Power and Pluralism By: Mark Haugaard.

University Of Ireland.

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“Power and Pluralism”

By Mark Haugaard

National University of Ireland

When Dahl entered the power debate in 1957 it was the first step in his

construction of a pluralist view of democracy. In this power was considered

something external which has to be distributed between social agents. In the

work of Hunter and Mills the issue was: who has power? Dahl made this more

sophisticated by distinguishing between power and power resources and

developing his well-known, and useful, vocabulary of power, which later

facilitated his construction of a pluralist model of democracy (Dahl 1961 and

1983). Bachrach and Baratz, and Lukes follow in this tradition in the sense that

they also analyze distributions of power as a form of social critique. With

Foucault there is a kind of qualitative change, Foucault constantly insists on

power as something which is not the possession of social agents.

With this there comes a change of ontological focus. What interests Foucault is

how social agents being-in-the-world is constituted through power relations. In

the work of Flyvbjerg (1998) and Clegg (1989), as in Foucault, power is not out

there as something to be possessed, but the emphasis is less upon ontology and

more upon the world-shaping aspect of power, which is partly the consequence

of their rediscovery of Machiavelli. In Laclau and Mouffe (1985) we see the

influence of Gramscian notions of hegemony (as in Lukes) but without any

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Enlightenment hope of redemption. Hegemony is given an ontological and

world-shaping quality coupled with a cynicism, in which Carl Schmittian realism

makes social life nothing but a cynical play of manipulation and deceit. In this

article I wish to return to 1957 in the sense that, like Dahl, I believe there to be

more and less democratic distributions of power. Unlike Machiavelli and

Schmitt, I am not interested in power as a means to manipulate others, but as a

way to create a just society. However, I do acknowledge that many of the

processes which Foucault, Clegg and the rest, point out to be at work in the

constitution of power relations, actually take place, as an empirical fact. If one

were to pigeonhole this project, it is normatively of the Enlightenment but

empirically post-modern.

In some senses, I wish to use the rich diversity of the power debates to

revisit the projects of Rawls and Habermas. Rawls has been criticized for

presupposing an unrealistic concept of social agency. The person in the „original

position‟ is an essentially under socialized being in the sense that they have been

stripped of their socialization. The latter is the essence of the communitarian

criticisms of Sandel (Sandel 1982) and so on. Partly because Habermas‟ ideal

speech situation is sociologically grounded this has not been the main criticism of

his work. Rather, he has been criticized for ignoring the workings of power in

ideal speech. This criticism is most polemically exemplified by the work of

Flyvbjerg (1998). In this article I intend to use the power debate to avoid these

criticisms in constructing an idealized model of just power relations – note, I

have not said I am interested in social relations without power. I will essentially

argue that prior to such conceptual devices as those used by Rawls and

Habermas, power theory suggests that justice should be based upon a plural self.

Such a self is neither the under socialized self of Rawls‟ individual in the original

position, nor is it self who exists outside power, as in Habermas. Rather, this self

is derived from what it means to be a competent social agent (as theorized by

Weber, Goffman and Giddens) and constituted through practices of power

relations.

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With the possible exception of Foucault, most of the power theorists referred to

so far, have tended to assume that power is a noxious phenomenon, perceiving

power as domination. There is of course, another power tradition, what I call

the „consensual power‟ tradition, in which the emphasis is upon legitimate

power. Parsons and Barnes are the main theorists in the sociological tradition,

while Hannah Arendt is the only normative political theorist who attempted to

theorize the basis of normatively legitimate political power.

The contrast between the work of these theorists and the rest is usually

characterized in terms of the contrast between „power to‟ and „power over‟. I

do not consider this a very useful or correct way of presenting the contrast.

Those who are interested in theorizing consensual power are also interested in

„power over‟. Central to their analysis is answering the question, when is it

legitimate for someone with authority to exercise power over another?

