Undoing power

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Abstract
This essay examines the possibility for critical scholarship to re‐articulate power so as to aid its undoing in social and, hence, dialogical practices. It starts with an experiment in perception designed to make readers aware of how language is implicated in bringing forth the reality we see and also aware of the possibility of its re‐articulations. It presents several well known articulations of power, largely from academic writing, that depict the nature of power as the awe‐invoking and omnipresent leaving nothing to be done. The essay then proposes four defining conditions for undoable phenomena and applies them to power, examining the foundation of its inevitability and looking for a lever to unhinge its constructions. And with the help of four more procedural steps it is suggested how power may be contested, re‐articulated and undone. The key to debilitating notions of power is their reliance on physical metaphors whose entailments make an undoing inconceivable. This gives rise to the distinction between power and force. The undoing of power is demonstrated through three examples: simple threats, domination, and the concept of language that keeps social scientists stuck in a debilitating way of languaging. The essay concludes with a recommendation for what critical theory could and should do: maintaining the possibility of emancipatory dialogue with Others.

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