted state all agents share in common is, in the reality of our social environment, quite the opposite.

Not everyone has the opportunity to develop a life conducive to self-directed behavior; there are social, political, and economic conditions operative in the liberal socio-political system that rely to an important degree on creating conditions non-conducive to autonomous behavior.

Oshana recognizes the importance of the relational aspects of our empirical world, and her theory takes pains to stress the fact that actual self-authority is tied to the development of critical cognitive and social skills, as well as to underlying economic and political conditions.

The critiques to her theory, that her model is overly paternalistic and exclusionary, would be more usefully directed towards the liberal system I read her as describing. 

Finally, I need to say that there is a movement in contemporary political philosophy towards applied theories, where it is understood that our conceptions have verifiable results, and one may in fact do philosophical work to “get things done”.

By understanding the dynamic practical and ontological mechanics of political systems, I see the potential for applied work in areas such as domestic and international relations, distributive economics, privacy, and various forms of oppression. 

In Chapter Three I will begin tying several themes together by discussing in detail the concept and structures of Power and the Identity of Citizen X.

References
Bartky, Sandra Lee
Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression, Routledge, 1990, New York

Baumann, Holger
 ‘Reconsidering Relational Autonomy. Personal Autonomy for Socially Embedded and Temporally Extended Selves’, Analyse and Kritik, Lucius and Lucius, Germany, 2008

DeCew, Judith Wagner
‘Marina Oshana, Personal Autonomy in Society’, Social Theory and Practice, 2009
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6395/is_1_35/ai_n32102786/?tag=content;col1

Foucault, Michel
‘Discipline and Punish’, Vintage Press, USA, 1995
‘The History of Sexuality’, Vintage Press, USA, 1990
‘The Foucault Reader’, Pantheon Press, USA, 1984
‘Power’, Essential works of Foucault, Vol. 3, Edited by James Faubion, The New Press, New York, 2001
‘Power/Knowledge’, Pantheon Press, 1980

Meyers, Diana Tietjens, 
Feminist Social Thought: A Reader, Routledge, 1997, New York

Oshana, Marina
‘Autonomy and Free Agency’, Personal Autonomy: New essays on personal autonomy and its role in contemporary moral philosophy, Edited by James Stacey Taylor, Cambridge University Press, 2008
‘How Much Should We Value Autonomy?’, Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation, USA, 2003
‘Personal Autonomy in Society’, Ashgate Publishing, USA, 2006

Searle, John
‘Making the Social World’, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010

Walzer, Michael
‘Spheres of Justice: A defense of pluralism and equality’, Basic Books, 1983

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP): “Foucault and Feminism” http://iep.utm.edu/foucfem/

Chapter Two -
Part Four 

The Value of Autonomy in Relation to Personal Power - The Origins of Citizen X
A Summary of Chapter Two (parts 1-3)

In the first three parts of Chapter Two, I have presented two distinct arguments.

One, Marina Oshana’s controversial study of autonomy in which she claims that individual agents in the modern Liberal State generally fail to obtain a robust or even basic level of personal autonomy.

Two, I have shown Sandra Lee Bartky’s account of the psychological colonization of women as an example of the general mechanisms of oppression in the relationship between State power and Individual power. Bartky has been accused, like Foucault before her, that the level and depth of social construction and systemic oppression she describes leaves little to no room for resistance to its control or to develop an authentic “Self” outside of its influence.

Now, in Part Four, I will begin weaving these arguments together in order to explain the necessary existence of the individual Self and its capacity for resistance. Doing this will open the way for the next step of my larger argument, the relationship between what I term “Citizen X” and the Princely Soverign power of the modern capital-based liberal state. For it is in this relationship that we can find, discuss, and critique the true value of power and the possibilities for meaningful revolutionary action.

The possibility of resistance to the ‘feminine’

The relationships of power discussed in this blog are of the socio-political kind and this ensures that, if nothing else, all political agents are fundamentally recognized as subjects, regardless of the discursive objectification placed on most by some.

Domination, oppression, involves a psychological pressing down, the exploitation of a fragmented picture of the subjective self and its potentials. It is to have the object-hood of ‘other’ stamped on one’s back, be it “feminine,” “black,” “gay,” “transgender,” or “disabled” and to have this complex and contradictory social identity come to define to some degree who or what they are or may be.