However, the „power over‟ versus „power to‟ distinction does implicitly capture

the fact that for consensual power theorists the purpose of political society is not

simply to restrain one another from defaulting on a rationally optimal situations,

as in Hobbes, or interfering with one another‟s property, as in Locke.

Rather, political order is also constituted for the purpose of realizing joint

objectives, or to generate power „to do‟ things, of social agents – power as the

ability „to act in concert‟ (Arendt 1970: 44). What makes power legitimate?

There are two distinct answers here: a sociological empirical one, and a

normative evaluative one. The former analyses the viewpoint of social actors as

an empirical fact, while the latter concerns itself with how society should be

constituted. While it is the latter which interests us for the purposes of this

article (unlike my previous work), I will begin with the former as it contains the

key to the latter. As an empirical fact, legitimate power is power which is based

upon the consent of the actors involved. In the work of Parsons (1963) consent

derived from shared system goals, while in Barnes it comes from a common

interpretative framework (Barnes 1988). Sociological, de facto, consent is not,

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however, always the basis for normative legitimacy. As a political scientist, I may

observe that in a certain society patriarchy was (or is) legitimate but that is not

the same as actually endorsing patriarchy as normatively legitimate.

This distinction is crucial to understanding Gramsci and Lukes. The objective of

hegemony is to create a position of domination in which the subaltern actors

consent to their own domination. For Gramsci the power of the bourgeoisie

rested upon their capacity to make their acts of domination appear legitimate in

the eyes of the dominated. Lukes based his conceptualization of three-

dimensional power upon Gramscian notions of hegemony. Those who suffer

from „false consciousness‟ are actors who, essentially, consent to their own

domination because they do not know what their real interests are.

In the second edition, this is integrated with the work of Bourdieu,

whereby false consciousness is a process of domination where consent is rooted

in an imposed habitus derived from the bourgeoisie (Lukes 2005). Thus,

domination is made appear „natural‟. While the subaltern, or dominated actors,

give de facto consent to power, it is Gramsci‟s and Lukes‟ view they should not

be doing so. The latter is a normative evaluation whereby normative and

sociological legitimacy are out of sync with each other. In Foucault we also find a

similar disjuncture of consent. Actors within an episteme or discourse formation

share consent to an interpretative world-view. They even engage in exercises of

power over each other that presuppose a shared epistemic consensus. As

observed by Clegg (1989), these are the rules of the game which decide what

constitutes victory or defeat. Truth in this case performs an integrative function,

whereby consent is created.

As I have observed previously (for instance, Haugaard 1997 and 2003),

truth is something a „rational actor‟ cannot disagree with, consequently the only

alternative to the „true‟ is „madness‟ and „deviance‟, which constitute subject

positions that inherently disempower. This kind of strategic use of truth creates

de facto legitimacy but not normative legitimacy. Of course, in Foucault this

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is/ought distinction if never made explicitly, but his critique depends upon it.

He is not simply describing power and truth, which, as a fact, actors consent to,

but power and truth that they should not be consenting to. The implicit heroes

of the story are those who resist by not consenting to the order of things. Why

are they to be applauded? Is it simply because they resist or because they resist

for normatively desirable reasons? I don‟t know what Foucault‟s answer would

be, mine is that they should be applauded only if the resistance is for the latter

reasons - for reasons of normative desirability. How do we distinguish de facto

consensus from normatively desirable consent? The easy and unsatisfactory

answer is of course in terms of some kind of speaker‟s privilege.

Traditional Leninist discourse took this form and,

arguably, appeals to „false consciousness‟ are structured this way. In order to

look for a more satisfactory path, I wish to begin from Arendt‟s observations

concerning the distinction between power and violence. She claims the two to

be opposites (1970: 56) but in what sense are we to interpret this claim? It is not

simply an empirical claim but also a normative one. According to Arendt,

violence is by nature instrumental, in the sense that it is a means to an end but

never an end in itself. Consequently it always needs justification. Legitimate

power, in contrast, „needs no justification‟ (Arendt 1970: 51-2). Violence and

war are always justified relative to their opposite, peace. All wars are fought for

peace, while peace is never pursued for an end other than as an end in itself

(Arendt 1970: 51).

