Power and Pluralism

By: Mark Haugaard.

University Of Ireland.
 Power & Pluralism

“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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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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