Bartky reminds us that when men yell at women on the street, they are not merely being objectified, they are being “made to know” they are a ‘nice piece of ass.”[1]

This epistemological objectification is an affront to the comfort, dignity, and independence of a subject, a “self.” It is understandable that objects do not need reminding that they are tools or things.

Women then, as are all oppressed persons, are fundamentally subjects, otherwise the oppressive discursive power feminist theory is fighting against would not exist.

Psychological oppression, claims Bartky , aids in the transmission of oppressive socio-political discursive apparatus. Seeds grow healthy in fertile ground: if one is born to believe she is to serve or submit she will never know to question the logic of such arrangements.

The self as grounds for resistance

As explained, resistance to the modern feminine is not the resistance of a slave towards a master, it is not a relationship enacted upon mere objects, property or chattel.

For the “feminine,” on Bartky’s account, the resistance is against disciplinary regimes that seek to govern a woman’s body. Her sex, her shape, her mind, her presentation; the patriarchal urge to pull her from the assembly line and use her until she is consumed.

But how is it possible to resist this power? Even the existence of subjective selves do not justify the claim that the enveloping systemic structure of modern power relations in capital-based society can be thwarted or meaningfully resisted.

To understand how political power can be resisted it is helpful to recall where Foucault says modern power exists. He writes:

“Let us come back to the definition of the exercise of power as a way in which certain actions may structure the field of other possible actions. What, therefore, would be proper to a relationship of power is that it be a mode of action upon actions. That is to say, power relations are rooted deep in the social nexus, not reconstituted "above" society as a supplementary structure whose radical effacement one could perhaps dream of. In any case, to live in a society is to live in such a way that action upon other actions is possible-- and in fact ongoing. A society without power relations can only be an abstraction.”
                                                                                        - Foucault, The Subject and Power (1982) pp. 208.

 Foucault claims that modern power is an action upon actions. This means that resistance itself is part of any exercise of power. Resistance is internal to the exercise of power, found at the point where relations of power are exercised.

Resistance is the limit to power, the point of the action where the self-authority inherent in acting agents resolves from the choices available into the actions made. Politically, resistance occurs in the situation where one must act, where one must choose from options fundamentally shaped by social and economic conditions, including access to critical skills, financial stability, and social means. 

Patriarchal power, as socio-political power, is an action upon actions. This pragmatically translates into a limiting of the actual and perceived options a subject has open to her.

Within their interactions, agents must have access to some degree of liberty in choice, options, response, or reaction. If an agent does not have at least this basic autonomy to choose anything, than it is not an exercise of power as it does not involve mutually-acting subjects .

In upcoming chapters of this blog series, I will do an in-depth analysis of my understanding of power (personal power and political power) using the ideas of Foucault and Searle to frame my original work.

For now, let us simply take the ideas that the Self exists implies a necessary capacity for resistance to oppressive practices, a capacity inner-twined with agential social and cultural conditions and access to decision-making power.

The “self” of the female agent, the basic shared humanity of her as we identify with when we speak of human rights or human species, remains complete despite the discursive cannibalism of “femininity” that bonds and devours its perceived fundamental totality. Women, as are all members of humanity, are fundamentally subjects and this necessarily implies a capacity for active resistance to the patriarchal colonization of any and all women’s autonomous “self.”

Again, for the time being, I must refrain from speculating on the formal content of this “fundamental self.” That is a subject for future blog entries. Acknowledging its existence and capacity for resistance is enough to decisively move the question forward.

For regardless of the ontological underpinnings of the political subject, if we grant that political agents[2] maintain basic and viable “Selves” within their total identity, one question remains: what is the worth of an identity and can or does it matter in capitol-based liberal politics.

What does a self matter in the eyes of the world?

In my argument above, I claimed that what individuals conceive of as their “self” has socially constructed elements. I then sought to answer if that was all there is.

I claimed no, that in able to be politically dominated, that is, socio-politically assumed to be an object, there must be a prior, more fundamentally recognized subjective self, a sum of the parts that we understand loosely as “human,” that is recognized and recognizes itself under most circumstances.