According to Arendt, „power is in the same category; it is, as they say, “an

end in itself.”‟ (Arendt 1970: 51). By power, of course, she means legitimate

power. While I am not intending to put forward an Arendtian perspective (or

attempting to borrow legitimacy for my position by reference to her), I think

there is something intuitively right about the violence/legitimate power

opposition which can enable us to get to the basis of normatively legitimate

power. What makes violence different from legitimate power? Unlike the latter,

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violence does not presuppose the consensual agency of other. If you stab a

person, shoot them or bomb them from 30,000 feet, the other is only a physical

object. You are acting upon their body. If a person rapes another, what

distinguishes this from love is the total disregard for other as a social agent.

Other is a physical object from which (not whom) gratification can be derived. It

is not interaction but action upon the other. What makes violence normatively

wrong is not simply its physicality but its denial of the agency of other. Let us

use a contrasting thought experiment to illustrate the point. Imagine that a

person bites a lump of flesh out of another human; imagine that a domestic dog

bites a piece out of its owner‟s leg and; imagine that a wolf bites the leg of an

explorer. While the latter is unfortunate for the poor explorer, it is not a

normative issue, while the dog incident is somewhat so and the person is

definitely so.

What distinguishes the person, the dog and the wolf, in descending order, is

their level of socialization. A human is a fully socialized agent, the domesticated

dog somewhat so, and the wolf not at all. What makes violence a normative

issue is not the sheer physicality, but the apparent disregard for the agency of

other when the latter might be expected – a wolf is not expected to have regard

for the social agency of other. Following the work of Bourdieu, the use of the

term „symbolic violence‟ has become increasingly popular. Here, of course, all

physicality is absent and what I am attempting to theorize can be seen in its pure

form. In symbolic violence meaning is imposed upon other with total disregard

to their social agents.

Let us for instance say, that a certain group are classified as „primitives‟

or they are spoken for (possibly even from altruistic motives, in the way 19 the

C evangelists spoke for „natives‟). What is normatively reprehensible about this

is the imposition of meaning upon other without any regard to their self-

perception. It is an action upon them, about them, which disregards them as

reciprocal social beings. What does it mean to disregard the social agency of

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another? Reversing this, what does it mean to be a social agent? Following the

phenomenological tradition and the work of anthropologists like Geertz, being a

social agent is essentially to be a world-creating agent. The world out there

exists made of physical things composed of atoms (or so the scientists tell us

according to their world-creating capacity) which have no meaning until we

impose it upon them. The tree outside my window becomes what it is, more

than a collection of atoms, a tree (in fact, a Scots pine) through my imposition of

meaning upon it. This meaning is not something which I personally invented but

comes from an interpretative horizon which I share with others. What makes me

a social agent, integrated with others, is the fact that the meaning which I impose

upon reality is similar to that of others.

As argued by Wittgenstein in the private language argument (Wittgenstein

1967), meaning creation is not a solipsistic act but an inherently social one.

Regarding the other as social agent entails having regard for the capacity of other

to impose meaning upon the world. Symbolic violence, in contrast, is an

imposition of meaning upon other which disregards their „world-creating‟

capacity. In a way it makes the other a solipsistic agent. The latter is particularly

normatively reprehensible when it is the self of the other who is the object that is

given a signifier or meaning („native‟ etc).

A shared interpretative framework gives us a capacity for action that

enables us to do things which we could not otherwise. What makes power

legitimate is regard for the interpretative being of other. Authority, which is the

personification of legitimate power in a social role, is essentially meaning-given.

