Special issue on noumenal power: an editorial

In the wider power debates, many theorists have observed that power is linked to reason: as ideology in three-dimensional power (Lukes 1974), as power/knowledge through the use of truth (Foucault 1980), as an epistemic condition of power as agency (Barnes 1988), and as performative authority (Searle 1996). Within this context, Forst’s theory of noumenal power constitutes one of the most systematic and comprehensive attempts to explore the link between power and reasons. However, as we shall see, because Forst’s hypothesis constitutes a big idea, it has also generated robust critical commentary.

Forst defines power as follows: ‘the phenomenon of power is noumenal in nature: to have and to exercise power means to be able – in different degrees – to influence, use, determine, occupy, or even seal off the space of reasons for others’ (Forst 2017, p. 42). As observed by Susen, in the first article, part of the subtlety of Forst’s intervention is that the phenomenon of noumenal power is theorized in an evaluatively neutral manner, while the ambition is normative. The neutral definition provides conceptual space for many power-related phenomena, but the object is to critique forms of domination that are based upon flawed justification, leading to their replacement with dialogic democratic politics derived from interactively mutually legitimate justifications.

Of the six articles in this special issue, five are robust critiques of Forst, while the sixth explores the types of reason that characterise the four dimensions of power. Two important interrelated themes run through the critiques. The first concerns the scope of Forst’s definition: is it too narrow in scope? The second concern ties between reasons and power: are reasons really foundational to power?

Susen’s article constitutes a clear overview of Forst’s position, which situates the work within the wider power debates. Having situated Forst in a nuanced way, Susen explores whether Forst’s definition of power precludes important constituent elements raised by those debates. For instance, does the emphasis upon reasons as the source of compliance ignore instances of domination where reasons come after interests? Lukes (1974) maintains that identifying whose interests are served is central to any analysis of domination. Surely, argues Susen, it is quite often the case that the powerful start from their particular interests, and then construct justifications to legitimize those interests. In other words, the process that drives the domination of the less powerful is not an intellectual move from reasons to interests, but the other way around. This form of post-facto rationalisation becomes occluded from analysis by the presumption that reasons come first.

In the second article Lukes explicitly addresses the question of demarcation. He opens by defending the idea that power is an essentially contested concept. This means there will never be a single definition that all will agree upon. However, even accepting this divergence, all theorists wish to have a concept of power that is sufficiently clear so that it includes political phenomena that are relevantly similar, and excludes those that are dissimilar. Lukes argues that the inclusion-cum-exclusions of our definition have a profound impact upon our perception of the political landscape, which determines what is perceived as politics and what is not. This has normative implications: if the exclusions are large, the normative field becomes small, and so critique limited. When Dahl defined power in terms of A getting B to do something that B would not otherwise do (Dahl 1957), the implication of this was to see the political landscape through the limiting lens of decision-making. Normatively, this made the US appear pluralist and democratic. Once Bachrach and Baratz (1962) drew attention to the second dimension of power and Lukes (1974) to the third, the political landscape appeared wider and, consequently, less democratic.

Back in 2008, in the first issue of this journal, Hayward and Lukes (2008) engaged in a dialogue where they debated the difference between power and structure and this debate continues in this issue of the Journal. In 2008 and in the current paper, Lukes argues that agency is a defining characteristic of power, while constraint pertains to structure. Such a distinction enables the normative theorists to evaluate moral responsibility (power), or its absence (structure). Consequently, Lukes criticises Forst for not properly distinguishing power from structure. However, following the previous debate, Hayward disagrees. In the third article, she applauds Forst’s inclusion of structure as a form of power. However, she argues that Forst’s account of structural power does not go far enough.

Forst includes social structures within the ambit of noumenal power by arguing that structures are reproduced through the realm of reasons, and so open to justification. For instance, structural discrimination against blacks is justified by a racist narrative, which constitutes the (bad) reasons for this form of structural domination. However, Hayward argues that, over time, given social complexity, the reasons that sustain relations of domination are often unclear. In fact, the most effective relations of domination work around, or by displacing, the cognition of those who are subjected to it. For instance, with regard to segregated housing in the USA, it may be true that in nineteenth and early twentieth century this was sustained by an overt racist discourse, which was open to critique – a la Forst. During this period a whole set of insurance and mortgage policies were developed which had their roots in this racist discourse. However, after WW 2, the racist discourse became de-legitimized, yet the structures remained in place. In this later period, black and white buyers purchased their houses relative to their respective mortgage and insurance possibilities. The latter became the reasons for their actions, not the previous racism. So, these house purchasers reproduced structurally segregated racial housing patterns but without racist justification. For Hayward, justification and institutionalisation are not the same thing: a truly emancipatory social change takes place only when both the order of justification and the institutional order are overturned. Forst’s emphasis upon reason suggests that all that is necessary is the former.

In the fourth article, Azmanova distinguishes between relational, structural and systemic power. She accepts Forst’s claim that his concept of noumenal power covers relational and structural power (unlike Hayward) but Azmanova argues that noumenal power does not include systemic domination, which it should. The latter arises from central operational logic of a system. So, for instance, capitalism has at its operational core the logic of competition for profit. Because Forst acknowledges that all justification is socially embedded, this means that social subjects will justify relative to the systemic context in which they have been formed as social subjects. Social subjects socialised within a capitalist system will tend to consider the operational logic of that system as entirely natural. Consequently, the critique of the logical core of systems of domination becomes, de facto, precluded.

The scope of Forst’s definition of power becomes the starting point for Gilabert’s critique (fifth article). Gilabert finds Forst’s exclusion of violence from noumenal power deeply unsatisfactory. It would appear to exclude the ultimate acts of domination: when a person is made entirely abject (like an object) when, for instance, they are killed or imprisoned. Echoing Hayward’s structural and Azmanova’s systemic concerns, Gilabert further finds it unsatisfactory that unintended effects are excluded from noumenal power. For Forst unintended effects are constitutive of the structural and systemic context of social relations. He recognises that unintended effects happen, but they are theorized as influence. However, echoing Lukes’ point that how you define power impacts upon your normative perspective, naming unintended effects as influence suggests that these effects are somehow beyond critical reflection.

The last paper, by Haugaard, is different from the rest, as it is not a critique exposing supposed exclusions or contradictions of Forst’s position. Rather, Haugaard develops Forst’s analyses further by exploring how reason-giving changes over the four dimensions of power. The picture that emerges is a complex one. In the second, third and fourth dimensions of power we see how justifications become varied and dis-synchronous between powerful and less powerful. Haugaard does not argue that this precludes certain forms of critique of power, as the other authors do, rather that it makes normative justificatory convergence exceptionally difficult to achieve – which is not a theoretical flaw, rather a problem of practice.

In the next issue Rainer Forst will respond to these papers, and there will also be an article by Matthias Kettner.

Mark Haugaard
National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
[email protected]
Matthias Kettner
Witten/Herdecke University, Witten, Germany