I further argued that this “Self” exists and is fundamentally recognized as a political subject by sovereign elements, even while they maintain oppressive, exclusionary practices in the broader scope of the socio-political system and its background discourses and motivations.

To resist these enveloping discourses and expectations is to exercise one’s fundamental subjectivity against the actions that would construct one as an object. As this occurs in the active process of any situation, the fulcrum of object-subject is in the day-to-day choices one makes and feels secure could be made.

If Bartky’s question is, “How does a woman resist the feminine,” then the answer has to be, “By making choices.” It sounds too simple, but I do not think it is.

The value of actual, viable, real, practical choices is something that is perhaps taken for granted. The actual options one has available to them come down to a large degree on ones economic and social stability, not to mention personal disposition, gender, sexuality, and habits; the range of choices agents have open to them vary widely with contingency and circumstance.

Foucault writes that resistance to the type of power men and women face in contemporary society is to “refuse what we are.”[3] Refusing what we are, in the context of feminist theory, is to break, to deny, the boundaries, limitations, and oppressive normalizing identity categories imposed on women by the dominant paradigm.

Resistance is internal to power and the amount and type of socio-political constraints or opportunities is relative to the social position, status, and identity of the agents involved in any relation of power. 

Socio-political power is a matter of degree, as differences in economic and cultural status directly influence the available options an agent has open to her. This makes resistance a matter of degree as well.

In the end, the authentic Self necessarily exists, though its reality has been fought, denied and obscured by the same political systems that confirm its basic existence. This necessary Self contains the capacity to exercise resistance and to some degree exercises that capacity each and every day, the evidence of which is found in the active results of choices made from existing options.

Some types of resistance are more robust than others, just as some actions actively support the oppressive habits and norms, but the fact remains that it is the subjective self of an agent making choices to the best of her ability while blinded by the patriarchal “veil of femininity.”

The degree of success resistance may achieve can only be measured in the empirical conditions that obtain in her general culture and society. With the current vibrancy, importance, variety, and growing organization of the contemporary feminist movement, the success of society’s resistance to the domination of women is evident and active.

The final release of women from the bondage of “femininity” continues to develop and like all social processes, with every passing day, each discussion, struggle, essay, choice, and action we, as women and men, create its reality.

In Part Five of Chapter Two, I will wrap up my defense and discussion of Oshana’s controversial view of autonomy and begin to highlight specific points of political power.

References

Bartky, Sandra Lee
Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression, Routledge, 1990, New York

Baumann, Holger
 ‘Reconsidering Relational Autonomy. Personal Autonomy for Socially Embedded and Temporally Extended Selves’, Analyse and Kritik, Lucius and Lucius, Germany, 2008

DeCew, Judith Wagner
‘Marina Oshana, Personal Autonomy in Society’, Social Theory and Practice, 2009
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6395/is_1_35/ai_n32102786/?tag=content;col1

Foucault, Michel
‘Discipline and Punish’, Vintage Press, USA, 1995
‘The History of Sexuality’, Vintage Press, USA, 1990
‘The Foucault Reader’, Pantheon Press, USA, 1984
‘Power’, Essential works of Foucault, Vol. 3, Edited by James Faubion, The New Press, New York, 2001
‘Power/Knowledge’, Pantheon Press, 1980
 The Subject and Power (1982),

Meyers, Diana Tietjens, 
Feminist Social Thought: A Reader, Routledge, 1997, New York

Oshana, Marina
‘Autonomy and Free Agency’, Personal Autonomy: New essays on personal autonomy and its role in contemporary moral philosophy, Edited by James Stacey Taylor, Cambridge University Press, 2008
‘How Much Should We Value Autonomy?’, Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation, USA, 2003
‘Personal Autonomy in Society’, Ashgate Publishing, USA, 2006

Searle, John
‘Making the Social World’, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010

Walzer, Michae
‘Spheres of Justice: A defense of pluralism and equality’, Basic Books, 1983

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP): “Foucault and Feminism” http://iep.utm.edu/foucfem/


Footnotes
[1] Bartky, pg. 55
[2] I would like to include both individual persons and social groups (i.e. Brown v. Board of Education)
[3] IEP "Foucault and Feminism"