What makes a politician a politician, a policeman a policeman, and a father a

father to a child, is a certain meaning-giveness of those roles. As Arendt

correctly observes (Arendt 1970: 45), if a father starts inflicting violence upon

the child he has lost authority. In fact, I would say, he has ceased to act as a

father. Going back to the example of rape, what makes the rape of a child by a

father particularly reprehensible is it that it violates an additional set of

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categories of meaning, those of father and child, which have a semi-sacred status.

If an elected politician starts to accept bribes or act like a king, this is a violation

of what it means to be a politician within the democratic system. In these cases

their legitimate power decreases and they lose authority by violating a system of

meaning. Of course, they may seek to make up this deficit in legitimate power

by resorting to violence. However, in that act they disregard the world-creating

capacity of other and thus violate the social norms which empowers them.

What I have been doing here is to move from the empirical fact that

legitimate power and violence exist in inverse proportion towards a normative

conclusion. This is a process akin to what Rawls describes as „reflective

equilibrium‟ whereby the theorist moves from intuitions to rules and back. By a

similar process we move back and forth between a sociological is to a normative

ought. The reason that this process works is that the sociological is derives from

the normative intuitions of social actors. I think we can distil the essence of

normative legitimacy implicit in the work of Foucault from the way he pays

particular attention to acts of resistance.

The type of resistance which he had in mind was not simply a

resistance to specific outcomes. He was not interested in the resistance of Marx

to the work of the bourgeois economists, because he saw that as a form of

shallow conflict (Foucault 1980: 262). What made it shallow, I would argue

(Haugaard 1997: 41-97), is their mutual adherence to a shared system of

meaning. They all, for instance, adhered to the labor theory of value and also

regarded social agents as utility maximisers. The conflicts which really interested

Foucault were deep conflicts over meaning, or conflicts over the right to create

the world. In Discipline and Punish, what particularly interested him was the

capacity of agents to impose their meaning of crime and the criminal upon the

world. Was the latter someone who attacked the body politic, as perceived in

the „sovereign model‟? Were they an agent who had committed an act which

could be found on a tabula of crimes, as in the Classical model? Or were they a

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specific type of deviant individual, as in the modern panoptical system? What

interested him was how the advocates of each system of meaning tried to impose

their version of reality upon the world and how the subjects of these systems of

domination tried to resist. In other words, what was crucial was the conflict and

ultimate victory of one system of world-creation over another.

The appeal to truth was an attempt to reify one system of meaning over

another and, thus, to ensure victory. What was reprehensible about the use of

truth was that it silenced other possible acts of world creation. We find a similar

process at work in Gramsci‟s characterization of hegemony, in which the

bourgeoisie impose their meaning of the world upon the proletariat. For

instance, Gramsci saw the imposition of a single Italian language, derived from

language of the Tuscan elite, upon the whole of Italy as precisely such in instance

of the imposition of world-creation upon the working classes (Ives 2004: 33-62).

To borrow conceptual vocabulary from Bourdieu, hegemony entails an act of

symbolic violence whereby the interpretative horizon of one social group, the

bourgeoisie, is elevated above the habitus of other groups, the subaltern classes,

and, as a consequence, imposed upon them. In other words, the world-creating

capacity of the habitus of the bourgeoisie is given validity as the only mode of

legitimate expression and, as a consequence, those to whom this does not

express their „life world‟ are forced to use an alien mode of world creation, or

habitus, in order to be heard. Again, I would argue that what makes these acts of

legitimacy creation (de facto, sociological legitimacy) inherently normatively

illegitimate is an act of non-reciprocal interaction with the system of meaning of

other.

As I have already mentioned, legitimate power includes „power over‟.

When a parent tells a child to go to bed or when the elected leader of a country

gives an order, this may constitute legitimate power even it meets with

resistance. The issue is where does the resistance come from? Is it simply over

the outcomes or does it derive from a contest over meaning itself? I would argue

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that if the former is the case legitimacy is preserved, while the latter puts a

question mark over it. In social interaction one has to distinguish between

conflicts which reproduce the existing order of meaning and those in which

meaning is contested. The democratic process is premised upon relative

agreement upon meaning, while outcomes are subject to struggle and conflict.

Imagine two parties contesting an election. Both party A and party B field

candidates who stand for election; individuals vote; the votes are counted, and

the party which obtains the most votes wins.

There is clearly conflict here but it is conflict over outcomes. A and B

agree on what constitutes a „party‟, as well as „voting‟, „counting‟ and „winning‟.

If party B, which lost the election, were to seize power in any case they would

be guilty of a kind of self-contradiction whereby the meanings which they

endorsed prior to the outcome being known (going into the election) were

violated after the election. In this case, defaulting can be legitimately prevented

through coercion. Echoing the language of Rousseau, the general will is a system

of meaning which is shared by the social actors. Being constrained into outcomes

(including undesired ones) by those meanings is an instance of being „forced to

be free‟. When meanings are violated in order to achieve „victory‟ legitimate

power decreases. Arguably, the manner in George W. Bush „won‟ the first

presidential election, is such an instance when the categories of meaning became

contested and the legitimacy of the system decreased.

Part of the reason why the creation of consensus upon meaning is

normatively absolutely fundamental for legitimate power is that this moment of

interactive consent is also the moment of social inclusion. When the way in

which we make sense of the world is consented to by other, other has made us a

„social being‟, rather than a solipsistic agent. If we refer to the Kantian dictum of

treating others as en end in themselves, rather than a means to an end,

recognizing the meanings which other reproduces in an act of structuration is the

most fundamental act of recognition of their being in the world as an

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incontestable presence. Meaning is not created singly. Part of the process of

socialization is learning how to dovetail your individual acts of structuration with

those of society as a whole. The entire ontological security of a social agent

depends upon the fact that others confirm-structure most acts of structuration.

That is to say, that they confirm the meanings which attach to our actions. One

of the reasons that Garfinkel‟s breaching experiments elicited such strong

reactions was precisely because they contested common taken for granted

meanings, and undermine the ontological security of their subjects.

As Giddens argues (1984: 61-3), based upon the observation of

Bettleheim, what was central to the breaking down of the Jewish inmates of the

camps was undermining their habitus. The prison guards would constantly

violate the norms of interactive behavior, with the result that most of the

prisoners ceased to be able to act as social agents. When they reached the stage

of being unable to make eye contact, they usually died shortly afterwards. There

was, however, a minority who managed to resocialize according to the „norms‟

of the camps, and thus equipped themselves ontologically for survival in this

entirely different social world. George Orwell wrote somewhere that the

ultimate form of torture is to teach someone that two and two make five.

Bentham argues that the Panopticon can be used for experiments upon children

to teach them that two and two make five and that the moon is made of green

cheese. When we read this we recoil from the Panopticon, as a kind of devil‟s

artifice, which embodies Orwell‟s understanding of torture. Why is this torture?

Not only has the other become a pure physical object but also their social being

itself has become something plastic. In Madness and Civilization Foucault argued

that modern power was based upon total non-reciprocity (1971: 249). Reason

confronted unreason not in a dialogue but as a monologue of reason about

unreason.

Again I would argue that the implicit normative force of this critique of

modernity is a sense that non-reciprocity is the ultimate form of power as

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domination, while power that is derived from the merging of social agents‟

interpretative horizons constitutes legitimate power. According to Habermas‟

version of deliberative democracy, reason is absolutely central to the democratic

process. In essence, what made the democratic revolution possible was the idea

that unconstrained reason could be used to derive legitimacy (Habermas 1979).

While I would in some respects agree with Habermas in this assertion, what it

misses is the important moment that exists prior to the moment of reason, which

the act of interpretation itself.

As has been argued by Mouffe (2000: 49), the act of meaning-giving itself

presupposes an exclusion of alternative meanings. However, unlike her, I would

not accept from this conclusion that rational discourse is, as a consequence,

inherently a form of domination.There are three important points concerning

social agency which are missed by the post-modern critics of the Enlightenment

project. The first is that normative legitimacy is not an absolute all or nothing

phenomenon but is scalar. We may never reach that zero-point of perfect

democratic dialogue but that does not mean that all dialogues are equal

normatively. Non-interactive monologue (as in Madness and Civilization); a

speech situation in which all parties are forced to use the habitus of the dominant

party (hegemony); or one in which truth is used strategically to exclude the

other (Foucault on power and truth); are not the same as a dialogue in which

both parties make it their starting point to include the world-creating capacity of

other as something to be taken seriously, even if only to be falsified dialogically.

While the perfect zero-point of balance may never be reached empirically,

if it serves a regulative ideal which structures the rules of interaction, then

dialogue is democratic (even if it is possible for it to be more so, as the zero-

point is approximated).The second point, for which Foucault in particular seems

to not make conceptual space, is that autonomy and constraint are not

necessarily opposites, although they may be. What distinguishes normatively

consensual power from conflictual power is that the former entails constraints

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which facilitate agency, while the latter entails constraints which preclude it.

When Giddens (1984) argues that structure is both enabling and constraining,

what he means is that constraint makes ordered interaction possible. Legitimate

power entails creating mutual constraint which facilitates predictable interaction

with other. The democratic process is a set of mutually agreed constraints which

facilitate ordered predictable interaction. Reasoned argument is argument in

which each actor is open to the possibility of being constrained into changing his

or her viewpoint. Similarly, when a party enters an election it is with a prior

commitment to the fact that they accept certain constraints even if that entails

forgoing the particular goals (forming a government or whatever). For this

reason I do not think it chance that the Panopticon and the democratic process

where born twins. Understood as a metaphor (which I consider the proper

understanding of it), it is the embodiment of the realization that socialization

entails the internalization of constraint.

As Gellner observes (1983), the formation of the modern state was not

only coterminous with a monopoly of violence but also one of state education.

State education is the mass socialization of social subjects – a Panoptical project

on a mass scale. This is also the moment when nationalism was born, which

entails the idea that the state needs a unified culture. The culture of the governed

and governing elite have to be the same for dialogue to take place. The creation

of the nation is, in essence, the creation of a common habitus. In his critique of

Foucault, Lukes argues that it is difficult to distinguish between the Foucauldian

concept of power (by this he means power as domination – normatively

undesirable power) and socialization in general. I would argue that there is some

truth in this but this does not make Foucault‟s insights entirely wrong.

For Foucault, the Panoptic-on is inherently normatively wrong. I would

argue that, interpreted as a metaphor, this is not always the case. A common

socialization is necessary to create democratic citizens. Constraint has to be

internalized. What is problematic is when those constraints serve the interests of

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specific groups, represent an alien imposition and/or are reified in some way.

The third significant element is the idea that as selves we are somehow trapped

inside a singular interpretative horizon.

The post-modern subject shares with the typical Enlightenment subject the

illusion of singularity. The former can interpret the world only within in a

singular way, while the latter is a „reasoning‟ being who, because of the singular

nature of reason, can reason in only one way. Is either of these visions correct? I

would reject both of these interpretations of the social subject. When we read

Foucault‟s histories we understand perfectly well what it means to think in a

Renaissance or Classical way, despite being either „modern‟ or „post-modern‟.

Foucault is also mistaken in thinking that the Renaissance mode of thought ended

in 1650 and that the Classical one in 1800. Open the page of most newspapers

and popular magazines; you will find an astrology section, which is the

Renaissance thought – resemblances between the heavens and the temperament

and fortunes of humans.

Open any tabloid on the subject of sentencing of prisoners and you will

find many of the Classical arguments against the Prison system. Most people, in

fact, think that the punishment should fit the crime. If we turn to the elaborate

classifications of Parsons, we also find the Classical urge to tabulate the world.

One of the great failures of Enlightenment (both liberally inspired and Marxist)

sociology was the failure to predict the success of traditional modes of thought

within modernity. The wars of the 19 th and 20 th C. were driven by

nationalism (a form of gemeinschaft) and it appears not at all unlikely that those

of the 21 st C. could be based upon religious difference.

The subjects of modernity and post-modernity can think scientifically

while they operate computers, which they use as tools to disseminate ideas

which are pre-Enlightenment in their logic. To change Marx‟s famous phrase: it

is possible to be a scientist in the morning, a nationalist in the afternoon and a

religious believer in the evening. In fact, in sending the message across the

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Internet summoning fellow believers and members of „your‟ nation, it is possible

to be all three at once. If we look at competent social agency, this plurality of

self should not surprise us. In Goffman‟s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,

the competent social actor is someone who switches interpretative horizon

depending upon social context. When the individual walks into a public space,

they adopt a certain pose and attitude. I would argue that these are not simply

external signs but represent a fundamental ontological shift. Because the world is

not meaning-given externally to us, we confer meaning upon it as we go along.

This meaning is not constant but continually shifting. Social life is a continual

unfolding of gestalt pictures that mean one thing in one context and another in a

different one.

In a well-known study (Clement 1982), in a non-laboratory everyday

context, physics students were asked to explain simple physical phenomena and

to the surprise of all they gave everyday, non-scientific, explanations. By and

large (for instance, Gardener 1991: 3) this outcome has been interpreted as

some kind of shortcoming on the student‟s part. However, I would argue that it

showed that, although they were students of physics they were competent social

agents and the latter constitutes a powerful force upon their psyche - I am also

aware how inappropriate it would be for me to talk as I am doing right now in a

casual social context and would try to avoid doing so. We are also familiar with

the stereotype of the „socially incompetent‟ Professor who is incapable of making

that switch.If we look at Weber‟s four types of action, these are actually

representative of this switching mechanism.

In instrumental rationality I see the other as a „case‟, or a number in a file.

As an affective actor I see the other as “Dear Mrs Cohen who lives down the road

and whom I am distantly related to.” As a traditional actor I see her as an elderly

person who deserves respect by virtue of her age, and as a value rational actor I

see her as a being who is an end in herself (if I am a Kantian). None of these

interpretations of this same physical being is inherently wrong, although they

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may be depending upon context. When Mrs Cohen is queuing or taking an

examination, justice may demand that she be a number, when she is looking for

my help as a neighbor or relative, it is imperative that she be „dear Mrs Cohen‟.

If she is applying for special assistance it may be appropriate that she be elderly

Mrs Cohen, and if I am constructing an ideal speech situation with her, she

should be an end in herself. The competent social actor is one who knows when

each of these interpretations of the same physical being is appropriate.

Some of these perceptions of her clearly violate Rawls‟ original position,

which is monological, and, I would argue, inconsistent both with competent

social agency and justice. These alternative perceptions of the same person

preclude one another but this exclusion is not unjust as circumstances dictate. If

Mrs Cohen is one among many in a queue, or if she is a student taking an

examination, justice may demand that the interacting others restrain themselves

from using the inappropriate alternative gestalt view of Mrs Cohen down the

road.

However, as a university lecturer, in marking student scripts one often

experiences a conflict between treating the candidate as a number and as some-

one one knows and likes. In most cases, though not all, justice demands

constraining oneself into viewing them as an anonymous number. However, this

is not always appropriate, if one is aware of special circumstances in the person‟s

history, which may include a recent bereavement or disability. Justice demands

of us that we are continually open to the possibility of another interpretation of

the student. In his characterization of the holocaust (Bauman 1989), Bauman

made a powerful case that what facilitated the killing of millions of Jews was

their perception within an instrumental mindset. I would argue that the

Nuremberg laws, whereby Jews were forced to wear the Star of David, and the

tattooing of a number upon their forearms, were particularly symbolic in this

regard. It was a form of symbolic violence in which they were constituted as an

object to be administered. They ceased to be a part of all dialogic interaction.

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They were as defined by other. Arendt argues that part of what made this event

possible was an attempt to create a science of society, through the application of

the laws of natural science upon society.

In Habermas we find concern over colonization of the life world by

systems rationality. I would argue that what these thinkers are all implicitly

working towards are the dangers of monological thought. It is the danger of

insisting that one world-creating interpretative horizon is the correct one. We

have so strongly internalized the view that logical consistency is a good thing that

it appears counterintuitive to argue that the starting point for a discourse ethics

has to be the plurality of meaning. This is not a demand, like Rawls‟, which

presupposes an unsocial self. Quite the contrary, it presupposes precisely the

type of switching logic (and inconsistency) of the competent social actor as

described by Goffman. Being made up of many contrary interpretative horizons

facilitates our capacity to be open to the other as a differently interpretive being.

It also entails the reciprocal demand that the other see the world from the

particular world-creating perspective which we consider appropriate to specific

circumstances.

While we cannot have a privileged view from nowhere, neither are we

trapped into a single local language game, which renders all moral judgments

only of local significance. We can use these various interpretative horizons to

mirror objects against each other. The same thing can attach itself to a signifier in

one interpretative horizon and then swing back to another signifier in a different

interpretative horizon. It is like repairing a ship at sea, without a dry dock, but

with several ships which each can be used as an external vantage point to repair

the other. At this point we are at a very different perception of pluralism than

envisaged by Dahl. It is not the singular self with a plurality of resources. Rather

we are dealing with a plural self who, unlike the Enlightenment self, does not

seek the perfection of singularity but views their very inconsistency as a source of

emancipation. So far I have argued with moderns and Enlightenment liberals,

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thus entirely methodologically bracketing one of the biggest actual challenges of

the contemporary world, that of the growth of fundamentalist religious belief.

So far I have endorsed religious interpretations as alternative views as part of the

plural self (although this is not part of my plural self). I choose the word

fundamentalism deliberately. I would argue that religious belief which is part of a

plural self, is entirely unproblematic and may even be beneficial. However, if

this particular interpretative horizon informs the entirety of the self, at the cost

of the plural self, then I consider it dangerous. If the view is totalizing then there

is no ambiguity of signifiers, there is only one meaning for everything. The

dangers, which Arendt saw of the reduction of social life to a biological

positivistic metaphor, did not come from the incorrectness of biology but its

extension to inappropriate spheres of the world. Similarly, it may not be the

specifics of a faith which is the problem, it is the extension of a theologically

informed interpretative horizon to everything that leads to injustice.

What can be said concerning religious belief applies equally to other

systems of thought. If we take rational choice theory or utilitarianism it leads to

counterintuitive conclusions in certain instances. In order to „rescue‟ the theory

most protagonists of these perspectives construct complex conceptual devices to

deal with these situations. Altruistic behavior is explained through complex

secondary benefits in rational choice, and what constitutes utility is redefined to

make conceptual space for explaining why we should not feed a few people to

lions if it maximizes the pleasure of the majority. However, what is wrong here

is that the theories have been overextended to situations in which alternative

interpretative horizons are appropriate. I think the same can be said concerning

Rawl‟s original position. It does deliver justice in certain instances but each

situation calls for a continual reflection back and forth of interpretative horizon.

Is this person someone about whom I should know nothing or is it pertinent that

I see her as „Mrs Cohen from down the road‟? is a question which we must

constantly ask ourselves when dealing with other. Also, what interpretative

horizon is that other bringing to the situation? The recognition of the latter does

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20

not entail that we necessarily accept the constraints of another‟s system of

meaning. However, it does entail that we recognize that we engage with these

ways of making sense of the world and demonstrate why they are inappropriate,

if that is indeed the case.

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